2005 LIVE PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

Nightly (except Wednesdays) 6:30 til 11PM
Orleans Cafe
135 Decatur Street

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Every Wednesday 5 til 8 PM
Columns Hotel
3811 St. Charles Avenue
(Happy Hour Drink Prices from 5 'til 7)

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Fridays and Saturdays 3 til 5:45 PM
The Original Pierre Maspero's
440 Chartres St
(Happy Hour Drink Prices from 2 - 7PM)

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The July 2004 issue of Offbeat, Louisiana's leading music publication, features an article about Chip Wilson by columnist Marc Stone.

Why so long between recordings? You tell me you have material recorded, but you have yet to put it out.
Hmmm. I have done a lot of writing and recording, much more to come. The last two or three years have been very dynamic in many ways, and somewhat static in others. Among other things, I lost some beloved family, and had my status changed from married to single man. The impact of all this change has been impossible to describe, and it did distract me from both bigger goals and day to day life and responsibilities. My ongoing gigs at the Orleans Cafe and the Columns Hotel have been a constant and a blessing through these times.

Tell me about the music you have recorded.
It’s disjointed right now, there’s a lyrical thread going through it all, but too much stylistic diversity to issue the stuff as it stands right now. I am getting ready to return to the recording studio with Jimmy Ford engineering, and add to the existing group of songs.

What’s wrong with what you have?
It’s not that there is anything wrong with it all, although I would like to do some remixes and there are some technical problems with aspects of some tunes. I need to redo some bass tracks, replace some string bass parts with electric bass. Bad choices on my part originally. I have decided to take the R & B and bluesy stuff and add to that. I wrote a bunch of new blues-oriented material. I have been telling people that I needed to do a mostly blues record, in the same way that A Jumpin’ Somethin’ is a mostly jazz oriented collection of tunes. That project got lumped in as a swing revival record, thank God that’s over. Swing music never died, or needed to be revived, I thought, anyway. Most of the music I like swings in some way. The CD didn’t even feature a full drum kit on a single song. I thought it was a singer/songwriter thing. But any press is good press, they say.

Let’s hear about the mostly blues record.
Well, I kept thinking maybe Mostly Blue would make a good CD title. Once I got there, it took about an hour to write a soul ballad, kind of inspired by the Etta James hit “At Last”, called “Mostly Blue”. I think it might be one of my best songs.

Because I now mostly perform solo, or with trombonist Mark McGrain in a duo situation, I want to use the existing band stuff, and then do some stripped down recordings, solo, duo, trio, to reflect my current efforts. I like playing solo and intimately with one or two other players. And it’s cost effective, frankly.

I gave up slide guitar years ago when I heard Sonny Landreth. But I have come back to that, all in standard tuning, so I don’t have to retune, but also to exploit as well as accept the limitations and advantages of slide in standard tuning. My slide playing uses much more fingered chord and bassline stuff now than before, less slide; the slide is more like a punctuation point than a whole sentence.

What kind of guitar do you play slide on? Lots of people insist on Nationals or Les Pauls or something like that.
Live, I mostly use my old flattop I made over 20 years ago for almost all my playing, including slide. It’s good, it’s beat up, the thing is on it’s third or fourth refret, but people constantly tell me what a good sound I get. I’m a guitarmaker, I am supposed to have a good guitar sound. I use my handmade archtops less these days, but they still get a lot of use.

I have been playing nylon string with Mark, and just sold a good and inexpensive Ibanez nylon string and got a Godin Multiac Nylon SynthAccess guitar that is an excellent instrument for someone like me with no real developed nylon string technique. In the studio, for slide, I’ll use the flattop, and I also got a Galveston metal-bodied biscuit resonator guitar from New Orleans Music Exchange, where I got the Godin. Jimmy and Patricia Glickman from NOME are great to me, and always cut killer deals.

What happens after the blues record comes out?
Well, hopefully, the same kind of career jolt I experienced when A Jumpin’ Somethin’ came out. And I’ll then develop the rest of the existing recorded material and try to get another record out as soon as possible, with a more world-beat kind of approach, some Latin, some waltzes, other stuff. I have a reggae tune I‘d love my reggae producing cousin Chris Wilson from Heartbeat Records to help me with.

I think about clarinetist Tim Laughlin’s recordings. They have been thematic: the most recent is pretty modern, and going back, he has done ballads with just a guitarist, Hank Mackie, great player, stuff teamed up with another clarinetist, then a more trad sounding or New Orleans themed record. But it always sounds like Tim Laughlin. My recordings reflect a singer/songwriter mentality, just using different styles in each project to express myself. How you link the songs together is important, though, to producing a cohesive album.

How do you define yourself, then, with all these different styles you are interested in?
I have finally come to define myself as a singer/songwriter/survivor. The singer and songwriter part is obvious, the survival thing is all about having a huge repertoire of cover tunes, in many styles, and being a proficient enough guitarist to find work as a sideman when necessary. Keeping myself healthy enough to have good pipes. This way, I’ll always be able to work, whether or not anyone is interested in my originals other than me. But they are always there, always a part of the presentation, each night, and there’s a new song in the works always.