and yes we are here in our new studios so this is a brand new show i know you've been watching that same show throughout july and i thank you for your patience and attendance but we have a fresh look at our calendar we're  going take it simple though so don't expect all the bells and whistles we've been working with but we're working up to those it is very exciting to be in the new studios and they feel very spacious not the size of a postage stamp thank you dean no bigger and i thought  really nice place really really feels good here it is cleaner makes such a difference i want to thank my crew for years of service and i mean years of service over there and scan t v i'm still missing that building but geoffrey pullum was there for decades that man knows every corner that well he worked in a lot of corners shall i say paul taylor got us through so many moments over there and got us through moments to get here to from susan melchor and lee so how and both having to move to chicago so we got to chicago team now also andre williams has learned our audio work so he is our audio engineer at eight keys every monday night as well as jack newman our new  staff member whose audio engineer expertise is very much appreciated on monday nights craig perkins built our radio station booth so we'll tell you more about that as we get closer to turn that thing on in the past we've counted on john golet to help us with tower  power interview that was a lot of fun bernie murray doing post production doing all kinds of duplicating for us helping us out in every kind of way this is not something i do by myself and continuing in that vein i don't even know when i started so tell me when it gets close to six and a half minutes but i want to think jamie macdonald new crew member under williams and i think he's also part of our new crew and i want to thank the people at seattle community media our new establishment we have tom and rob  we brought back with this dean and rich is here to thank you thank you very much for helping pull well the first blues to do show together here at our new studios let me give you a brief calendar and then see if there's more to mention over the way footage that we've been gathering is coming your way we're probably going to double up and bring you some bands like bump kitchen the shivering denizens there were a lot of fun jeff in the jet city flyers and he stokes band from portland any bill blues is got some footage and she's hosting a jam for us one once a month raven wolf ellen and jordan did probably one of the best shows local shows of the summer we really enjoyed her show with lindy on the keyboards junkyard jane was excellent nick bigger reno did his swamp thing and we got an interview with tracy nelson one of our highlights of the summer so we're going to match that with this week's show and then bring in more of that footage i mentioned in future weeks we're learning our new gears here at seattle community media and do feel free to participate it is your community media station too so  tools yeah we're learning something to go two minutes a bit into a calendar ok tonight charles white review at the oxford give them some support to grow bored plays jazz bones tonight as well at the garden house it's called garden house on beacon hill cool little room they're doing a blues in barbecue on the twenty six with a group called smokin jays portland cam porter gamble has the rock and blues festival that's a new one twenty seven twenty eight charlie musselwhite is at the at the mesquite barbecue had to come out richer molinos moline as chicago blues jam and in stanwood they canceled their jam up there just not enough attendance i guess anyway it's great to be here it is seattle community media same channel seventy seven twenty three we also rebroadcast rebroadcast on saturday evening and monday night and we send it to bremerton and we send it to its new homes county everett a few places to air and of course at seattle community media we're in live streaming i believe also check us out on monday nights it is eighty eight keys where we gather our footage and we're really blessed to have that room one of the places second in jackson so join us there for live streaming monday nights and then we gather gather that footage to share with you on fridays and saturdays and mondays it is blues to do t v we're back nice to be here thank you very much for tuning in and thanks again to all of our crew new and old and we'll transition here with you tracy nelson and if you want a blast we had talking with her so that's coming your way right now here on blues to do t v andrea jack thank you very much mark got a bunch of folks here tonight helping out thank you very much it is another live session here at eighty eight keys tonight a special live session because not just the guest i have but we're live streaming from the club tonight on the web so if you've got a cell phone you can  night are some device of some kind what's in this and how do it know how do it know who good question i love eighty eight keys dot com so share with your friends we're going try to do more live streaming from the club now that we have the technical ability so yes thanks to jack and andre for kicking it tonight and giving us that technical ability all right it's also special because the one and only tracy nelson is with us here tonight give us some love give us some love people yeah a lot of the great history and great performances that we've enjoyed with tracey over the years coming together in a big way this year a lot of the history that you have and a lot of the music that has got you to this point is getting a lot of press and the new record is getting lots of press so i'm very excited for you thank you very much for making time for the interview tonight with my pleasure my  couple of nights at jazz alley so tell your friends tomorrow and the next night she'll have two performances at jazz alley and we have tickets tonight for the tuesday night at jazz alley so i'll be giving those away later on during the jam session right here eighty eight even a doubt but the blues is where you reside can you tell me why you know i can't i knew it i just lost i have i've loved and have an answer for that question and i got i'm i'm norwegian i grew up in madison wisconsin and i had that when the first time i heard blues it just you know just grabbed me we used to get a station called