Blues Hall of Famers Lil’ Ed & the Blues Imperials will slide into Sam’s Burger Joint on Saturday, May 2, on a tour promoting the band’s first new album in a decade, Slideways.
The band is led by Lil’ Ed Williams, who possesses a voice, guitar sound and fez-topped stage presence that flies in the face of his diminutive nickname.
Much as the name of the group’s latest album suggests, Williams is known for searing slide guitar and a rough-and-ragged approach that’s drawn frequent comparisons to Hound Dog Taylor and J.B. Hutto, the latter of whom is his uncle.
Williams and his band have operated without a lineup change in 40 years. Indeed, it’s the same group that appeared his 1989 debut album, Chicken, Gravy and Biscuits, a critically acclaimed slab of raw Chicago blues cut live in the studio with no overdubs.
We caught up with Williams by phone at his Chicago home to talk about the artistry of slide guitar, his new album and how to keep a band together. The conversation is edited for length and clarity.
You’re known for your slide guitar work, and the slide has always struck me as having a similar sound to a human voice, because it’s fluid. You can glide from one note to the next. Is that why it appeals to you?
Oh yeah. I would say that. Here’s the thing: you talk with the slide. You make notes, but you’re speaking — and you speak what you hear in your mind but it just don’t come out your mouth. You play that with the slide. So, say if you want to make a holler and you hit that slide, that slide makes the guitar holler so people know exactly what you’re talking about.
You and your band have spent four decades together. What’s the secret? Lots of other musicians would love to know.
Well, the secret is treat them right, give them respect. Don’t act a fool with them onstage. … Pay them to the best of your ability. And they have no other choice. They have to stay there, see, because there’s nothing wrong. But you start aggravating band members, especially if you embarrass them on stage, that’s when it’s time. They going to leave. They ain’t going to hang around. They going to go.
Some band members that’s in it for just the money, they ain’t going to hang around. But band members that’s got heart, you treat them right and be respectful towards them. Even though you think they messed up, you have to be respectful towards them, tell them the right way, not hollering onstage. Me and my band members now: we’re family. There’s no more band members here, because we all know each other and we’re family.
See, Uncle J.B. Hutto told me, he said, “Listen, when you get a band, you might not make it to be a millionaire, but you going to have fun and respect your band members, treat them to the best of your ability, and pay them to the best of your ability. I mean, don’t give them every dime you got, but pay them what you can.”
You took a long time between your prior album and this one, but it sounds like it could have come right after the previous release. There’s a real continuity to your sound — raw and live. You seem to know exactly how you want to sound and stick with it.
What I am, I’m a blues man. Nothing but the blues. That’s where I go. I mean, I try to keep it within that blues flavor because that’s what I am. Yeah, there’s a lot of them out there that try to change the blues into rock and using synthesizers and all that stuff. And you can’t call that blues. Blues is heart, really, love. Madness, crying. That’s what blues is. Blues ain’t nothing about synthesizers and all kinds of weird sounds and all that stuff.
What amazes me the characteristics that some people try to put within the sensation of the blues. And I say to myself, why is this person in a blues club and they’re playing pop music? But I guess it’s all because of the economy now and how things are going. So everybody wants to make sure they make that dollar. So they’re trying to incorporate everything they can, but they can’t call that the blues, not really.
Over the years, you’ve been known for your unusual headwear, your fezes. How many do you have in your collection at this point?
Oh, man. I’m getting in the stage of getting ready to move to a new place here and I’m finding hats everywhere. So, really, I don’t know. I think I might have 17 or 18 of them running around here right now, or even maybe more. I don’t know, because my wife makes them and she gets ideas, so she makes whatever she feels like she thinks that’s going to look really cool on me.
$20.25-$26.48, 8:30 p.m. Saturday, May 2, Sam’s Burger Joint, 330 E. Grayson St., 8:30pm, (210) 223-2830, samsburgerjoint.com.
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