Shakey Jake Oliva was preparing for a Saturday night at the Vegas Lounge in Norwood, Massachusetts when he was interviewed for this feature. His blues outfit, Shakey Jake And The Blue Vibrations Band, have been on the Boston scene for a little over a year. Before that, he was in the Worcester scene.
Shakey Jake Oliva has been in several bands over the years. Before he had his Blue Vibrations, he was in Party of Nine, a 9-piece R&B Top 40 dance band with a horn section. These days, Jake is focusing mostly on Chicago and Texas blues and some West Coast stuff.
Jake is drawn to the raw feeling of the blues. “It’s hard to put into words,” Jake said. “It’s very soulful is the best way to describe it.”
Jake has only been living, though not playing, in the Boston area for about ten years. He started playing guitar in the sixth grade, playing in a few hobby bands. After high school, Jake played some of his first serious gigs. His first band focused on classic rock in the Led Zeppelin vein.
Jake, like many players, was still a pup when he was learning to play an instrument. At age eight, in sixth grade, Jake was playing violin in a Worcester City Orchestra program. “It was something that was offered to me from the teachers,” He said. “I think I was the least talented of the several students that were invited.” He chuckled, self-deprecatingly.
Jake’s earliest public performances, as a child, began as a guitar accompany in his church choir. The guitar had appealed to him more than his violin, at age eight, when he heard Jimi Hendrix.
“Jimi Hendrix was definitely one of the first to give me some inspiration,” he said, “although, bands like The Doobie Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd,. the guitarists from those bands(were also a beacon). It was more the bands’ music that inspired me. Steely Dan was another one, lots of bands like Three Dog Night. At the time I didn’t know a lot of the guitar players’ names. But it was mostly the bands and their style of music” that was blowing Jake’s mind with their new sounds.
Jake recently came back home from Chicago where he attended the Chicago Blues Festival. He made the same trip in 2007, and each time he got up to jam during a portion of the event set aside for anybody to get up and play with the local Chicago musicians. “The first time I was a little nervous,” he said, chuckling. “This year was more comfortable. It was great, though, to be able to play with people from Chicago.”
Jake has got some interesting experiences marketing himself in big cities. At one point, he tried to get a bass playing job in a New York City nightclub band. He had a bit of a handicap when he went to audition. He didn‘t know how to play the bass.
He had just picked up the instrument and started to learn it. “I had auditioned for a band as a bass player,” he said. “I had never even played the bass before. I didn’t even own one. I just toyed around with somebody else’s. A friend of mine that I worked with had a job, from a New York nightclub band. They toured the Marriot Hotel circuit. They needed a bass player. I wanted to join up. I wanted to play in the band, but not having any experience didn’t do so well for me. It was pretty bad. I just didn’t really know how to play the instrument that well. A lot of times you can transition from one instrument to the other; the guitar to the bass is very similar. But he was looking for a particular style, which I was not really able to play and not having the chops to start out with.”
It take courage for Jake to try to wing it, and that says a lot about his grit. As embarrassing as it was, Jake was undaunted. He eventually did take lessons and learned to play the four string. He joined, as a bass player, bands that played rock and roll, Top 40 dance, and a serious blues outfit. “As my music tastes changed, the bands that I played in were more representative of my musical tastes,” he said. “Once I started hearing more bands that played rhythm and blues, some of the old 50s and 60s, Motown stuff; a lot of it’s very related. I’d find out about other musicians and musical styles. Once I listened to them, they really started appealing to me.”
Eventually, as much as Jake enjoyed his new found bass, he really missed playing guitar because of the variety of things he could do with the six string. “Some of the new music I was discovering, the guitar was mainly what was appealing to me,” he said. “Chicago blues is pretty representative of what I’m playing now, Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf Band, Buddy Guy. Those are some of my main influences on guitar, and Texas guitar players like Albert Collins, Jimmy Vaughn.”
Jake found himself taking lessons from local legend Ricky “King” Russell. Russell’s hour long lessons allowed Jake to absorb more and Russell’s technique of recording each session changed everything. “Which is great for people like me with short term memory loss,” Jake said. “He really opened up a lot of new doors for me.”
Chicago blues fascinates Jake with its beats. “A lot of people get sick of a shuffle beat, but it’s really fun for me,” he said. “You can do a lot of things with it. The guitar player has different chord progressions you can go through, even though the beat is the same. To me, that’s enough of a change between songs to be able to keep it appealing. Some people just hear beats, but to be able to change the chord structure of the song within the beat, gives it a whole new flavor. Blues has quite a few different beats that are very appealing to me.”
As a fan of Chicago blues, Jake had to check out the movie Chess Records, which centered on the recording studio that birthed Chicago blues. “It was nice to imagine being back in those days and what it was like,” Jake said. “It’s a little glossed over as compared to what life was really like in those days.
Jake’s band the Blue Vibrations include Wendell Jenkins on harmonica, Will Mariner on keys, and he uses a rotating rhythm section. Shakey Jake And The Blue Vibrations Band have played The Next Page in Weymouth, The Tap in Haverhill, and they have added Vegas Lounge in Norwood and Louis’s Crossing in Quincy, which is where they can be found in July.
The blues scene in greater-Boston hasn’t gotten to know Jake well enough yet to throw its support behind him. He has only been playing in this area for a year. He moved to Malden from Worcester in 2001. “The blues scene in Boston in general needs some more support and participation from people,” he said. “A lot of it has to do with the clubs closing. The whole financial thing has a big effect on it.”
Jake also owns Showtime Sound And Lighting, and that business too keeps him in the clubs, albeit in a different capacity. For now, Jake would like to get into a more frequent rotation at some of the clubs. He likes working with his harmonica player, Wendell Jenkins, who shares his love of Chicago blues.
“I’d like to gig a little more regularly,” he said, “which will be a challenge over the summer because that’s my busiest time from Sound And Lighting. But in the fall and winter, I’ll be building up a following and getting some more gigs.”
His next gig is Saturday, June 18, at Vegas Lounge in Norwood, Massachusetts. 9:00 p.m.
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