JASON RICCI & NEW BLOOD Source: Knoxville News Sentinel Co. Date: 10/2007 Writer: n/a

Openly gay bluesman stakes his rep on his skills, not his sexual orientation 

By Wayne Bledsoe (Contact) 
Friday, November 9, 2007 

Jason Ricci is opening ears and minds in the blues world. 
Jason Ricci & New Blood 
Where: Sassy Ann’s, 820 N. 4th Ave. 
When: 9:30 p.m. today and Saturday 
Admission: $5, 865-525-5839, www.sassyanns.com 

Jason Ricci isn’t your stereotypical blues musician. His hair and clothes come straight out of the punk-rock world. His music, with his band New Blood, can veer into hard-edged jam territory. The title cut of the group’s new album, “Rocket Number 9,” is a number by legendary jazz provocateur Sun Ra. And, Ricci is openly gay. 

In a cell phone call while the band travels to Lincoln, Neb., Ricci says that, in the blues world, all those things are issues: 

“I’ve had some death threats. We’ve been banned from several clubs and festivals. We’ve been boycotted by a blues society in Ohio. Why I’m out is not that I’m on some crusade to be some greatest gay blues artist, I just don’t want to make up stories about why I don’t have a girlfriend.” 

A harmonica player and vocalist, Ricci has definitely paid his dues and his respects in the blues world. 

Raised in Portland, Maine, Ricci began playing harmonica at the age of 14 in a punk rock band. 

However, his mother, who had given him the harmonica, had other ideas. 

“She found this teacher for me and he was way off into the blues and so was my mom,” says Ricci. “So between the two of them, they converted me.” 

Ricci started a blues band with fellow Portland blues enthusiast Nick Curran. In 1995, at the ago of 20, Ricci moved to Memphis, where he studied the work of harmonica great Pat Ramsey and also hooked up with the North Mississippi blues scene. 

Ricci joined a band led by David Malone Kimbrough, son of blues great Junior Kimbrough, and soon was a part of the bands of both Kimbroughs and was sitting in with R.L. Burnside. 

At the same time, though, Ricci was falling into a heavy drug habit. Part of it, he says, had to do with romanticizing the history of drugs in music. 

“It was like, ‘Oh well, Charlie Parker shot heroin. I’ll smoke crack and then I really needed it.” 

The eventual outcome of that was a drug conviction in Palm Beach County, Fla., where Ricci spent a year and a day behind bars. 

The judge allowed Ricci to participate in a drug treatment program while incarcerated. 

“It was life-changing,” says Ricci. “I’m a huge fan of the system. Even as screwed up as it is, it saved my life. Halfway houses, homeless shelters, detoxes, mental institutions, all those places have been a part of me!” 

Ricci laughs, adding, “Thank God, I haven’t had to see any of those places in the last nine years!” 

After getting out of jail, Ricci was even more serious about his music and stayed clean. 

Part of the equation was Ricci realizing that some of the bluesmen he admired, including the Kimbroughs and Burnside, were carrying on a family legacy while younger players needed to be true to their own paths. Ricci says that guitarist Shawn Starsky joining the band was a huge part of the group defining its sound. 

Ricci says he sometimes feels like if he starts a show with several rockers he has to prove his blues chops before moving on. 

“There’s extra pressure for me to show them, ‘Listen, I’ve listened to more blues from 1950 in the first year that I was into this than you will in your life!’ ” 

Yet Ricci isn’t planning on changing his music or himself to become what audiences expect him to be. 

That also applies to letting blues fans understand his nonmusical life. 

“I’ve had the same boyfriend for four years. We own a home together. We’re very serious about spending the rest of our lives together. We’re an incredibly loyal, monogamous, very straight-acting couple who are immensely happy together and would like the same financial breaks that the rest of the world gets so we have the same chances of success. We want to be able to visit each other in the hospital if one of us gets sick. We want to be able to leave our possessions to each other after we die without worrying (about) either one of our families stepping in and taking control of those things. I don’t see the big deal.” 

© 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. 

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