Lakeport >> Two and a half years ago when a local blues band first came together, 62 was a running theme for the musicians. Pat Gleeson, the lead singer and harmonica player, started perfecting the art of the harmonica in 1962. The drummer began playing music that same year as well. Four out of the five band members were 62 years of age. So it’s no surprise that 62 Blues just rolled with this recurring theme.
The band performed before a packed house and full dance floor at the Soper Reese Theatre on Friday night for the theater’s Third Friday Live series. The appeal of their traditional Chicago and Delta blues style certainly showed. ”Blues is an interpretive art. You play it the way you feel it,” explained Gleeson. “You can hear the same song over and over and over again but there’s a feel to each artist’s rendition of it … I try to keep it within the realm of the artist that wrote it, but still give it that twist that makes it ours. I don’t want to change the songs. I want people to enjoy this art, to understand what it was when it was originally made.”
When Gleeson was six years old, his dad put him in singing lessons, convinced he was going to be the next great soprano singer. It’s likely this enthusiasm stemmed from the fact that Gleeson was the only one of his siblings with vocal talent. “None of my brothers or sisters were able to carry a tune, so they were really surprised that I could and they were like, ‘Wow, you should really follow that,’” Gleeson recalled. “And I did.”
Gleeson’s vocal instruction went by the wayside when he turned 14 and started playing in his first garage band, but his singing lessons had left him with valuable skills. “It was good training for me because it brought me through my puberty stage where your voice cracks,” he said.
Blues music and the harmonica came into the picture when Gleeson met the older brother of a neighbor, who traveled around the country as a street musician. When he was in San Francisco, where Gleeson grew up, he played on Market and Powell street. These streets were where Gleeson first realized he wanted to learn the instrument. “He gave me a harmonica and told me to learn and play Shortnin’ Bread,” Gleeson said. “He said if he comes back and I know how to play it he’ll teach me the blues.” A year later, when the street musician returned, Gleeson knew the song. “What that little song did was it taught me how to bend notes. Then he taught me song technique and he taught me other things on the harmonica. By the time I was 12 years old I was playing pretty good.”
Flash forward a few decades and Gleeson was living in Lake County, looking to start a country band with his wife when 62 Blues sort of fell into his lap. He discovered a drummer who had a keyboardist friend by the name of Cory Hyatt who might be interested in joining the band. When he went to speak with Hyatt, he told Gleeson that he only played the blues. Even though this wasn’t exactly what Gleeson was looking for at the time, the two got together and 62 Blues was formed, much to the joy of Lake County, if the turnout Friday night is anything to judge by. The other members of the band include Tim Karlyle, the bass player and also an original member, plus drummer Steve Thoma and “Mojo” Larry Platz on guitar.
Platz is the most recent member to join the group and their fourth guitar player, but Gleeson said he’s what they’ve been looking for since they started. “He is the guitar player that we were looking for from day one. The other guitar players are good, they’re really good. Our first few guitar players are absolutely amazing, but they had that modern blues rock and roll that didn’t fit traditional blues,” Gleeson explained. “When he [Platz] plays the blues he plugs his guitar into the amplifier. There’s no pedal board. This is what blues is meant to be. He’s the perfect blues guitarist … His style of blues is really, really top notch.”
The current configuration of the 62 Blues is better than it’s ever been, according the Gleeson. All of the band members possess something of a carefree spirit, embracing mishaps on stage. “If someone on our stage makes that mistake we’ll laugh about it or just move on … If the feeling is light, [the audience] is going to appreciate it a lot more,” Gleeson said. “Some of the greatest musicians in the world, they make mistakes … We made mistakes last night, trust me, we made a lot of them, but I don’t think anyone in that audience knew it.”
Though Lake County is full of talented blues bands, Gleeson insists that each has their own distinct sound, despite performing some of the same tunes. “Any of the blues bands around here, there’s a different twist to each one of them. You’ll hear the same song by them that you’ll hear by us,” he said. “Some of them don’t sound at all like it and some of them are very very familiar. When you sit and listened to it you’re gonna get a different feeling.”
Though Gleeson has explored other genres, blues has unfailingly been his preferred style. “I’ve always played the blues. It’s always been a part of me from the time I was 11 years old to today,” he said. He explained that this is because he feels the music has a special kind of soul that other genres lack. “It’s all about feeling, it’s all about that emotion that comes from the heart. I’ve played rock and roll bands, I’ve played country rock bands. The emotion in them, it’s strong but it’s not the blues,” he said. “When you play the blues you have to feel it, otherwise it will be empty, blank. It moves you. It makes you either want to dance or cry or scream for joy.”
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
