HEADLINE: `KEEP ON KEEPING ON' IS BLUZBLASTERS' CREDO
Published: Friday, September 1, 1989
Section: Lifestyles
Page: E1
By JOSEPH PRYWELLER Staff Writer

It wasn't one of the Bluzblasters' better nights.

The members were tired, having just returned that morning from a weeklong tour of some of North Carolina's bluesier clubs. Midway through the second song, lead guitarist Jimmy Williams snapped a string. At the beginning of the fourth song, a trucker's voice crackled over citizens band radio through the amplifiers for a few bewildering moments.

But the Bluzblasters, one of this area's hottest bands, knows how to keep on keeping on. Even this night at Shucker's Restaurant & Raw Bar, a mellow wood-paneling-and-ceiling-fan club near the beach.

Nothing stopped lead singer Lathan Hill, with his football player's rugged physique, from stomping through the incendiary lyrics to B.B. King's "Why I Sing the Blues."

"Everybody wants to know now, baby, why I'm singing these old blues," he snapped between growling swipes at the chorus. Williams twanged on his white electric guitar, and Doug Newby's tenor saxophone made a series of staccato shrieks.

This five-man band from Hampton Roads sings the blues with single-minded purpose. Its members are graduates from other area blues outfits, and all but Williams are at least 35 years old. The full-time players came together 16 months ago to get serious about a career. The Bluzblasters want to rattle the cage of a national audience.

"There're a lot of good blues bands in Hampton Roads," said Mike Rau of the Natchel Blues Network, a Norfolk-based group that promotes blues shows. "But none are more committed to being successful than the Bluzblasters."

As each member of the band attests, the group has achieved most of its fame outside Hampton Roads, getting its mojo working in places such as Wilmington, Del., and Cape Hatteras, N.C.

Last year, the Bluzblasters were signed to a strong-but-small blues record label, King Snake Records in Washington, and put out their first LP, "Get Blasted!" in July. It mainly contains the band's original blues tunes. It's a possible prelude to the band getting signed by one of the major labels, such as Alligator Records.

It sounds like these guys are serious. Then you look at them individually. There's singer/guitarist Lathan "Pudgee" Hill from Norfolk, dressed in black T-shirt and bicycle cap. He might look like a linebacker, but he used to teach English at Commonwealth College in Virginia Beach. "Blues is the most emotional music there is," he said before the show. "It's all about how people live with their ups and downs."

Guitarist "Little Jimmy" Williams looks like a '50s hep cat in beret and a little goatee. His fast-chiming guitar and sonic noodling come partly from the work of Jimi Hendrix, whom Williams claims as one of his influences.

Then there's bass player Earl Holiday of Virginia Beach, whose real name is Walter Barnes, but who's almost a dead ringer for Ringo Starr with longer hair. Drummer "Blind" George Smith of Suffolk, is the only band member currently married. Smith, who leaves a wife and two small children to travel with the band, looks like a typical family man except for the little ponytail he wears. He's the designated driver on tour. Finally, there's saxman Newby, a Newport News resident and Smithfield native. He gave up a lucrative career as a nuclear technician to play in and manage the Bluzblasters. Hill constantly refers to Newby on-stage as "San Antone Jake" for a Western-style art piece Newby has on the wall of his home.

Newby, the band's oldest member at 41, co-produced the Bluzblasters' album. The album has some wild moments, as would befit this outfit. It includes an ode to a "Gold Tooth Woman," a saxophone blaster called "Doug's Stomp" that features a sax solo by blues man Noble Watts and a heavy version of the '60s garage-band hit "Baby Please Don't Go."

The most charged moment on "Get Blasted!" could be the cover of the blues song "I Wouldn't Lay My Guitar Down," a melody that sounds even more buoyant when heard live.

"The way we see it, we don't want to play music that we don't believe in," said Williams, when asked about playing a form of music that's not so widely embraced by audiences. "If we work at this long enough, people will eventually catch up to us."

Band members pile into Smith's family station wagon for repeated series of one-nighters up and down the East Coast. Eventually, the guys want to tour the country.

After playing Hampton Bay Days, the Bluzblasters will fly to Italy to play at the San Remo International Blues Festival, televised live in that country. Other musicians on the bill are Al Green, blues harmonica player James Cotton and guitarist Albert Collins.

"It's a big start for us," Newby said of the trip, arranged by King Snake Records and paid for by the Italian government.

But first the band needs to conquer Hampton Roads. "We still play a club around here, and someone will ask us to do a Jimmy Buffett song," said Newby, laughing at the improbability of a blues band doing lazy island pop songs. "But we'll win them over some day."

* BAND STAND: The Bluzblasters will play at 2:30 p.m. Sept. 9 on the Mill Point Stage at Hampton Bay Days.

Copyright 1989, Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

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