Elvin Bishop Jams – and Makes Jam

At this time of year, blues guitarist Elvin Bishop stays busy canning. Every inch of his 3/4-acre backyard in western Marin County is covered with vegetable beds and fruit trees, and, before winter he will have put up hundreds of cans of fruit and vegetables from his garden. The winter firewood is already chopped and stacked by the carport.

Behind the carport is his studio, where he recorded most of his latest album, "The Blues Rolls On," probably the most ambitious personal project Bishop has undertaken in his nearly 40-year recording career. With guests on every cut from either side of his generation - from tribal elders such as B.B. King to newcomers such as John Nemeth - Bishop has put the folk process on a CD.

" 'The Blues Rolls On,' " he says, sitting on the couch in the studio's control room. "I think I nailed it all on the first verse of that song. I like the way it flows from one generation to the next. It was never a dominant music like rap or country. And over the years, I'm sorry to say, a lot of music listening has gotten to be not as deep. Music today is just an accessory. But blues is a music that is a real expression of the deeper things in life."
He will bring the concept to the 36th annual San Francisco Blues Festival next weekend, when he will appear with the Mannish Boys, a handpicked blues revue put together by label chief Randy Chortkoff of Delta Groove Productions, which released Bishop's new record.

"I'm just jamming with those guys," Bishop says. "They're pretty good. And John Nemeth may join us. He's my idea of an up-and-coming blues singer. I don't see a lot of them out there, but I know one when I see him."
He has made a number of appearances at the San Francisco Blues Festival over the years, although he has carefully avoided becoming a regular at the event, produced by Tom Mazzolini.

"I've turned down as many of Mazzolini's proposals as I've accepted," says Bishop, who appeared with one of his Chicago blues mentors, Smokey Smothers, in 2000 and joined the Chicago Blues Reunion hosted by Steve Miller in 2002.

"I learned 'The Joker,' " Bishop says. "I went out, bought the CD and everything, but he forgot all about that as soon as we got onstage. All he wanted to do was play the blues."

At age 65, Bishop is old enough to see the long line of time marching through the blues music he has played all his life. As a member of the landmark Paul Butterfield Blues Band, he broke the racial barriers of Chicago's South Side and penetrated the previously all-black world of urban blues. Although he led a raucous rock 'n' roll band for years, sang lead vocals on one of the songs on "The Allman Brothers Live at Fillmore East" and scored a 1976 Top 10 hit with "Fooled Around and Fell in Love," he returned to the blues of his youth later in life. At concerts these days, he plays his old hit as a slide-guitar instrumental. His new CD is a meditation on that devotion.

"Once I started out, after I got the idea, I got on it like a dog on a bone," Bishop says. "I thought about how good people were to me when I was starting out - Hound Dog Taylor, Junior Wells, Butterfield, Clifton Chenier, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Big Joe Williams, guys like that."

So, in addition to getting established names such as B.B. King, Kim Wilson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds and George Thorogood to perform on his album, Bishop sought out young blues musicians such as Nemeth, Ronnie Baker Brooks, Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks. The Homemade Jamz Blues Band from Tupelo, Miss., features a 14-year-old guitarist and singer and a 9-year-old drummer. He spent the better part of the year he worked on the production just tracking down his guests.

He caught Wilson after a Fabulous Thunderbirds show in Petaluma. Sessions began at 3:30 a.m., while Wilson's girlfriend slept on the couch.

"When you're working with famous people," Bishop says, "you've got to catch them at a crack in their schedule and do what you can."

He went to Las Vegas to record King, who keeps an apartment there. Bishop packed some canned garden products for him, including a large jar of jam ("He likes my jam," Bishop says), which was confiscated by airport security who found the oversize container in Bishop's carry-on luggage. He pleaded with the guard that it was a gift for King, but to no avail.

"You tell B.B. King," the guard told Bishop, "the thrill is gone, and so is his jam."

Bishop also recorded Brooks, son of bluesman Lonnie Brooks, whom Bishop knew as Guitar Junior during his Chicago days.

"He grew up with Junior Wells jamming in his living room," Bishop says. "He's got the real-deal feel. I think the best example of 'The Blues Rolls On' is the Elmore James song 'Yonder's Wall' that Butterfield sang and we did with Ronnie Brooks."

Bishop praised guitarists Haynes and Trucks - part of a new generation of Southern rock guitar players - not only for their abilities but also for their good sense.

"I told Derek and Warren, 'Your generation sure got something ours didn't.' They like to travel with their family. They're not into drugs. They're not too bad drinkers. They're smart about things," says Bishop, who hasn't had a drug or a drink in a long time, but knows what he's talking about from experience.

Bishop is something of a loner who probably wouldn't leave his leafy home if it weren't for fishing and the occasional gig. He takes Japanese lessons and stays up at night reading seed catalogs in Japanese. He chops up tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce from the garden, throws some vinegar and cottage cheese on top, and eats lunch standing up in his kitchen.

He knew the daunting prospects he faced in making "The Blues Rolls On."

"I know the CD business is going out," he says, "but I didn't think about that because I wouldn't do it if I did."
Bishop did it without managers or assistants, and he footed the bill himself.

"I did it on my own dime," he says, "so I didn't have to accept any input from the record company."

For someone with such a long and varied experience with the record industry - his first album was released in 1970 on Bill Graham's short-lived Fillmore Records after he made three albums as a member of the Butterfield band - Bishop is realistic about his work's fate.

"I feel good about the record," he says. "What happens now is not up to me. It's never a good idea to get too optimistic about something that's going to happen in the music business. Let's say I'm watching with interest."