double a c in it was a split signal that after the sun that it was like i was hearing something coming out of outer space and it but it just grabbed me and there's no explanation for it well and a lot of musicians will tell that story of listening to wolfman jack late at night on way to getting his whole deal f is your all time favorite blues artist and country and any other category you choose my all time favorite blues artist the first person who comes to mind is moderating  that rainy yeah you have something that you notice that because i hear that sometimes she had a very drawn out style and you know sure she was never on top of the b you she'd be doing a line you think well she's never going to get there by the end of the bar and she always does but it's a it's a and i could hear that stylistically a little bit in and how i do it to the kind of gives you the upper hand leading the band wise doesn't it i mean when you're in charge of the rhythm of song they got to listen to you well they do but also it's just so much less rigid you get to play with the rhythm a lot more if you're not trying to be right on top of or ahead of the b you know and it just gives you a lot of freedom that's very interesting is i don't think i've ever really talked about that before oh yeah i get some of that tone for sure the wailing there's some something in the intervals i don't know what i'd see it bessie smith probably had the bigger better voice but my probably i'm guessing he's my first rodeo so the i'm backing off because i thought that's what was making a ring well i think that makes him turn it up so eat the mike here we go i like i always do that i don't know why i am you not doing it now when i want to talk about your new cd victim of the blues the creation of this cd almost involve near destruction of your entire home the story being that it caught which room do you want us to save and it was the studio i mean the studio it's my boyfriend's old family home and it's one big old you know a room house that there was a formal living room on one side  then the living room dining room on the other side and he had turned a formal parlor into his studio and they just said you know i don't know if we can even begin to put this out what do we need to concentrate and he said the studio the room that i cared about that had all my stuff in it already burned so so i didn't have to make that choice and they busted out the window pulled the computer out and and you know i mean now everything's on a computer so i made it a little easier but yeah we woulda lost the whole record of the way and this was just say the same thing the way that people come forward when they know you've had something like that happen it's the most incredible remarkable you know life affirming thing and it was certainly was the case with us we just you know people we had never heard of from all over the world were contacting us what can we do we're so sorry we love your music or so sorry this happened to you and it was just you know it was kind of a wake up for me that you know those folks out there that they care about what i do in a kind of minimum and then i'd get out and do it a little more well and the whole idea that you don't need all the things necessarily in life that we accumulate that probably had to be a part of that well you know you accumulate so much stuff and we lost maybe half our stuff we didn't lose everything and we still have way too much stuff is just incredible when you discover war you know what you've been hoarding but i tell everyone is all that wonderful stuff that you love that you have in the attic get it out put it out enjoy it right right use the silver yeah use the good actually absolutely i'm a fan of that too in a man for that hour let's talk about the song's a victim of the blues that's a heck of a title to pick i mean i'm sure you're getting a hard time from women at the national organization for women or something because they're like oh don't play the victim don't be the victim right where how did that come in well you first of all i try always to do i'm already song when i do a record and i kind of thought i had called through her entire catalog and done everything that i thought i could do justice to but i you know i love i tunes i tunes is the most amazing resource that in rhapsody both i mean you just think of something and you can find it so i pulled up my radio and just went through the entire list which is very lengthy of all the stuff that's out there my raney and i saw this title victim of the blues in it god i hope that's a great song because it's such a great album title and it was i mean i loved i loved the song and it had nothing to do with the fire i mean we had already picked it to the title and finished the record before the your man is beating you up or something but it's just men women everybody's been a victim of the blues and that's what the song is about it's not a real whiny thing is it is people think i'm crazy i'm just a victim of the blues and would you play me that jack he's got all cued up yours title track trac and he played played with a group called i think the pile drivers or steel drivers or the it was a really rock as you know loud kind of rock and roll bluegrass group so i assumed he had a banjo and i called him and i said you have  brings us back to that country blues sound the moderate thing the really distinctive and you've always had some of that quieter not all bolted out in front kind of r and b sound doc about some of the collaboration that you've done i mean magically worked where they shouldn't willy singing with almost anyone is an odd combination but this really were to people loved it and the three of us are men and marcia and i mean both marcia and i idolized irma from the beginning of our musical knowledge and so to be recording and performing with her was so amazing and the three of us are totally different sounding singers i may sound a little more like army because i listened to her so much allen saying with the and without love i mean any time i get somebody else to sing with me i'm very happy the best harmony stuff and yet you've always been a lead you're not a harmony singer my right well yeah i mean i don't do a lot of session work or anything like but i love to i love it when somebody calls me as long as i know who they are and they and i don't try to tell me what to do i love to come in and do