Roxor Blog

JB’s musical history boasts an impressive resume. He’s written songs for Miles Davis and played percussion in the Davis group. Bigham played guitar and keyboard for the pioneering rock-funk-ska band Fishbone for eight years, contributing songs, guitars, keyboards, background vocals and production expertise to the albums The Reality Of My Surroundings, Give A Monkey A Brain and Chim Chim’s Bad Ass Revenge.

Later on, he toured as a side man and played on sessions with artists as varied as Eminem, Dr. Dré, Rosey, Joi, Nikka Costa, Bruce Hornsby and Everlast.

Bigham’s latest solo project The Good Girl Blues is a testament to the forceful beauty of music that’s been stripped down to its essence – guitar, voice and naked human emotion delivered in sparse performances that grabs your attention with its raw and spontaneous power.

Listen to “The Hole”

So I was watching Animal House the other night and I remembered how much I loved Otis Day and the Knights. When that royal blue station wagon pulls into the Delta front yard with OtisDay & the Knights painted on the doors, I always tune in just a little bit more.Those two scenes always remind me of my mom telling me about going to on campus parties at UVA where each party had there own band, and where once, one of those bands just happened to be James Brown. Can you imagine, stumbling into the third or fourth party of the night and being in the presence of the hardest working man in show business?When I was a kid I could not get enough of that sound - Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, all the Stax/Volt stuff, and Otis Day and the Knights fit right in there.

But I digress.

Of course before the movie there was no Otis Day, there was only DeWayne Jessie who was at that point a character actor under contract with Universal Studios. Jessie had appeared in movies such as Car Wash andThank God It’s Friday, but ever since Animal House he, professionally at least, has been Otis Day you can even book him for your next event.

As I watched “Otis” kick out the Isley Brothers classic Shout I noticed something. I recognized the bass player. Who is that, younger then I had ever seen him, but I knew the face - and even though I had seem him countless times, and seen this movie quite a few times I had never noticed before.

Yep the bass player in the movie version of the Knights was none other then Stratocaster master Robert Cray! And if you don’t know who Robert Cray is, you better ask somebody.

Guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd took a film crew, a portable recording studio and producer Jerry Harrison on a ten-day journey into the heart of the American South, documenting and recording an impressive lineup of blues veterans. Warner Bros./Reprise Records releases the resulting documentary and accompanying live CD Ten Days Out (Blues From The Backroads) in January, 2007.

View the Trailer here.

Listen to The Thrill is Gone Featuring B.B. King