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Tab Benoit w/ JD Simo
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Tab Benoit is a Grammy nominated singer, songwriter, and guitarist who has built a remarkable 30+ year career on the foundation of his gritty and soulful Delta swamp blues, acquiring a devoted legion of fans along the way, as well as 5 Blues Music Awards, including BB King Entertainer of the year (twice) and an induction into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame. He has recorded and/or performed with Junior Wells, George Porter Jr, Dr. John, Willie Nelson, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Billy Joe Shaver, Maria Muldaur, James Cotton, Cyril Neville, Kenny Aronoff, Allen Toussaint, Kim Wilson, Jimmy Thackery, Charlie Musslewhite, Kenny Neal, Chris Layton, Ian Neville, Jimmy Hall, Jim Lauderdale, Anders Osbourne, and Alvin Youngblood Hart to name a few. Tab’s accomplishments as a musician are matched only by his devotion to the environmental health of his native Louisiana wetlands. Benoit is the founder and driving force behind voice of the Wetlands, an organization working to preserve the coastal waters of his home state. In 2010, he received the Governor’s Award for Conservationist of the Year from the Louisiana Wildlife Federation. Benoit also starred in the iMax motion picture Hurricane on the Bayou, a documentary of Hurricane Katrina’s effects and a call to protect and restore the wetlands.
JD Simo
Rather than simple roll up those fabled crossroads of blues lore, JD Simo builds a bridge by hand. The Chicago born and Nashville based singer, songwriter, and guitarist, and producer connects the missing link between Motown and Woodstock as he fuses fluid and fiery fretwork with vital and vulnerable vocals. JD has been acclaimed by Rolling Stone, NPR, Guitar Player, Relix, No Depression, and more…. Logging hundreds of gigs annually, he has collaborated with Jack White, Tommy Emmanuel, Luther Dickinson, and Blackberry Smoke among others. Not to mention, he graced the bills of festivals including Bonnaroo, Warren Haynes Christmas Jam, and Mountain Jam. Phil Lesh, iconic co-founder of The Grateful Dead, invited him to join Phil Lesh and Friends. Meanwhile, JD’s 2019 solo album, Off at 11, incited fan fervor and tastemaker praise. Billboard claimed the record “channels forbearers such as Jimi Hendrix, Santana, and the Allman Brothers Band,” and Guitar World dubbed it, “another step toward the 34-year-old Chicago native establishing himself as a contemporary blues rock giant.”
Throughout 2019, he maximized rare time off to write what would become JD Simo. Returning home after 150 gigs, he worked out of a “funky little eight-track studio” in his house. When it came time to record, he sought out a co-producer for the first time. Enlisting Eddie Spear behind the board, he recorded the album to tape in just three days during January 2020. And then, the pandemic hit. “Like everyone, I was unprepared in how to deal with this new “normal”, so I turned to the thing that always helps me: music,” he elaborates, “I just started playing, opening up my socials and jamming and from that, Mind Control was born.” Mind Control, which released on November 5, 2021, is JD’s most unique, original and rawest effort to date. During lockdown in 2020 along with playing live weekly on his socials, he began cutting tracks in his makeshift studio joined by longtime collaborator Adam Abrashoff on drums and the addition of his good friend, bassist-producer-engineer, Adam Bednarik (Justin Townes Earl), where the mused and fused a proverbial “stew” of shared musical influences. The songs are a mix of the hill country trance blues of Junior Kimbrough, RL Burnside, and Asie Payton, the hypnotic Afro Beat of Fela Kuti and Tony Allen, and the psychedelic warps of Captain Beefhart, Funkadelic, and Jimi Hendrix. In that swirling mix is also some old school blues of John Lee Hooker, Earl Hooker, and Ligtnin Hopkins and the spice as well as the raw fuzzy rock of The Stooges and Nirvana. “It is a lot!” laughs JD, “but the idea of the lockdown and after fighting Covid, it just all came naturally from us. The feeling in the record is hope and mixing it up when your options just narrow. We literally did what we know how to do to cope and that is what I am most proud of on Mind Control.” Mind Control is an artist’s record, the product of like-minded musicians huddled in a humble setting, making music to make them feel good. JD says, “it is stark and revealing and the product of us using the creative process for therapy and the fun of playing music. I hope that what resonates for people is of course the music, but also the vibe of the record which is a positive theme of growth, self-help, and also struggles with addiction and mental health baked inside a haunting, low down musical landscape. It’s raw, funky, and real.”
