'A real bluesman'

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'A real bluesman'
July 22,209
By: ANDY VINEBERG
phillyBURBs.com

Michael Burks has a dilemma.

He’s watching two of his three grandkids on a Thursday afternoon, and his granddaughter is bugging him for a Krabby Patty, the tasty, deep-sea — and, unfortunately, not real — fast-food delicacy from “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

“Guess she’ll have to settle for a McDonald’s Happy Meal,” he says, laughing.

Burks’ commitment to family is the main reason he gave up his beloved guitar for more than a decade in the 1980s and early ’90s. After playing the instrument literally since his days in diapers and earning a fanatical following in his Arkansas hometown as a funky young bluesman in the ’70s, he cast music aside to devote his time to raising two children and working a steady 9-to-5 job.

“I pushed the guitar under the bed, and that’s where it stayed for 11 years,” Burks, 52, says by telephone from his home in Little Rock. “I only took it out once. My daughter, who was 5 or 6 at the time, pulled the case out from under the bed and asked, ‘Daddy, what’s this?’ I opened it up, showed it to her, played something for her and then put it back in the case for another five or six years.

“You couldn’t make a living at it, not in Camden, Arkansas (where he was living at the time). It was a small town, and most of the clubs went from live music to DJs. The closest place with live music was really Little Rock, but that was 100 miles away. To drive there, do a show and make it home by 5 in the morning to go to work was hard.

“I missed it, man, but I tried to put it out of my head. I was so busy trying to raise a family that I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it.”

The story could have ended there.

Burks had a good job working as a mechanical technician for Lockheed-Martin, and, nearing 35, he was well past the age when musical careers typically begin.

If you’d told him then that, 15 years later, he’d be a major figure on the contemporary blues scene, fronting his own band, earning multiple Blues Music Award nominations, touring the world and sharing massive festival stages with some of the biggest names in music (including a recent show in Italy with Joss Stone and Derek Trucks), he’d have likely called you crazy.

Heck, he’s still not sure it’s real.

“I still have to pinch myself,” says Burks, who headlines the Bucks County Blues Society’s 27th annual R&B Picnic in Falls Saturday. “When I walk out on a stage in front of 30 or 40 — sometimes 100 — thousand people, man, I can’t believe I’m there. I’m an old country boy from Arkansas, living a lifelong dream, getting to play shows with people I’ve listened to on the radio. It’s still a big fantasy to me.”

Don’t be fooled by Burks’ modesty. His nickname is “Iron Man” — the title of his acclaimed 2008 album but also an apt description of his tireless work ethic and intense, marathon live shows.

“From the beginning all the way to the end, it’s gonna be jumpin’,” he says of his four-piece band’s typical show. “We start off rocking — and end rocking.”

The play-till-you-drop mentality is part of what earned him a contract with prestigious, Chicago-based blues label Alligator Records in 2000.

That — and a refusal to take no for an answer.

After releasing his self-produced debut CD, “From the Inside Out,” in 1997, Burks and his manager repeatedly sought out the attention of Alligator founder/president Bruce Iglauer.

“He had a manager at the time who had been hounding me to come see him play,” Iglauer says. “I told him I’d come see him (at the 2000 Chicago Blues Festival), but that I wasn’t signing anybody now.

“After the set, I went backstage and I said to him, ‘Remember me saying I’m not looking to record anyone new? Well, I want to record you.’

“Michael was the real thing. I could feel it. His soul connected with my soul. I saw an extra level of passion at that performance, a big growth in his sense of confidence. He threw himself into the music, the sweat was pouring down; it was like nobody was going to drag him off that stage.”
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Burks has since recorded three albums for Alligator, starting with 2001’s “Make it Rain,” an album The Chicago Sun-Times called “chilling and heartfelt” and that drew comparisons to Eric Clapton from Billboard.

But we’re getting ahead of the story. How did Burks go from mechanical technician and family man to a full-time touring and recording musician?

It helps that the talent was in his blood.

Burks’ grandfather, Joe, was an acoustic Delta blues guitarist in Arkansas and his father, Frederick, was a bassist playing the blues clubs in Milwaukee, where Burks was born. Frederick backed several touring blues stars, including harmonica legend Sonny Boy Williamson.

Michael, the middle of 11 children, picked up his first guitar at age 2. By 5, he was infatuated with his father’s 45s, and every time he learned to play one of the songs, his father would pay him a dollar.

“That didn’t last too long,” Burks says. “I was breaking him. The last time he did it, he gave me a stack of 45s and told me, ‘I want you to learn all of these by the time I get home from work or I’m going whip your butt.’ I learned them, man, I learned them.

“By 6 years old, I was playing in bars. I’d play with my Dad, and anybody else who came along and needed a guitar player. I got a chance to meet a lot of the greats — Freddie King, all the old Southern soul and R&B singers.”

Frederick Burks moved the family back to Camden from Milwaukee in the early ’70s after a machine accident injured his hand and hampered his musical career. Michael and his siblings helped their dad build the Bradley Ferry Country Club. The 300-seat juke joint became Michael’s regular musical stomping grounds — he fronted his own band and backed several big names that passed through town — until family and the real world intervened.

And that was the end of his musical dreams until, sometime in the early-’90s, an old drummer friend of his moved back to Camden from Austin, Texas, and wanted to jam.

Burks finally pulled his guitar out, although the strings had turned black and had to be replaced.

No matter. The fire was back.

At the same time, he was going through a divorce, and he joined his brother for a weekend in Atlanta, where he ended up sitting in with popular Georgia blues artist Chick Willis.

“I was a little rusty, but I guess I did good — because everyone loved it,” Burks recalls. “I made up my mind that night to go back to Arkansas and start a band, start doing my thing again. It made me realize how much I really missed playing music.

“It took me a long time after that to feel comfortable, because I knew I wasn’t playing to the ability I used to play. But I played like crazy every night at home. I would lock myself in a room with a little practice amp and go at it.”

Burks is especially satisfied that his dad got to see his success. Frederick died after Michael completed his second Alligator album, 2003’s “I Smell Smoke.”

“Oh, man, he was real happy when I got back to playing and started touring all over the world,” Burks says. “He was really proud.”

Alligator’s Iglauer thinks Burks is only going to get better, a rarity among musicians his age.

“He’s a real bluesman,” Iglauer says. “He grew up with it from day one. You can hear that in his music.”

He isn’t surprised Burks gave up the music for as long as he did.

“He needed a day job, needed the security,” Iglauer says. “He’s a very responsible guy. He’s not a wild-man musician. The wildness is in his music, not his life.”

Not necessarily. Hunting down a Krabby Patty in the middle of Arkansas can make for a fairly wild afternoon.