John “Blues” Boyd – Singing the “Blues” make me happy.

Now in his 70’s, John “Blues” Boyd has experienced the highs and lows of life and is finally putting his experiences into song. Singing the blues since he was 4 years old, simply put “People think it is sad music, but every time I felt sad, I would try to sing or listen to some lowdown blues and I would feel a little more happy.

Vizions of Rock:  Who plays what instruments?

JOHN BLUES BOYD: When I perform, I try to always have Kid Andersen with me on guitar. I love Jim Pugh playing the piano and organ, and sometimes Bob Welsh plays with me too. He plays both piano and guitar, and even bass.  My favorite drummers are Derrick “D’mar” Martin, he’s from Mississippi like me, and I also like June Core and let’s not forget the Little Baby, Lisa Leuschner Andersen. She plays drums in the Greaseland Youngsters. 

See, often when we play, it’s the Greaseland All Stars, with the people I just mentioned, but I also play with the Greaseland Youngsters, and if Kid isn’t with us I have a young guitar player named Roman Yamilov and his brother Robby plays bass. Lisa is on the drums and we have a young harmonica player named Ryan Walker. They Play on my song “I Heard the Blues Somewhere” on my new CD. 

If we can, we love to have the great Sax Player Eric Spaulding with us, but he moved back to Pittsburgh or Baltimore or somewhere. Aki Kumar plays harp with me sometimes too. I know a lot of musicians, and as long as they understand the blues and listen to me, we always do real good. 

Vizions of Rock:  How did the band come together and how long have you been together?

JOHN BLUES BOYD: I know all these people after my old sax player Frankie Ramos introduced me to Kid. He used to live in a room at Kid and Lisa’s house, but he passed away a few years ago. That was a great thing he did though, to let me and Kid met each other. 

Vizions of Rock:  You have lived and seen so much in your life, why did you decide to make “What my eyes have seen” when you did? 

JOHN BLUES BOYD: It was Guy Hale who first said that he thought my story was important and wanted to make a CD about it. At first, I didn’t know if I wanted to, because there are so many things, I have been through that I don’t like to think about. But then Kid showed me some of the songs that he and Guy had been writing for me, and they were really great, so I started helping them write the rest of them. 

Vizions of Rock:  As a follow-up. Is there a message that you’re trying to communicate with “What my eyes have seen?”

JOHN BLUES BOYD: It’s just the story of my life and some of the things I have seen and lived. Some of them good, and a lot of them very bad. Some people tell me that things have change but look at what is going on now. It’s still happening, and it needs to be known. 

Vizions of Rock:  We are talking about “What my eyes have seen” in a pivotal time in our country’s history.  Do you think that music has the power to heal, as well as teach?

JOHN BLUES BOYD: Well the blues always made me feel good. People think it is sad music, but every time I felt sad, I would try to sing or listen to some lowdown blues and I would feel a little more happy. And writing songs helps me too, and I started to write songs way back almost 40 years ago, when I was living in San Diego because I had lost my job and I was feeling very down. So, I would write and sing and make drawings, and it got me through until I got back on my feet. 

Vizions of Rock:  How would you describe your sound?  

JOHN BLUES BOYD: It’s the blues. I've been singing the blues ever since I was a very little kid, about 4 years old. I don’t remember all of it, but they said I used to start singing along as soon as the blues came on the radio, and I would sing going to school, and when I had to start working out in the fields to help my family, I would sing there too. 

Vizions of Rock:  How has BLUES (as an art form) changed over the last 40 years?  

JOHN BLUES BOYD: Well, they got everybody doing the blues now, people from every part of the world, and I’m glad they like the music and especially glad when they come to see me. The blues I love is mostly from the 40s and 50s and 60s, and most of the great ones are dead now. There isn’t hardly anybody left who sings the way Mr. John Blues Boyd does.

Vizions of Rock:  How has the music industry changed over the last 40 years and what would you change about it?  

JOHN BLUES BOYD: To tell you the truth, I didn’t ever try to become a professional musician. I’ve had to work all my life, in the cotton fields in Mississippi, then in Florida, Chicago, Texas and since I came to California, I did hot tar roofing for 37 years. So it wasn’t until I retired that I started putting a band together, but the people I could get to play with me when I first started that, they weren’t nowhere near as good as the people I’m playing with now. 

I was married for 49 years to a gorgeous woman named Dona Mae, but for the last 10 years she was alive, she was very sick, so I had to tend to her most of the time, and I stopped drinking and going out, and I didn’t have as much time for music either. But she loved the blues just as much as I do and loved to hear me sing, and I would tell her all about Kid and Frankie and Aki and Rick Estrin and the people I had met and were playing with. Before she died, she told me to keep doing my music and do my very best. After she died, I went through our things and I found an old book that had the songs I had written in San Diego almost 40 years ago in it. I showed them to Kid and he said we should record them. Then I started writing new songs, all the time. I have written over a hundred and recorded almost all of them at Greaseland with Kid. Some of them were on my CD for Little Village Foundation a few years back, and some of them are on this new CD “What My Eyes Have Seen”. 

Vizions of Rock:  Who are your influences?

JOHN BLUES BOYD: My favorite singer has always been Junior Parker. I like the singers who have a real pretty voice, like T-Bone Walker, Wynonie Harris, Big Joe Turner, BB King, Little Milton and also guys like Albert King and John Lee Hooker.

Vizions of Rock:  What is the creative process like when writing your songs? 

JOHN BLUES BOYD: A lot of times, I will think of something I heard, a saying or expressions maybe something I heard the people say in Mississippi way back, and I’ll make a song around that. I always write about things I know about, and I also keep a dictionary with me, to make sure I’m using the right words, and it can help me when I need to find a rhyme. Then when I have about three or four verses, I will bring it to Kid an tell him what kind of rhythm I think will go with the song I wrote, and we always make it turn out great. Right now, I am writing one about George Floyd and what they did to him. I have been quiet about so many of the things I’ve seen throughout years, and I think it is time for me to speak up.  “What My Eyes Have Seen” helped me do that, but there’s even more, and it is coming out now. 

Vizions of Rock:  What is on the horizon for the future? 

JOHN BLUES BOYD: Right now we’re recording this song about George Floyd, and we are also making another CD for Gulf Coast Records and this one goes even further back than “What My Eyes Have Seen”, all the way back to when they first brought the slaves over here form Africa. 

Vizions of Rock:  Is there a tag line that describes JOHN BLUES BOYD 

JOHN BLUES BOYD: They always have said that I am the real deal. Now that most of the originators are gone, I think that that is true. 

Vizions of Rock:  How can we find you music?

JOHN BLUES BOYD:  You can find it any places in the internet, on gulfcoastrecords.net and also wherever I play.