JASON RICCI & NEW BLOOD Source: The Daily Times (Maryville, TN) Date: 12/2007 Writer: Steve Wildsmith

THE DAILY TIMES (Maryville, TN) 
January 11, 2008 
 
Blues man Jason Ricci feels Southern hospitality in Tennessee 
 
Courtesy of Jason Ricci 
Blues man Jason Ricci dares to be different, but he sounds like the traditional blues dudes at whose feet he learned the craft. Catch him Thursday at Brackins in downtown Maryville. 
 
IF YOU GO 
Jason Ricci and New Blood 
 
WHEN: 9 p.m. Thursday 
 
WHERE: Brackins Blues Bar, 112 E. Broadway, downtown Maryville 
 
You would think, given the stereotypes attributed to the South, that an openly gay blues man like Jason Ricci might have a hard time around these parts. 
 
You would think, but you’d be wrong. 
 
“The majority of the negative press, the cancellations, even the death threat — most of that, if not all of that, came from the North,” Ricci told The Daily Times this week. “I’ve had no problem in Mobile, or Mississippi, or Tennessee. That old expression is so true — there are (jerks) everywhere, and bigotry — especially homophobic bigotry — is reinforced on a national level. For evidence of my argument, go back and watch the Democratic national debate. 
 
“When Barack Obama says he’s not sure how he feels about homosexuality and whether it’s an abomination, then on a national level, it’s approved. And when you do that, you’re going to have bigots all over the world who think it’s open season on fags that day.” 
 
Ricci isn’t on some crusade to bring tolerance and understanding to the masses. He doesn’t want to be the poster boy for gay musicians, and he doesn’t really even see the relevance in discussing his sexuality. He came out several years ago for one reason — to get honest. 
 
“I just didn’t want to have to lie to people anymore when they asked questions like, ‘Where’s your girlfriend?’ or, ‘Do you want to go out?’” Ricci said. “I just wanted to be natural. I didn’t want it to be a big coming-out party, and I don’t feel I have a lot in common with the gay community at large. It’s just part of who I am and something I can’t really change. 
 
“I tried, for many, many years to pretend — not just outwardly, but inwardly,” Ricci added. “Now, it’s just something I’ve accepted and deal with.” 
 
And, more importantly, it’s just a small part of who Jason Ricci really is. Perhaps more importantly, he’s a first-rate blues performer — the reason he’s returning to Brackins Blues Bar in downtown Maryville on Thursday night. As a teen, he got his start playing punk rock, a style that he seems well-suited for even today, given his penchant for punk attire and dyed hair. 
 
His mother introduced him to folk music, and when he picked up the harmonica and started taking lessons, his teacher introduced him to the blues. A trip to see blues legend James Cotton at the age of 14 cemented the direction his path would take — Cotton made the youngster a collection of tapes, and in the blues, he found integrity and sincerity that seemed lacking in other forms of music. 
 
When he was 21, he placed first in the Sonny Boy Blues Society contest in Helena, Ark., and went on that year to perform on the Main Stage of the King Biscuit Blues Festival. That same night, he filled in for Annie Raines and performed at The Black Diamond with Susan Tedeschi, and later that year, he recorded his debut CD. 
 
In 1996, he started living and playing full time with Junior Kimbrough’s son David Malone Kimbrough in Holly Springs, Miss. Eventually, he earned a spot accompany the elder Kimbrough, as well as blues singer R.L. Burnside, to juke joints all over the South, where he received his real education. 
 
Around 1997, he recorded his second album, “Down at the Juke,” and began a string of gigs with several notable blues men - Nick Curran (now on Blind Pig Records), James Harman’s guitar player Enrico Crivellaro and Big Bad Smitty, who was signed to the High Tone label. He also tackled his personal demons, kicking drugs and alcohol after spending little more than a year in jail in Florida. 
 
When he got out, he was more on fire than ever for his music. In 1999, he won the Mars National Harmonica Contest, beating out over 1,000 other harmonica players and appearing as a special guest performer with The Fabulous Thunderbirds at the House of Blues in New Orleans. He recorded another CD and went on to join Big Al and the Heavyweights before leaving to reassemble his own band, Jason Ricci and New Blood. 
 
Over the three years the band has been together, the members have come together in a way that even transcends the blues. From the live album that kick-started the band’s career to the studio albums “Blood on the Road” and last year’s “Rocket Number Nine,” Jason Ricci and New Blood have anchored themselves in a sound that’s distinctly based on the blues but stretching out in several different musical directions. 
 
“We added another player who was not essentially a blues musician, although he’s certainly capable of playing that type of music,” Ricci said. “We added a guy (multi-instrumentalist Todd Edmunds; guitarist Shawn Stachursky and drummer Ron Sutton rounds out the quartet) who plays electric bass, upright bass, tuba … he’s just as likely to play in a jazz ensemble one night, the next night sit in with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and the next night with James Brown — all of which he’s done. 
 
“You add a musician like that to Shawn and I, and we have the freedom now to explore new territory. We have the musicians now who are more than capable of completing the ideas Shawn and I come up with. For two and a half years, we didn’t have any concept of doing something new or wild — we just mixed it in with everything else we did.” 
 
“Rocket Number Nine,” in fact, is the album that finally captures the sound of Jason Ricci and New Blood. The live album “Live at Checker’s” was plagued with recording problems, he said, and “Blood on the Road” was a rush job that the band recorded in eight hours. 
 
“For ‘Rocket Number Nine,’ we had a great producer, and we were dealing with no personnel changes within the band who had years of experience doing these tunes,” Ricci said. “There was nothing to learn the day before we went into the studio. And when you’re working with a brilliant, nine-time Grammy-winning producer and recording at the House of Blues Studios — well, if you can’t make a hit record there under those circumstances, maybe you’re not in the right business.”