Johnny Hoy
Johnny Hoy And The Bluefish are on a released CD The Dance finds the boys at the top of their game, and they’ve been moving numerous copies at their gigs and on Spotify. Bluefish keyboardist and musical director Jeremy Berlin discussed the Bluefish sound and the band’s evolution over the last 25 years.roll.
The entire band lives on Martha’s Vineyard now that Boston drummer Chris Anzalone has been replaced with native Robbie Soltz. Although the island is a nice place to live, the band can be dependent on boats to get to gigs on the mainland, which costs money, requires a boat reservation, and they have to hope that the weather permits boating on a given day. It’s extremely rare that the weather has kept Hoy and the Bluefish from their gig. One night, however, the band and everybody else on board a transport was told to get off because of rough weather, and it cost the band a gig at the Squire in Chatham, Massachusetts.
“It was 7:30 at night and we we’re supposed to play at 10:00 so it was a piece of bad luck,” Berlin said.
The band originated on Martha’s Vineland shortly after Johnny Hoy moved to the island in 1978 to pursue work as a mason. He had sang with some bands previous and sat in with a few bands there. Guitarist Maynard Silver had connected with Hoy for some gigs. Then, in 1990, when a singer quit a band named Billy And The Bluefish, Johnny Hoy took over and the informal band became the first incarnation of Johnny Hoy And The Bluefish.
“The first generation of the band might have had a couple of guitar players and his then wife Barbara became the bass player,” Berlin said. “The band got pretty popular pretty quickly on the island. There were a lot of bar gigs and parties and they started doing some off island stuff.”
The band had gone through several guitar players but never had a keyboard player until Berlin joined in 1993. Berlin, on request from Hoy, was sitting in with the band on many occasions. After spending an entire summer as an informal, unofficial member, the keyboardist finally asked Hoy if was in the band or not.
Jeremy Berlin
“He said ‘You want to be in the band?’ I said ‘Yeah.’ He said ‘Well, we’re going to Maine tomorrow.’ ‘I said great.’” Berlin has been in the band ever since. His duties as keyboardist eventually expanded into organizer and booker, his role growing over the years. Berlin also became the “bass player” when Johnny and Barbara split up.
“One night we got to a gig, and I said ‘Who’s playing bass?’ And Johnny said ‘You are.’” That began Berlin’s 20 year role as the bass player, using his left hand notes to fill in the low end.
The left hand bass scenario helped create a unique sound for the band. Berlin said many bass players who come see the band look around for the bass player all night until they realize it’s Berlin. They often comment that they never missed the four string instrument. “Only band members complain about it, but not fans,” Berlin quipped.
The band’s current line up has to adapt to change once again. New drummer Robbie Soltz replaces Anzalone. Guitarist Buck Shank joined the band many years ago, before Berlin’s tenure, then quit in 1995 but returned 10 years later. “He’s been with us for the last seven or eight years,” Berlin said. “He took a break for about 12 years.”
Johnny Hoy And The Bluefish are essentially a roots rock Americana band with blues being at the core or heart of what they’re doing. Yet, fairs, festivals, and venues tend to lump them in with blues bands even though that label is a bit off the mark.
Buck Shank
“With our new drummer, who’s not so much a blues drummer. He didn’t grow up with that stuff,” Berlin said. “I think were more of a rootsie, dance music with a lot of blues flavors. We’re doing a lot of RL Burnside now. We do some country stuff. We do Johnny Cash. We do Jerry Lee Lewis. We do a lot of New Orleans music. We do some swing tunes. We do some jazz standards. We do some originals which are not easy to categorize.”
Hoy, who likes country, swampy music, writes most of the band’s original songs. The singer then brings them to the band to be fleshed out. “He writes the melody and the lyrics,” Berlin said.
Listening to the new CD The Dance, one is struck by grooves like the one in “Daddy Right,” especially as the band does not have a four string bass player. It came about organically. Initially, Hoy told them to check out a piano groove possibility, one similar to an R&B, hip hop feel.
“I just started playing the intro with Chris and that was the basis for the song,” Berlin said. “There was no direction or discussion about how we were going to do that. That’s often how things go. I’ll just start playing the groove and get with the drummer.”
Johnny Hoy And The Bluefish’s new CD also features their take on “Rolled And Tumbled,” which was popularized by Muddy Waters and Bob Dylan. Berlin said they came up with a new idea for the oft-pirated song, making it sound dark and foreboding.
“One of the things that we did to it was change it from a major key to a minor key,” he said. “I think a lot of that darkness is the minor sound. It’s not generally done as a minor, dirgey dark sound. It totally changes the character of the song. Chris came up with this amazing groove with his toms and that rolling thing.”
Hoy, Berlin
Berlin related that many listeners have a fascination with another new song titled “Dancing Danny O.” It’s about a Bluefish fan who had a heart attack and died while dancing to their music, many years ago. “People do seem to really like the record,” Berlin said. “I haven’t heard that people don’t like it.”
The disc’s title track “The Dance” sounds influenced by everything from Tom Waits to German waltz to every great slow song ever written. “I think Johnny loves the idea of a waltz,” Berlin said. “He’s hard on himself and on the band when we do a waltz. He has an idea in his head that he’s always grasping for, just the feel of a waltz. He just had that lyric and this idea of dancing around with his lover.”
Berlin said the German waltz was probably not intentional, as he doesn’t think Hoy knows a lot about German waltz. “I had the idea of putting the accordion on there,” the keyboardist said, “which speaks to the German waltz and the waltz in general and just that sense of an ‘old country’ feel folk song.”
Hoy’s deep, rich voice was bestowed upon him at birth, and he calls it up at will. “He’s got an incredible instrument in there,” Berlin said. “I like it best when he sings naturally and doesn’t growl or make it more than what it already is. It’s got a lot of layers and nuances to it. He’s not a trained singer. He’s just blessed with a good voice and good instincts.”
Over the course of five CDs, Johnny Hoy And The Bluefish has evolved in strange and mysterious ways. Some of the songs they’ve recorded have never made it onto their set list. Berlin said the process evolves over time with trying different things to keep the sound fresh.
“The evolution of the sound,” he began, “comes from a collective and an individual effort to keep things where you can actually go out and feel like you can play them yet again and have them be vital and alive, not stale and dead.”
Johnny Hoy And The Bluefish will be at Ryles Jazz Club at Inman Square in Cambridge on April 16. The band will also hit for the first time The Knickerbocker in Westerly, Rhode Island.
The band has also been nominated for a Limelight Music Award for Live Artist Of The Year.
www.johnnyhoyandthebluefish.com
