BACKSTAGE PASS:

Go behind the scenes with staff writer Scott Dirks as he shares inside stories and additional details on the cutting room floor regarding Delta Groove artists and releases. This month's article focuses on a candid conversation between Delta & Eclecto Groove Records CEO Randy Chortkoff and staff writer Scott Dirks.

The Insomniacs have been shaking things up around their hometown of Portland, Oregon for a couple of years now, and their new Delta Groove release “Left Coast Blues” should go a long way towards propelling them into a much larger spotlight.  I recently spoke with 26 year old Insomniacs guitarist and frontman Vyasa Dodson.  Dodson may not have learned his craft sitting at the knee of the masters like some of the blues players from earlier generations, but he has absorbed their music like a sponge, and has developed into one of the finest and most tasteful young bluesmen working today. 

I have to ask - what’s the origin of the name Vyasa?  (pronounced “VEE-oss”)

It’s Sanskrit, from India.  My mom liked the name - it means knowledge.  It was also the name of a famous scholar who wrote the Mahabharata.  (According to Wikipedia, Vyasa “is a central and much revered figure in the majority of Hindu traditions.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyasa)

OK, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about your music…do you remember the first music that had an influence on you?

When I was around 10, I remember listening to The Doors first album…it was in my mom’s collection.  That’s my earliest memory of being really interested in music.  I think I listened to that album over and over again for about a year.  Although I don’t think I’ve drawn any influences that are in my music, I just really like the sound of it.  Then when I was 14, I took an instrumental training class at high school.  I had 100 dollar acoustic guitar I got from Costco, and learned the chords and scales.  G, C, D, E, A, maybe an E minor in there just for fun…all the good chords (laughs).

But the whole reason I took that course was that I’d heard this song “Five Long Years” on Eric Clapton’s “From The Cradle”, and the guitar sounded really cool.  I wanted to be that kind of guitar player.  At the time I had no idea these were covers that Clapton was doing, I didn’t have many records and hadn’t heard any of the original versions of the songs he was doing.  I remember later hearing “Sinner’s Prayer” by Ray Charles and thinking, oh, that’s where Clapton got that from.  And I still think it’s a great CD.   I guess I’ve found myself defending my opinion about it sometimes, but I think it’s the best thing he’s ever done.

So when I first got started, I listened to a lot of the same stuff everyone else was listening to, Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, I listened to them over and over and over.  Those were my main influences, and I was hanging around with other guitar players, and it was all about shredding, and I was amazed with all the technicality and speed.  But I got through all that after a while, and I haven’t listened to Stevie Ray in a long time.  I still like it, but I moved on into other stuff.  My main influences these days are the West Coast guitarists, Little Charlie Baty, Junior Watson, Hollywood Fats, the West Coast standard guys.  Alex Schultz is pretty amazing too.  And there are two guys here in Portland who are just amazing, they’re awesome players who aren’t really known much outside Portland: Phil Wagner, who goes by the stage name Suburban Slim, he’s an amazing player, and Marco Savo, he’s on Jimi Bott’s latest record playing a Tiny Grimes tribute.  He’s a god!  They’re local, unknown outside of Portland guys who are just killers.  I’ve been fortunate to be able to hang out and learn a lot from these guys over these past 5 years.  They’ve been very important influences on my guitar playing, and also in life. 

I really enjoy your singing – you’ve got your own voice.  Whose singing do you like?

Phil Wagner is a great singer, and an influence.  He never forces it, and it comes out so natural.  But my all-time classic is Johnny “Guitar” Watson.  He had such a cool, quirky voice, so much feel, so great.  Anything he sings sounds great.  There are a lot of people I wish I could sing like, but I’m a little doubtful about my own abilities; about my singing, I just try not to mess up (laughs). 

You also write some pretty good songs, at a time when a lot of blues songwriters are just pasting together a few lines here and there taken from other songs, and calling them originals.  Where does that come from?

I started writing early…I started writing songs at the same time I started playing guitar, so I’ve always been writing.  In the last five years I’ve been listening to a lot of different people, and that’s had a definite influence. 

I detect a little bit of Rick Estrin’s tongue-in-cheek approach in some of your stuff.

Rick has got a really interesting way of putting things, and it’s usually pretty funny.  My song from the “Left Coast Blues” CD, “I Got Money”, I tried to make that a light hearted, not-so-serious approach to the blues, so yes, Rick would have to be an influence.  As far as new songwriters, I think a lot of the songs he writes are instant classics.

What is it like being a young man playing what a lot of people think of as an old man’s game? And related to that, what kind of audiences do you draw?

Being a young guy is kind of fun…I think I come at it a little more aggressively than guys who’ve been doing it a long time.  The band is all younger guys, and we like to have a good time.  We do get a lot of friends at gigs, younger people generally, in their 30s or so, and they like to stay pretty late, they don’t turn in early.  But generally the crowds are a little older, because blues fans in general are a little older. 

It’s kind of tough, but a lot of places where young people like to go, those places don’t want to try a “blues band” in their bar - they don’t think it’ll draw, so a lot of young people just don’t get exposed to this music.  It would be awesome to expose new people to this kind of music, but I don’t know if I have that kind of reach or influence.  There’s a wider age range when we play a gig like the Waterfront Blues Festival, situations like that where you get a good range of ages from little kids to older people and everything in between.  But it’s a challenge to play in front of young people, and try to turn them on to the music, because there aren’t many places that you can play in front of a younger crowd.

What’s next for The Insomniacs?

We’ve got our first out of town tour coming up in a couple weeks.  We’ll go up to Seattle, down to Los Angeles, Phoenix, then we’ll play Biscuits & Blues in San Francisco on Halloween – that ought to be fun! (laughs).  I can’t really express how excited I am to get on the road.  That’s been the goal the whole time, and it’s very exciting.  I also really hope to get to Europe, and we’re trying to make some connections with people to get over there.  I was just over in Europe, and if I got to go over there and have fun and play music, and get paid for it, that would be awesome.  We’d like to get out on the festival circuit.  We’re also working on our next CD right now, so we’re staying very busy.  We want to do it all!

Written by Scott Dirks