DOYLE BRAMHALL BIO
It’s apropos that DOYLE BRAMHALL’s new Yep Roc CD is titled Is It News because, althoughthey’re absolutely true to his deep roots in the blues, its dozen original tunes mark a turning pointthat is both ambitious and the logical summation of his artistic evolution. The answer to the forward-thinking,envelope-pushing CD’s title is a resounding yes—and the news is all good!
“I wanted to make an all-original record that was big, energetic, intimate, and unpredictable,”Doyle states. “We got a lot of the sounds by pushing everything to the limit and then pulling it backfrom there.”
Fans already accustomed to Doyle’s high standards and willingness to chart new territory willnonetheless be pleased and surprised at just how high he raises the bar. This instant classic is thebenchmark of Bramhall’s storied career—which is saying a lot! Continuing the tradition he startedwith the songs he co-wrote with Stevie Ray Vaughan, which struck a chord with the biggestaudience the blues has ever enjoyed, he deftly expands the idiom’s vocabulary and texture.
Any discussion of Texas blues, be it T-Bone Walker or Stevie Ray, is incomplete without mention ofDoyle Bramhall. As singer, songwriter, and drummer, he has been an integral part of that rich state’s music for almost 40 years and, indeed, one of the founding fathersof the blues/roots resurgence synonymous with the Lone Star state and the migration from Dallas to its musical epicenter, Austin. Considering the impact Texas, the stateand the state of mind, has had on music around the globe, Bramhall’s importance cannot be overstated.
Growing up in Dallas, his Chessmen opened for Jimi Hendrix in 1968, when Doyle was still in his teens. Moving to Austin with the band’s guitarist, Jimmie Vaughan,the two formed Storm, which Bramhall eventually left to form the Nightcrawlers—this time with Vaughan’s little brother, Stevie Ray. Two Bramhall compositions, “ChangeIt” and“Lookin’ Out The Window,” became linchpins of Stevie’s repertoire, and the pair began a fruitful songwriting collaboration that yielded seven more classics—including “The House Is Rockin’,” “Tightrope” and “Wall of Denial” from In Step, and three tunes from theVaughan Brothers’ Family Style, which featured Bramhall ondrums.
The term legend is bandied about, often in reference to Doyle, but there are few triple-threats as strong—as songwriter, singer (sited by Stevie Ray as his biggest vocalinfluence), and instrumentalist (blues queen Lou Ann Barton calls him as “the bestdrummer in the South”). So it was little surprise that his 1994 album, Bird Nest On The Ground, was such a powerful debut. Following that success, he produced critically acclaimed albums by Marcia Ball, Indigenous, and Chris Duarte, while leadinghis own rocking band. His follow-up CD, Fitchburg Street, was a heartfelt ode to the blues and R&B he heard during his formative years in Big D—which also happensto be Doyle’s nickname, to differentiate between him and his son, guitar great Doyle Bramhall II.
Doyle II is just one of the guitar greats Bramhall enlisted for Is It News. Bandmates from the past Denny Freeman and Jimmie Vaughan turn in stellar performances,along with Mike Keller, Charles “C.C.” Adcock, and Mato Nanji of Indigenous—as do bassist Scott Nelson, keyboardist Billy Etheridge, and others.
Louisiana swamp-rocker Adcock co-produced the CD with Doyle. “I had a vision for this record,” Bramhall explains, “and, because I love Charles’s records and lyricsand the way he records, I really wanted him to be involved. Charles said he could come up for a few days, and he ended up staying for two years.”
Of that vision, Doyle notes, “I’m not comparing myself to them, but I always loved the way the Beatles recorded, especially later on, where they approached eachsong differently and experimented with all kinds of sounds. I wanted to try different things and have everything complement each other—the rhythms and melodies—without getting in each other’s way. I wanted this album to have a totally different feel. Grab whatever’s in the studio and see how it sounds.”
Exploiting that unconventional, fresh approach and pushing it a step further, Adcock concludes, “Too many artists sell themselves short by thinking they have to stick to
one thing. I’m a big advocate of, no matter how far you push someone, it’s always going to sound just like that person.”
Doyle offers clues to who that person is: “Stevie and I both loved rock & roll and soul and jazz—all kinds of music we wanted to bring in. All the way up to FamilyStyle, in 1990, we didn’t stop ourselves from trying whatever we felt. We always stayed close to ourroots, but we were very influenced by other things. That’s what was so fun about Stevie—like, what’s going to happen next? He was not predictable.”
The same, of course, can be said of Doyle, especially in light of this groundbreaking release. “I never viewed myself as a blues person or rock person or whatever,”he explains. “I just see myself as a music person.” As usual, what sounds simple and unpretentious on the surface, like Doyle Bramhall’s multi-layered music, speaksvolumes.