JASON RICCI & NEW BLOOD Source: Dayton Daily News Date: 11/2009 Writer: Don Thrasher

Jason Ricci is categorized as a bluesman. However, one listen to his new album, “Done with the Devil,” makes it clear preconceived notions don’t dictate his approach to music.
“I’m really bummed there’s this need for everybody to classify things,” Ricci said. “It has to be black or white, gay or straight, or rock ’n’ roll, blues or jazz. I don’t understand that.”

Backed by his versatile band, New Blood, the singer-harmonica player is able to tackle straight-up blues, but just as often defies expectations. “Done with the Devil” is a blues album, but Ricci and company also inject radical strains of hoodoo venom into reworked versions of songs by punk rockers The Misfits and jazz mystic Sun Ra.

“We get a lot of people scratching their heads, but we’re never trying to shake things up,” Ricci said. “We’re just playing music and this seems to be the result.”

Ricci only spent three days recording his previous album, “Rocket Number 9,” but he spent two weeks in Shadow Lane Studio in Nashville recording the new disc. Ricci took advantage of the time by adding touches such as Rhodes electric piano, upright bass and Hammond B3 organ.

“The extra time allowed us to digest the music as we went and make the proper changes,” Ricci said.  “We didn’t feel pressured to have to get something right the first or second time. We were able to come up with ideas like adding an accordion to a part. You wouldn’t normally think about that in three days because your mind is focused on getting done.

“Records just shouldn’t be made that way unless they’re meant to be recorded live,” he added. “I’ll never do a record in three days like I did the last one.”
Ricci, who performs at Gilly’s on Sunday, Nov. 22, is a rare beast in blues music: an openly gay man and he isn’t leery about discussing it.

“I don’t have any boundaries,” he said. “That’s something I learned from my mother. I broke up with my boyfriend of six years when I was making the new album, so you’re definitely going to be hearing some breakup songs.

“I never thought I’d ever write material like that,” Ricci continued. “I’m way to into the forces of good and evil, death and birth, the God and the Devil, left and right, and the sun and the moon and everything in between, but this is definitely huge so I will be writing about it. I’m an open book about everything”.