you know backup i'd rather sing backup than than lead if i had to make a choice  because i love harmonies but i just hear your voices of lead totally voice but have it when you're singing harmony it's like that much it's like three four times more it isn't it's a vibration and i grew up my family grew up i mean and people think i'm making it playing because they were listening in the phonograph same thing with the t v so yeah i don't don't lose that experience part of it are you experienced is the question jimi asked of course in seattle got to tie that jimi thing in once in a while o collaboration's had said that i can almost do that i've forgotten the sixty's so let's talk about that joe tex song you say one of the songs that you recorded on this new record which again victim of the blues on the delta groove i started singing with an r and b band in madison wisconsin called the fabulous imitations and we were we were and ben sidran was was in the band keep and you know played keyboards and wonderful me over to space and gave me an a joint which is i think my first joint and and started playing records for me and one of the things he played was joe tex you say and it just i mean it just destroyed me somewhere will come to me and also sing it in the car and i love the song but i never ever thought i would ever recorded or try to do it because it's a it's a song joe tex did it and it's a song mean i expect he wrote it about being a black man in race in races south and thought you know yeah i mean it's just i don't have to believe every lyric that i saying i stood loved stand by your man and i regarded that bit but that was just too heavy i decide it was too presumptuous of me to to to try to sing that song but i did because i thought you know who knows if i'll ever make another record and i always wanted to do it i'm going to do it and then we cut it i had a hard time with the vocal even though i've been saying it for forty years i just was i was really insecure about doing this and when we finished i said now i can put this on the record doesn't work and my producer who i love him because he doesn't ever push me around he just takes care of the business and lets me do everything else said i've never gotten heavy with you as producer before but that song is going on the record and he was right i guess i expected people to beat me up over it i expect exceed reviews a who does she think she is doing it sanya the only other person i ever heard to on the delta group record label and asking a few other questions too i want to ask about your family how much of a role does your family play in you doing music in you being a musician obviously you talked about the family little bit already well my grandmother played some of the best stride piano i ever heard and she played a gig the night before she died at age eighty eight or so and my uncle plays he's not a pressure music i mean everybody in my family even my brother who's a retired federal judge he said he was a lawyer up here in seattle for many years you know and they all play music it's just part of our family and has on both sides my father's side and more my father i think is you know just he himself but and probably because he married my mother and there's so much music everywhere that it it's just always was a part of our life however my parents were not thrilled when i became abuse issue and that was that's something they in vigil for their for their baby girl but you know they were they were proud i'm sure but it just wasn't what they wanted me to do you know not a great reputation you know music and i knew it myself i mean i got drug and kicking and screaming out of you know if you can ever find my first record that i made this this so folk blues record i did end prestige when i was nineteen you know in the liner notes i say well i'm in social work and i'm you know i've i'm i don't plan on becoming press professional here i'm still in social work but it's just dealing with you know music stuff i was going to ask that i cannot imagine you doing another job was there another job for you and you said social work but you really didn't know i that i was up you know allegedly going to use his school for but actually are you a hell raiser yeah tell me how to say to this day i i have a quick fuse for one i get in people's faces you know if i hear somebody yelling at their kid in wal mart i'm in their face right there somebody made a crack about me being  so i don't think that's a victim of the blues speaking i just don't for some reason so now how do you stay inspired well because i'm emotional you know i mean my emotions are always like right there and i'm i'm inspired and uninspired you know as the situation changes but i love music music has never not inspired i didn't want to clash her formative years post war chicago you got to meet and i assume play with muddy water no you know that something that got out there somehow when i when i did my first record in chicago we used charlie mus let's see i'm losing track here ok you also were after that post or chicago time period and after the recording on prestige package it with we try to do i want to do it with this last record this great conglomerate that bought rounder and a lot of their labels now owns prestige and we i want to issued an r i want which is really the most comfortable place to be in and it was a low budget tour so it's not like we had a bunch of buses and we were all packed bus and and just you know and just talk girl stuff and i don't it first son of a record i did on a kind of obscure label that never when we were in a cut it again on the live prison record and i just love it it's just this feel a feel good song in it in it's it it's really true about how great it is to have a new truck and it is great you know if you have a new track it's a wonderful thing but even an old truck can be fun and i just got an old back i mean i've got another truck that's much newer than the one i was driving so well and it sounds like it should be used in a truck commercial you should be paid lots of money for all right so let's talk about mother earth when you left the chicago scene you quickly went to san francisco and recorded the memphis slim song so well that later you actually were asked to sing it at his funeral  to be a huge honor it was a huge honor was most daunting thing i've ever done really tell me about well his cousins called me