Nightcats Happy With Place on the Rung : Blues: Little Charlie’s climb up the ladder has been a slow one, but he and his band are having too much fun to mind.
It’s looking like Little Charlie and the Nightcats are going to have to keep on winning fans the way they always have, a bar-full at a time, about 225 nights a year. The hard-working, fun-hearted blues band has tried the fast track, and it just hasn’t panned out.
An advertising executive got the whim to feature the quartet in a series of Taco Bell commercials, but the blues-jumpin’ ads were just as capriciously dropped after a few airings.
Then, one of the band’s songs, “Dump That Chump,” was placed in a movie, which in some instances can lead to platinum sales. But this movie, according to band guitarist and namesake Charlie Baty, “turned out to be a low-budget motorcycle flick called ‘Masters of Menace.’ I rented the movie and it turns out they placed the song right when a bunch of bikers were taking a pee outdoors. So much for Hollywood.”
Though Baty admitted that he and the Nightcats had some hopes of riding a taco to stardom, he said they are anything but discouraged with their present lot. “We’re doing pretty good,” he said last week by phone from Houston, a stop on a tour that brings them to the Heritage Brewing Co. in Dana Point on Saturday. “I can’t say that we couldn’t do better. But I think we’ll continue to climb up these rungs just by persistence and putting on a quality show.
“We’re really lucky because even during the tougher times we’ve all been going through, we’ve been able to go out there and make a living. Some acts have been having a real tough time on the road. I think that this recession is ending now. I sort of feel it in how the audiences are reacting.”
Baty’s band already is a household word in some households, mainly those of other musicians and blues fanatics. This writer first heard of the Nightcats years ago through Stevie Ray Vaughan, who had listed Baty among his favorite contemporary guitarists. The 39-year-old is a phenomenal player, with a thorough command of the nuances and conventions of the blues, and the imagination to find nearly limitless expression within that framework. He also manages to have a fine time doing it.
He has an ideal foil in frontman/singer/harpist Rick Estrin who, like Baty, knows his business and also knows how to turn it into a playground. Rounded out by bald bassist Brad Lee Sexton and drummer Dobie Strange, the group looks like a ‘30s cartoon and detective flick rolled into one.
Musically, the group specializes in what Baty calls “jumping blues. We call it that because (we are) a trimmed-down version of a jump blues band. We don’t have the standard horn section or the piano that’s associated with the music, but we have a little bit more of a jazz or swing influence than a lot of bands, and it’s generally upbeat with a bit of a humorous approach.
“Something else we do that many bands don’t is we do primarily original material. And we definitely have a wide range of styles mixed in, from Western swing to rockabilly to be-bop, delta blues, Chicago blues. I think the reason we have all those sounds is we’ve been together for almost 17 years. When you’re in a band that long, you go through a lot of growth spurts where you’re engraving these new things into your sound.
“I think there’s no substitute for experience playing blues a long time. I used to think I knew everything about blues after I’d been playing it a few years. But when I look back, I’m really embarrassed when I hear older recordings of myself. Over time you learn little subtleties--the wisdom you gain in life as you get older translates into the music. I think that’s why the people like James Harman, Rod Piazza and Rick, who have been at it over 20 years, are the superior blues players.”
When Baty met Estrin, there was one small obstacle to them being in a band together: Both played harmonica.
“The first record I ever had was ‘The Best of Little Walter,’ ” Baty recalled. “I came across (it) when I was about 11. I got some harmonicas and tried to learn how to play like him, at a time when all my friends were listening to the Beach Boys and the Beatles.
“I started the band in Sacramento about 1975 and called it Little Charlie and the Nightcats because we were pretty much a tribute to Little Walter and the Nightcats. We were so into him that on his birthday we would do a tribute with 35 Little Walter songs in a row.
“When I met Rick, he was such an obvious talent but wasn’t performing because he couldn’t find the right kind of band. I had the band, but I couldn’t sing. So we mixed things up a bit, and I taught myself guitar.”
Baty, who still plays a bit of harp with the band sometimes, thinks it’s a definite boon to a blues guitarist to be experienced on harmonica.
“I think playing harp is part of why I have a different approach to the guitar,” he explained. “Like the sax, you play harp in a linear fashion, and I’ve tried to apply that to guitar. It also makes it easier for me to follow Rick to because I can think like a harmonica player.
“There’s an art to that. You need to play chords that match up with the register of the harmonica and you have to know when to play the right inversion or some counterpoint kind of things. To me the right combination sounds almost like one instrument. There aren’t that many players who can do that. Alex Schultz in the Mighty Flyers is one, and certainly (Orange County-based guitarist) Junior Watson is one. He’s a great guitar player, one of the best if not the best at that and jump blues playing.”
The Nightcats have four albums on the Alligator label; a fifth is due in January. Produced by Bay Area bluesman Joe Louis Walker, the 13-cut album will span a wide range of styles, Baty said, from a traditional acoustic blues number featuring Walker to a Baty-penned number called “Buzzsaw” which he describes as a “blues meets Dick Dale surf music” tune.
“We try some different things, but we’re still keeping to the same basic sound. I mean we’re not trying to change blues, because if you change blues it’s no longer blues.
“If we tried to consciously change what we do, to commercialize it, I don’t think it would be right. One thing people say to us is that they can tell we enjoy what we’re doing, and I just want to keep it that way.”
* Little Charlie and the Nightcats play Saturday at 9 p.m. at the Heritage Brewing Co., 24921 Dana Point Harbor Drive, Dana Point. $5. (714) 240-2060.
