By Staff Writer
Gulf Coast Records recently released Dog Eat Dog, the new album from longtime soul-blues vocalist, Billy Price. After the critical acclaim and Blues Music Awards nomination of his last album Reckoning, Price was excited and eager to get back into Greaseland Studio in San Jose, California with Producer, Kid Andersen. Kid and Billy’s mutual love for the music and commitment to making an original contribution to the soul- blues genre is evident in this new collection of recordings. Dog Eat Dog contains twelve songs, eight of which are original compositions.
Continuing our series, Blues-E-News (BEN) asks Price (BP) 5 Quick Questions
BEN: What sets Dog Eat Dog apart from your other recordings in the past?
BP: One thing is the addition of percussion—congas and other percussion instruments—on all of the songs. The two percussionists we used were Jon Otis, son of the great drummer and bandleader Johnny Otis—and Vickie Randall, who has played in the Tonight Show Band and with Mavis Staples and Lyle Lovett among others. I also think we have a particularly strong selection of songs on this album, most of which I co-wrote with my collaborators Jim Britton, Fred Chapellier, and Bill Troiani.
BEN: If you were to put together an All-Star band with any musicians you wanted (both alive and/or deceased), who would that band consist of?
BP: I’ve worked with a lot of great musicians throughout my career and am fortunate to have two great bands I presently work with – in Pittsburgh, where I used to live, and in Baltimore/Washington DC, where I live now. The musicians on my last two albums have been tremendous. Both of those albums were produced in San Jose, California at Greaseland Studio, with my producer Kid Andersen on guitar, Jim Pugh on keyboards, the great Jerry Jemmott on bass, and Alex Pettersen on drums.
BEN: How did you hook up with Mike Zito’s and Guy Hale’s new label, Gulf Coast Records, who in turn, released Dog Eat Dog?
BP: Mike was a big fan of Roy Buchanan. I sang and recorded with Roy in the early 1970s and am on two albums with him. Mike had listened to those albums a lot when he was younger and just learning to play guitar. So Mike was excited about meeting me when we first met, which I think was at one of the Blues Music Awards ceremonies. Mike and Guy were on the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise last October, and Mike was nice enough to invite me to sing with his great band on a couple of his shows. That was where Mike, Guy, and I first started talking about my recording for their new label, Gulf Coast.
BEN: How has the music business changed since you began your career?
BP: I’ve lived through a couple of format changes for recorded music and have seen the evolution from LPs and cassettes, to CDs, to streaming and digital delivery and the current demise of CDs and revival of LPs. It’s always been difficult to make money on recorded music, but the widespread availability of inexpensive or free digital versions of songs has made this particularly challenging. It is more important than ever before for artists to rely on personal appearances and merchandise sales at shows to help augment performance fees.
BEN: What does the near future hold for Billy Price, musically speaking?
BP: I’m excited to be heading for Lucerne, Switzerland in a couple of weeks for a performance at the Lucerne Blues Festival November 14-17. After that, I come back for a short tour in North Carolina followed by lots of cool holiday shows. I’m planning a tour in Florida for the early spring and will be looking forward to a full festival schedule in the summer of 2020. In 2021, I’ll be celebrating fifty years as a professional singer, and I’ve been thinking about releasing some kind of retrospective CD package for my longtime fans along with a 50-year celebration tour. I’ll be thinking more about that in the coming months. Thanks for publishing this interview and supporting my music.
For more on Billy Price, visit www.billyprice.com. Gulf Coast Record’s website is www.gulfcoastrecords.net.
