Billy Branch Bringing Back the Blues

Oct. 30, 2015

Chicago-born and California-seasoned, harmonica-playing blues musician Billy Branch is again living in his Windy City hometown after years in Los Angeles. No matter where he is, blues music comes as naturally to him as walking, and he’ll be bringing his sound even farther north next week, with a concert in Traverse City.

It’s early on a Thursday morning and, based on the gravel in Branch’s phone voice, it sounds like it’s a little too early, but he’s got to get moving anyway; he’s heading to a recording studio for a side project he’s working on: a collaboration with an unnamed Italian classical composer.

While Branch’s own group, The Sons of Blues, is a legend in its own right, Branch is also a master of musical alliances, having spent time in the studio with everyone from Johnny Winter and Taj Mahal to Lou Rawls, Koko Taylor and Willie Dixon.

It was Dixon, in fact, who first inspired Branch to start focusing on his music.

“I picked up harmonica as a kid, when I was 11,” Branch said. “I was just drawn to it. I had a natural ability to play it.”

In the beginning, he mostly played folk tunes, old classics interspersed with nursery rhymes and Christmas carols around the holidays.

The harmonica stuck with him throughout his schooling and after he graduated from high school in the late ‘60s, he attended the University of Illinois, where he said “the blues were everywhere.”

“People all over campus were playing the blues, playing harmonica; you heard the blues everywhere you went,” he recollected.

“I went to a phenomenal blues festival that Willie Dixon put on and there were also, oh, probably 40–50 nightclubs around the city that featured the blues during that time.”

Branch teamed up with a good friend to make the rounds of the blues clubs, where he got to see some of the greats. It’s a list that seems even more incredible when you realize that all of these musicians were performing in the same city.

“I got to see Junior Wells, Koko Taylor, Howlin’ Wolf, Son Seals, Muddy Waters — and I ended up performing and recording with most of ‘em!” Branch said.

Now a three-time Grammy nominee and an Emmy Award winner, Branch is a mustsee at venues and festivals around the world including the San Francisco Blues Festival, the Montreux Blues Festival and his hometown event, the Chicago Blues Fest.

The blues, as you can probably tell, remain his foundation.

“Willie [Dixon] said that the blues is life,” Branch said. “It’s the ups and downs, the trials and tribulations. Everybody has them, so everybody has the blues.”

“And it’s the only one you can have,” he continued. “You can’t have the jazz, you can’t have the hip-hop — but you can have the blues.”

While the universality of the blues spoke to him, Branch was also drawn to it because of the sounds and the scene surrounding it.

“It was just so vibrant, exciting, hip and cool,” he said.

This genre longevity led to the first studio album Branch recorded with his band in 15 years. When asked what brought him back to the studio, he simply said, “it’s about time!” More contemporary blues than traditional blues, he explained the title, Blues Shock, refers to people’s captivation by the blues, something he said happens most often at live blues performances.

That’s intriguing news for people anticipating Branch’s upcoming Dennos show.

“The blues always have to fight a stigma of being sad music for old people,” Branch added, “but when you experience a live blues concert, you’ll find that it’s anything but.”

Billy Branch and The Sons of Blues will be in concert at Milliken Auditorium at The Dennos Museum Center in Traverse City on Nov. 7 at 8pm. For tickets and more information, visit dennosmuseum.org or call (800) 836-0717.