Jump-start

Mike DiBari wastes no swing time

by Don Fluckinger

The road to a blues education doesn't always lead through the crossroads of Mississippi. For Mike DiBari, it went through Berklee, New York, and Japan. In fact, DiBari's the antithesis of the usual bluesman: he was educated at Berklee with formal training in Spanish and classical guitar styles, and his music career includes playing punk in New Jersey, folk in Greenwich Village, and who knows what on the streets of Tokyo. But this Cambridge guitarist, who performs at Slattery's this Saturday, found that all roads lead to the blues. From his childhood days listening to the Beatles, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton to his days at Berklee -- where the blues intersected the jazz he played -- he's headed to this point in his musical odyssey: the Mike DiBari Swingtet.

The band started two years ago in North Andover, at Little Richard's Roadhouse, now defunct. DiBari had a trio who played straight-ahead blues in the Guitar Slim and B.B. King mode, with occasional guest harmonica spots by Charles Sawyer, blues aficionado and author of The Arrival of B.B. King. Bass player Jacques Raymond invited three horn players (Brian Kane on tenor sax, Doug Olsen on trumpet, and trombonist "Bobby Breeze" Holfelder) to sit in one night.

DiBari was intrigued by the idea. Although he speculated that a horn section could add an exciting edge to his sound (knowing that shifting from blues to swing, R&B, and jump blues might be just the upbeat thing he was looking for), he didn't know many horn players he wanted at the time. He also liked the organic jam style that didn't require as many formal rehearsals as a "little big band." After hastily arranging some tunes, the band ripped out a great show, DiBari says.

"When I started to do some of the more uptempo, jazzier-sounding things, I felt like I was connecting more with the audience," he says. "I thought, `Wow, this is the sound I had been looking for for a few years.' It didn't occur to me that I could put it together, but it just kind of fell into my lap."

He liked it so much that he took the band, with horns, to Lowell's WJUL 91.5 studio two weeks later for a live recording on John Guregian's show, Blues Deluxe. DiBari had booked his trio on the show, but was so into the new sextet sound that he decided to take them in and cut a demo.

They had only played three gigs together, but the WJUL session worked out so well that in 1997 DiBari committed the recording to CD and released it as Jumpin' the Blues. Live-to-two-track without the aid of radical mixing or overdubs, this recording catches the spark of live swing as it happened four decades ago.

How did his classical training influence DiBari to make the transition from Berklee to the blues?

"I knew all the notes on the guitar before I learned how to play a T-bone Walker solo," he says, adding that his background gave him a method of studying the genre and picking it up in an organized fashion, as opposed to the way many blues players learn -- by rote, mimicking licks heard on albums.

"I don't know if it made it any more easy or difficult. Learning any genre, there are things you have to learn about -- you can't absorb something like blues phrasing in a schooled way. You have to listen to it for a few years before it makes sense to you."

The Mike DiBari Swingtet retain the same line-up that came together at that pick-up jam in North Andover. Bobby Breeze's horn charts, which complement perfectly DiBari's smooth blues guitar played in the style of B.B. and Freddie King, as well as T-Bone Walker and Guitar Slim. The CD comprises a dozen cover tunes, from the Louis Jordan chestnut "Saturday Night Fish Fry" (complete with references to Charlie Parker's "Ornithology") to Jay McShann's "Jumpin' Blues" to B.B. King's "Waitin' on You."

DiBari says that seeking a recording contract might be a part of the band's future, but for now he's content to release material on his own Palomino Records label. The Swingtet play largely in the Boston area, though they've lately branched out to gigs in Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.

Charles Sawyer, who no longer plays with the band, went on to start his own blues band. He also contributed to their legacy by penning liner notes for Jumpin' the Blues, laying out the story and summing up DiBari's playing style as elegantly as any writer could: "When [he] plays I get that special mellow feeling that comes when I hear blues played right and righteous."

Mike DiBari Swingtet play at 9, 10:15, and 11:30 p.m. on January 3 at Slattery's, in Fitchburg. Tickets are $4; admissions is free for those who arrive before 8 p.m. For information call (978) 342-8880.