Boiling point

It gets hot when Joe Kubek comes to town

by Mark Edmonds

Freddie King, Johnny Winter, Albert Collins, Lightnin' Hopkins, Stevie Ray -- the list of influential six stringers who've emerged from Texas and hit the international blues scene has been, over the years, growing to the point where it's so long that it would take you the better part of a day to list everyone.

On that list, of course, would undoubtedly be Joe Kubek. Although he hasn't achieved the household-name status many of his Lone Star brethren enjoy, the tall, burly, Dallas-based bluesman and his partner, B'nois King, who appear at Theodore's on April 25, have been working to get there. Quietly blazing trails across the country in a six-passenger van and performing a series of one-nighters, Kubek and King have built a following while simultaneously earning a reputation as one of the baddest-ass blues bands in the land.

In the midst of all the driving, they've found time to record a handful of CDs for Boston's Bullseye Label. Their latest, Got My Mind Back, is a lot like a typical Kubek/King road show. Rock-bottom shuffles, piledriver pumps, and simmering slow drags dominate the collection of 10 originals, each done up in four-piece style with the assistance of bassist Paul Jenkins, drummer Mark Hays, and producer Ron Levy.

The results? Well, it's no doubt the best of the five discs the big man and his diminutive partner have recorded since they signed with Bullseye. But as far as a detailed review goes, hell, let's just say it's like the studio version of a typical night out with the band, where the music's loud, the beer cold, the chicken steaks are sizzlin', and the blues are undiluted.

Muscling his way through the proceedings both live and on disc, Kubek will pull, bend, pick, and push his strings well beyond what you'd think they'd normally endure as he runs through his and King's songs. Using Hendrix-style crybaby wah wah leads and ear-bleeding, Johnny Winter-meets-Elmore James slide work on songs such as the title/leadoff cut and the shuffling "She's It," he brings things to a boiling point with screeching and shimmering lines that rattle speaker cones and make the fillings in your teeth vibrate.

Then, applying the brakes, he runs through some of the sweetest, most beautiful slow blues on "I'm Here for You" and "Cryin' By Myself" with shimmering high notes, hanging in the air above heavy turnarounds. Throughout, King (no relation to Freddie) will comp along on his Gibson, shout lyrics, and, in general, make the whole package complete as he has done since first uniting with Kubek 10 years ago.

This union began during a regular Monday-night gig in Dallas when Kubek invited King to sit in and found that King's softer, jazz-based guitar and vocals perfectly complemented Kubek's headier rock-inspired guitar work.

Although the partnership is a natural, Kubek still seems amazed that it worked at all. Months earlier, the two shared an uncomfortable meeting that he still recalls today.

"We laugh at it now," he says, "but when we first ran into each other, it was in some club dressing room a while before I'd invited him to sit in with my band. Neither of us remembers why we were there, because it wasn't our gig. We never said a word to each other. We just kinda sat there and looked at each other. It was weird."

The pair became fast friends, though, and eventually found themselves on the road in support of their first Bullseye disc, Steppin' Out, released in 1991. On early tours, the band did weeks in the Northeast in the dead of winter in an old Ford van, without heat.

"It was kinda like that movie Alive," Kubek notes with a laugh. "We'd drive all bundled up. And it got so cold sometimes, I'd actually think of building a fire inside the thing just to keep warm. Then to top it off, every hotel we stopped at only had heat in the rooms when you rented 'em. So they never got warm. I had to sleep with my hair dryer the whole time. The goal was just to get home alive."

Now, after a lot more dues payin', the group cruises in a late-model van with, as Kubek says, "as much heat as we can stand" as they travel to gigs from Alaska to Alabama. At each, the crowd is appreciative of what it hears, much in the same way Kubek thinks his onetime boss, Freddie King, probably would be.

"I think, he'd dig what we're doing. I really think he would. I was 19 when I played with him, and it was right before he died. He was usually a pretty quiet guy until he hit the stage -- never said much to us. But one time, he told me, `As long as you feel your music the people's gonna feel it too'. That one's really stuck with me. And you know, I bet it will forever."

The Smokin' Joe Kubek Band join legendary bar rockers the Nighthawks at Theodore's, in Springfield, at 9:30 p.m., on Friday, April 25. Tickets are $10 in advance and $13 at the door. Call (413) 736-6000.