JASON RICCI & NEW BLOOD Source: Telegraph Herald Date: 10/2009 Writer: Sandye Voight

Rock 'n' roll-blues-jazz harmonica player/vocalist Jason Ricci knows his audience.
Jason Ricci and the New Blood will perform Saturday, Oct. 3, at 180 Main, a venue he remembers as The Busted Lift, and one he's played several times before.

"It's cool. There's a good variety of ages and background" in the audience, he said. "We tend to be more ourselves than in the blues-based venues -- not that I don't like blues. I might perform shirtless; you never know."

The New Blood includes Shawn Starski, guitarist, and Todd "Buck Weed" Edmunds, on bass, tuba, double bass, sousaphone and bass harmonica. It does not include Argentinian drummer Maki Bergara.

"There've been six drummers since him. One a year," he said.  He's not sure why the band has a hard time hanging onto drummers.  "It's a 'Spinal Tap' thing. Sometimes, they just spontaneously combust, you know."  Current drummer Byron Cage is set to tour with the band in November when they join Ricci in England. Ricci already will be there beginning in October, when he goes over to tour Europe as a sideman for guitarist Walter Trout.

He's not an optimist, but if Cage passes the year mark with New Blood, Ricci believes he'll stick around.  Originally from Maine, Ricci quit high school, left home for Idaho, where he got a GED and studied wildlife management while getting involved in music. He landed in Memphis in 1995.

It was an early band, Farm Dog, in his high school days that prompted him to pursue the mouth organ.  "The guys were writing songs and singing, too, and doing it better than me," he said. "I wanted to play something so I wouldn't get benched. They picked the harmonica for me. They figured I couldn't really ruin the music like I could with a piano or a guitar. I showed them."