Newhouse: The blues aren't always a sad song

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Newhouse: The blues aren't always a sad song
June 24, 2010
By Dave Newhouse
MercuryNews.com

Paul Wood doesn't just play and sing the blues. He lives the blues, looks the blues. The blues follow him around like a bill collector he can't shake.
Wood has packed the blues in a suitcase and taken them with him across the country, playing two years with John Lee Hooker. He also carried his blues along on a two-year European musical excursion to Amsterdam and Hamburg, Germany.
"I felt that calling pretty strong," he said.
It was the blues calling.
"The cool thing about it," Wood said of his nomadic bluesman's life, "is you get to find out if people can appreciate your music or not, because it's an unbiased kind of opinion — it's not like you've got anything else to sway them with.
"The bummer about being on the road is the cops don't like you, especially if a musician stole his ex-wife. There's a lot of risk being on the road."
He is married — to blues joints. Wed once, he has three grown sons he raised by himself.
Wood, 58, picked up his first guitar at 11 after hearing surf music. He's self-taught. He was in a teenage band, The Jungle. He later had his own band, Bridgeburner, for 20 years. He has opened for James Brown and has put out his own albums.
The blues brought Wood back to Oakland two years ago to watch over his mother, Marilyn, who had colon cancer surgery. Her cancer is now in remission, and Wood needs to get reacquainted with the blues. His timing may
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be perfect.
There's a "King of the Blues" competition to find "the nation's greatest undiscovered blues guitar player." Wood, who needs to be rediscovered, has won two stages and is among 214 finalists for the grand prize, which includes $25,000, endorsement deals, music equipment and possible recording dates.
Such long shot odds, 214-to-1, aren't encouraging, but when you have known the blues for as long as Wood has, slim is better than none. He performs again today at the San Francisco Guitar Center, 1645 Van Ness Ave., in one of 25 regional competitions. Wood hopes to reach the national finals Sept. 2 in Los Angeles.
By putting his face out there in blues land once again, who can say what the future holds? The man has talent. Some blues band just might pick up on it, and he will be back on the road, reliving a life as familiar as jamming.
Watching Wood practice at his mother's home in the Montclair district, you can tell up close the blues is his mojo. He has long, stringy black hair, the heavily lined face of a nocturnal indoors blues existence, and a deep, smoky voice that sings "Bad Day 4 Good Whiskey."
His memories of youth include pitching the first Young America no-hitter at Montclair Park, hearing the influential instrumental "Pipeline" at 11, watching Cream at the Fillmore, opening at 17 for Sons of Champlin, and being discovered at 20 by Hooker, who heard him play and recruited him on the spot.
"John told me, 'I'm going to put a star on your door,' " Wood recalled. "I said, 'Cool, what does it pay?' He said, '$100 a night.' I said, 'Count me in.' "
He recorded three albums with Hooker, Elvin Bishop, Van Morrison and Charlie Musselwhite. In 2002, Wood received a Key to the City from Oakland.
Has the road life, in the final analysis, been a good life?
"Oh, yeah, absolutely," he said. "Staying on the homefront and doing the same gig every day didn't appeal to me. There are (musical) dry spells, but something always turns up."
Like "King of the Blues."
"If I wasn't passionately in love with this, I wouldn't have been doing it this long," he said. "And I still find something new every time I play the guitar."