and i had met slim a couple times and then actually performed the song with him a couple times and they asked me to come down and sing at the funeral and you know course i was just thrilled but i got there and you know i'm in an entirely black church say standing up and singing with just me and a piano i was i was  frightened i mean i just you know i just felt so insecure about it but and it was an amazing experience because i you know they i could tell these people are looking at me thinking was is this but there was a plan no what i hit that i i realized when i got it it was like everybody was kind of dropped everything and and and it was extraordinary but as soon as i was done i had to you know go off behind a curtain and i just burst into tears i don't ever cry in this just i just totally lost it well and poured your soul out when you did this so much so that it became a definitive version of the song i guess so really when people know it yeah they still as far as i've got i've got a copy of the song recorded on the fish tree water song on that disc and for help in that cause let's play a little bit of that mother earth because again it's who you know in those days if you were on a had a recording contract you just didn't ever plan anybody else's record just you they wouldn't release you so they had a typo it on purpose yeah you just make make up a name and while i was retired but has been singing the whole time and dorothy morrison who was that beautiful low voice on oh happy day and how we ever got her to be a blues bride i don't know but the four of us do this thing where we each do our own thing but each of us are singing backup with the others and and then we do a lot of choral stuff to some gospel and you know some older r and b with good harmonies and it's my favorite thing that i ever do and i love it it's so much fun and the it's art such great women they're wonderful to be around what do you think should we get the blues broads to come up here you know you know in the noir well yes and there's nothing more powerful in the native american world then a circle of your song signature song i talked about mother earth blues and that is that again the definitive version of that but your signature song you wrote yourself has been covered by edit james linda ronstadt maria muldaur hour and most recently on the grammy nominated ever wrote and where were you what were you feeling when i was in san francisco i had just had my heart broken by i don't often say this but i shouldn't be so timid about by steve miller oh  hearts back and more a lot of it and i just wrote that song i mean that's where it came from and people you know say oh it's such a sad song and i didn't write it as a sad song it to me it was a kind of screw you song ok you know i  i'm like really you know downtrodden because you know because you dummy it's not that is just there's nobody else around to step in but it just did come across you know even though i thought i was thinking that apparently i was it because it sure didn't come across that right if you don't mind i'd love to spin city loppers version again grab you know what she did she nailed it you know us not an easy song but it is not an easy one the first time i met at a james it was after she had recorded the song and her horn players they were playing in nashville and i met her horn player it's the internet you go to she said this is the hardest fucking song i ever try to do in my life and i absolutely agree it's really hard i would never write another song like that it's too hard to see saying it's too hard to work up with abandon but i have absolutely understood where she was coming from on that sure did a good job and yeah well it says what you feel and so well that apparently that had to be such a compliment for all these different women to be covering your song i just heard a version by d m on something or david clayton thomas cut it they never released it and someone sent me this you know the studio take his version so it's a he's the only man i know of that's done it with the exception of joe mcdonald he told me he was performing it for a while but he said even doing in the key changes that are now that if i could have figured out how to do that i would have done that so yeah i mean it's been done in every style and you know it's amazing it's amazing that some of that song as it has legs and if you like you could do man speaking of men women sensitive men get your music but i would imagine in my assuming the wrong thing women are really the ones who get your music in it's as an assumption or i think that's probably true but there's you know depends on the song too i mean around like my more rock as stuff got a new truck would be a guy you know yeah but yeah i think that that probably you know songs like that although i've had men i've had i've gotten letters from men who said i didn't commit suicide one night because i heard that you know i've heard that many many times people who say i was so down in the dumps i was about to kill myself and i heard that song and that's pretty heavy and that's pretty that's a pretty big burden yeah well yeah and mental health issues are huge so art saves lives and i hear you say yeah you know i mean music music does music and music i worked early on with children when i was pretending like i was taking a little time off from school and couldn't go back and there was an autistic child in our class and you could not get through it is child and you couldn't make him sit still and i would sit down with the guitar and play and he would settle and focus i mean it's an amazing amazing tool yeah well yeah and you realizing more and more women impact you have on people when that comes back now because  your house burning up and all that i wish there was more i'm sure there's research into it but i wish there was more research into the power of music all right we're feeling it victim the blues is the delta group release that is brand new for tracy nelson and you can find out more on her website tracy nelson dot com we are live at eighty eight keys live streaming at eighty eight keys thanks to jack newman and andre williams very much ed markey helping us out we had  out very much well i'm blessed to have it to play out every monday night and we're going to have nikki reno up shortly and then we get into a jam session so it's a good night here at eighty eight and tomorrow night