Blind Lemon: Here’s Juicy.

Blind Lemon launch their self-titled CD at the Jazz’n’Blues Bar, Holiday Inn on Wednesday.

Hailing from northern New South Wales, Blind Lemon are on a blues mission to present the music they love with verve and flair. Not content to regurgitate a handful of hackneyed standards, Blind Lemon seamlessly blend jazz and blues to craft music anything but sour.

Guitarist Andrew Baxter concurs: “Our music is blues-based, but as with most bands nowadays, we’re combining elements of other styles, mostly jazz more than anything else. We are all big fans of jazz, particularly jazz fusion.”

“We have the obvious influences—Stevie Ray Vaughan, Clapton, Buddy Guy, Louis Jordan, Charlie Musselwhite and so on. Also, as I said before, the jazzy side of the world too, guys like Robben Ford, John Schofield, Tony Williams, Miles, Weather Report. Our bass player thinks he is Jaco Pastoriuos! We all have enormously eclectic tastes in music and I like to think that it shows in our playing. To me the best thing about playing blues, is that it melds so seamlessly with other styles, particularly jazz.”

After more than two years on the volatile blues music scene, Blind Lemon are releasing their self-titled debut. Andrew describes the result.

“We have some tunes recorded live. We have some tunes that were done in a professional studio, and we have some that were recorded at home on a Roland digital multi-track. The live tunes were the first ones we did, and they were done in October last year. The studio stuff was started in October last year as well, and just completed piece by piece. I wanted to go in do the whole thing live, four or five takes of each song and pick the best, but the studio owner talked us into utilizing the capacity of a studio. We more or less reproduced what we do live, but track by track instead of all at once. So we have been going in and doing a bit here and a bit there.”

“We had enough material to do all original but I think putting a couple of covers on gives people looking at your record something to grab onto so they know where you are coming from. We have covered Red House by Jimi Hendrix, Key to the Highway by Big Bill Broonzy and Catfish, which we heard on an old blues harp compilation CD, 25 Years of Blues Harp Boogie—a great CD.”