On Music: Monster Mike Welch talks about return to Rockland blues festival July 13

Monster Mike Welch Submitted photo

Ever since the North Atlantic Blues Festival began back in 1994 I have interviewed one of the performers to bring attention to each of this award-winning festival for the last 29 years (the 2020 Festival was canceled due to the pandemic). I am continuing that streak by selecting an artist from the 2024 line-up and this time ‘round it’s Monster Mike Welch who will be performing on Saturday the 13th there in Rockland. I chose him because many, many years ago I had the pleasure of chatting with him when he was a very young musician performing at a club in Portland. He had been given the nickname “Monster Mike” by actor Dan Aykroyd (of The Blues Brothers fame) when he was only 13 years old and over the years he’s lived up to that label by releasing albums under his own name and being a part of several bands like Sugar Ray and the Bluetones. I called the Boston-based guitarist/vocalist at home recently and here’s part of our long chat.

Q: Thanks for sending the link to your latest album Nothing But Time, I had a lot of fun with that.
A: Oh, nice, I’m glad to hear it.

Q: One of the surprises was, and I’m sure you can figure this out, I never knew that George Harrison had written such a killer blues tune as “I Me Mine”!
A: Yeah, and it’s funny, I had that version come into my head and kind of realized that the original version is like a minor-key blues ballad that alternated with a blues shuffle. I immediately started Googling to see if a million blues fans had figured that, someone had to have.

Q: And what did you discover?
A: I couldn’t find any versions of it, it seemed like the kind of thing that Eric Clapton would have covered at some point, and then if I covered it everyone would say: “Oh, you’re doing the Eric Clapton version!” but no, I’m really proud of that one. It came out exactly the way I heard it in my head.

Q: Well, congratulations on being the first, man, and you killed it, too! Now, it’s been quite a while since the last time we spoke, but for the life of me I can’t recall when it was, I believe it was early on in your career and I do remember it was for a gig in Portland.
A: Could it have been at Morganfield’s?

Q: Yes, you’re right, that’s exactly where you were playing, I just forgot the name, that venue’s changed names quite frequently.
A: Yeah, that’s the place I used to play up there.

Q: So how has your music grown over the course of your career? I sense a tightness to it and you really have a good handle on vocals, as well.
A: Because I started doing this when I was so young and I think I may have started singing too early, although I don’t know if I could have made a different decision because I really wanted to be the front person to do my own songs, and it’s very hard to do that if you’re not the vocalist. I kind of took a break from being the front-person around 2000/2001 when I joined a band called Sugar Ray and the Bluetones, I was in it, on and off, for a lot of years. And then for a couple of years after that, in 2016, 2017, 2018, I played with a singer named Mike Ledbetter, who passed away in 2019. But all through that time, when I wasn’t the primary singer, I was working a lot on my vocals, I don’t think I would’ve been ready to make this record the way I did until now, really.

Q: Have you ever done the North Atlantic Blues Festival before?
A: Yeah, I know I was on the second one in 1995 and then I did it once with Sugar Ray and the Bluetones and once with the Welch Ledbetter Connection, which was the band I had with Mike Ledbetter, that was probably 2017 or 2018, but it’s been a while, so I’m very much looking forward to going back.

Q: What can folks expect from your triumphant return to Rockland on the 13th of July?
A: Well, I have a killer band full of people I’ve played with in different situations over the years, we’ll be playing songs from the new record, probably a couple of songs from my older records, probably a couple covers of my favorite blues and R&B songs; but really I just try to pour everything out on stage every time I play, (pause). One of the things I’ve learned from all of the people I’ve played with is that there are no unimportant gigs, there are no gigs that don’t require the absolute most from you, especially getting on a big stage like the North Atlantic Blues Festival; I really try to give it everything I have.

Q: And that was even present on this new album of yours, you didn’t just phone it in, you threw yourself into every song, it was audibly evident.
A: It’s the first time doing one of my own records that I’ve ever worked with an outside producer, my own records have either been self-produced or produced in collaboration with band members or people from the record label. I went up to California to Kid Anderson’s studio, Greaseland, and the thing that I couldn’t have known in advance is that having someone like Kid handle the production ended up meaning that this was the most personal record of my career.

Q: How so?
A: Because Kid’s a genius, I trust his taste implicitly, and every decision was collaborative, but because there was someone taking care of production and arrangement decision, I was free to just play and sing the songs. Kid really gave me the freedom to put the most personal music I’ve ever made onto the record, and I’m eternally grateful to him for that.

Q: When will the album come out?
A: It actually was released last year.

Q: Oh, really?
A: I was out of commission for a few years, I was hit very hard by long COVID, Mike Ledbetter died at the beginning of 2019 and all through 2019 I was reeling from losing my friend and creative partner, and then, in 2020 the pandemic hit and just as I was starting to get out and gigging again in 2021 I got COVID which completely wrecked me for a year. The actual time I had COVID was only about a week-and-a-half but the fatigue lasted a good year, year-and-a-half beyond that and it was scary. So agreeing to make the record in the first place was a leap of faith for me, and this year is really when I’ve been starting to actively promoting it.

Q: Is there anything, Mike that you’d like me to pass on to the folks reading this article?
A: The North Atlantic Blues Festival has always been a very special place for me since the first time I played it, and I just want people to know how much I love playing for them and how much I’m looking forward to seeing them again. It’s been a weird few years since the last time they saw me and I’m looking forward to reconnecting and having some fun.

Q: Well, thank you for your time and you had better play “I Me Mine” at the NABF coming up in a couple of weeks.
A: Oh, yeah, definitely! (laughter). And one more thing about that song: figuring out that arrangement unlocked the rest of the record for me in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. I realized that I could treat that like one of my own songs and play and sing the blues the way that I do over it, that showed me that the way to handle the entire record was to put that much of myself into every song regardless of where it came from. If I could make “I Me Mine” my own then I could make a whole record that felt like my own.

Lucky Clark, a 2018 “Keeping the Blues Alive” Award winner, has spent more than 50 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.

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