Coco Montoya & Ronnie Baker Brooks

On the first day recording Times Have Changed – the eleven-track album from Chicago bluesman Ronnie Baker Brooks that brings a sound so big it could topple a Louisiana juke joint – industry-revered album producer and drummer Steve Jordan told Brooks to put his pedal board back in the van. For the first time in his professional life, Brooks, the son of Texas and Chicago blues legend Lonnie “Guitar Jr.” Brooks, would plug a Gibson into TKTK amp and rip it straight from there.

“Back to the basics. The pedals get in the way of your tone – your natural tone. Any distortion I had came straight out of the amp,” Brooks remembers from the Times sessions. “It was almost like going to college, or grad school. It was definitely an education.”

Brooks, 49, likes to treat each album he makes as a platform for him to grow, but the reality is that heʼs been climbing the blues worldʼs latter all his life. He was born in Chicago, and started playing guitar around age six. At 19, he joined his father, who by then had influenced some of the most well-known bluesman of our history: Jimmy Reed, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Johnny Winter, and Junior Wells. For 12 years the two would tour together, putting Ronnie out front with Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and Koko Taylor. In 1998, when he was 32, his father told him to go solo.

Baker already had a band by then, one heʼd been touring on the side with since 1992. But by 1998 heʼd started a label; that year he made his first album, Golddigger, 16 songs tracked out in two weeks. “My dad always said to keep writing, even if you donʼt think the song sounds great or you canʼt finish it,” says Baker. “Write. Continue to write. The more you write, the better you get.” Take Me Witcha came three years later; his second album on Watchdog Records. Brooks broke out as his own champion on 2006ʼs The Torch. The Boston Herald called it “ferocious and unrelenting … the yearʼs best blues album.”

In the ten years since The Torch, Brooks has started a family, toured North America and Europe, and taken feature spots on the records of other bluesmen. He produced Eddy Clearwaterʼs West Side Strut and contributed guitar work to albums from Elvin Bishop, the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Review, Billy Branch, and Big Head Todd.

Times Have Changed, Brooksʼ first album in ten years, carries with it the weight of grown perspective and time spent perfecting old material. Brooks worked it with Steve Jordan, whose work runs from Keith Richard to Stevie Wonder, John Mayer and Eric Clapton. With that comes a lesson in rhythm and blues history. Brooks refers to the director as “a walking encyclopedia of music detail and equipment,” a professor through which Brooks could take that next developmental step. “Once we got the ball rolling, my confidence went higher and higher,” he says. “Iʼm a better musician for this experience.”

The experience Brooks is talking about is that which came together over the course of a few weeks at Royal Studios in Memphis, the home of Al Green, Syl Johnson, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and O.V. Wright, whose 1974 hit “Blind, Crippled, and Crazy” gets a facelift on Times Have Changed. Jordan and Brooks brought in a mint press of Memphis music royalty: Stax Records staple Steve Cropper (Booker T. & the M.G.ʼs, Otis Redding, Sam & Dave), Archie Turner (Al Green, Syl Johnson, O.V. Wright), jazz saxophonist Lannie McMillan, and R&B icon Angie Stone.

“We used the same mics that Al Green used on his record,” says Brooks. “Matter of fact, we were using much of the same band! It kind of took that vibe.” The first track recorded was a cover of Curtis Mayfieldʼs Superfly hit “Give Me Your Love.” The second, “Twine Time,” the instrumental jam from Alvin Cash.

“To be honest with you, when Steve said ʻMan, we need an instrumental,ʼ the first person I thought of was Freddie King. Steve wanted something more appealing to all people, not just guitar players. He said ʻWhat about ʻTwine Time?ʼʼ I said, ʻIs he serious?ʼ Yeah, ʻTwine Time.ʼ But that song was a key to this album.Man, that just lit the fire for this record. It became one of the funnest tracks we did.”

Times also comes laden with original hits. Five of the eleven tracks were penned by Brooks. Raised on othersʼ music, heʼs always considered the songwriting process to be as sacred. “Itʼs like having a baby,” he says. “You see it come to live. Once you play it live, it grows even more. That was the most fun part of it, for me: the creative side. Coming up with a song people can relate to, and you relate to, it just snowballs. Itʼs almost like therapy for me. Like the song ʻTimes Have Changedʼ: I wrote that song years ago. I sent Steve my songs and he picked that one. Itʼs kind of timeless. Every day somethingʼs changing. Now, when I play it live, you can see the effect of it. Initially, it was just an idea: just a riff. Now, this song has influence on people. We were just in Europe this year, after the bombing in Brussels. And weʼre playing Brussels. I played that song; people were in tears. It helped them heal.”

Itʼs on that title track that Brooks brandishes what may be his finest songwriting talent: the ability to humanize social issues and unite different voices into one cohesive thought. Thatʼs no more evident than in the latter stages of the song, in which Brooks deploys his longtime friend, Memphisʼ Al Kapone, to drop 32 bars on what the future holds for our people.

“My whole intention, when I started with Golddigger and up through this one, was to be authentic enough for the older generation but have something that the younger generation could latch onto,” says Brooks. “I try to be that bridge. With Tame Me Witcha, Iʼve got a rapper on that. On The Torch we went with Al. Heʼs a bridge. Heʼs a bridge from blues to hip-hop. With music, it all comes from the heart. It comes from the heart and from the soul. It blues, it doesnʼt matter what youʼre talking about, it definitely relates.

“Just play what you feel, be real about it, and enjoy yourself." Thatʼs what Albert Collins taught me,” says the award-winning guitar virtuoso and soul-deep singer Coco Montoya. The self-taught, left-handed Montoya mastered his craft under Collinsʼ tutelage. Incorporating lessons learned from his mentors, the iconic Collins (for whom he originally drummed), and UK legend John Mayall, Montoya puts his own stamp onto every song he performs. Since his first solo album in 1995 (which won him the Blues Music Award for Best New Artist), Montoyaʼs endlessly inventive guitar work and passionate, hard-hitting vocals have kept him at the top of the blues world. With his new Alligator Records album, Writing On The Wall (his sixth for the label), Montoya delivers what he is already calling one of the best records heʼs ever made. For the very first time on Alligator, he decided to bring his road-tested band—noted keyboardist and songwriter Jeff Paris (Kebʼ Moʼ, Bill Withers), bassist Nathan Brown, and drummer Rena Beavers—into the studio with him. Between the camaraderie of the long-time bandmates and the sheer talent of all involved, the results have left Coco, in his words, “over the moon.”

Produced by Grammy Award-winner Tony Braunagel (Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal) and co-produced by Jeff Paris, Writing On The Wall is a tour-de-force of memorable, hook-filled songs, sung with passion and fueled by equally memorable, top shelf musicianship. The 13 tracks include five written or co-written by Montoya. The set opens with a signature, career-defining performance of the soul-baring I Was Wrong, written for Coco by songwriter Dave Steen. From the blistering Save It For The Next Fool to the enjoy now/pay later philosophy of Jeff Parisʼ (Iʼd Rather Feel) Bad About Doinʼ It to the riveting reinvention of Lonnie Mackʼs Stop, Montoya delivers each song with heart-pounding emotion. Special guest Lee Roy Parnell adds his well-seasoned slide guitar to the smoldering A Chip And A Chair. And Cocoʼs friend, guitarist Ronnie Baker Brooks (son of late Alligator star Lonnie Brooks), joins in for some good-natured fun on the droll Baby, Youʼre A Drag and adds his blistering playing to the searing cover of Bobby Blandʼs You Got Me.