Peterborough, NH blues bass man Mickey Maguire
New Hampshire blues bass player Mickey Maguire has transformed his home town of Peterborough, New Hampshire into an oasis of blues music. Every Sunday afternoon from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Maguire hosts his Soul Repair blues jam at his Mickey’s Repair Service parking lot right off of Route 202.
After his favorite weekly blues jam at Strange Brew Tavern in Manchester, New Hampshire had to cease due to Covid-19,, Maguire, jam guitarist Howard Randall, and a few other people decided to hold blues shows in front of Maguire’s auto repair shop..
“We just decided to start playing music,” Maguire said. “Initially we were doing it like a show. All our gigs got cancelled and I’m used to play multiple gigs a week.”
From the first week, the outdoor jam was a success Some Peterborough residents sat on a Route 202 guard rail across the street from his shop. One person pulled into Maguire’s auto repair shop parking lot with a convertible and sat in the vehicle with his top down. Other people sat outside their cars like a tailgate party.
“It just kept growing. We’ve done 17 weeks now,” Maguire said. “Probably at around week ten we started having other people mix in and join with us. It’s brought a lot of the area’s musicians into play.”
Keyboardist Vere Hill drives up from Rhode Island. Saxophonists, guitarists, and other from Manchester, Hooksett and Merrimack attend most weeks. Singers, too, show up and bringing their own microphones. Local newspaper Monadnock Ledger Transcript wrote a front page feature about the repair shop parking lot jam.
“The sound travels all the way down the river into the next town,” Maguire said. “We got people (listening) all the way down to the fire department, which is a mile away. They go out in their yards Sunday afternoons to listen. People have their friends come out and listen outside their apartment complex across the river.”
The Sunday jam, Maguire noted, has had a positive impact on many in the area, with everyone from kids to the elderly attending. The name of the repair show jam was renamed from One Big Soul, which was the name of the blues jam at the Strange Brew Tavern to Soul Repair, a name that Maguire resurrected from a jam he had co-hosted at area venues near Peterborough.
“I’ve been trying to get into Harlow’s for a long time,” the bass man said. “Maybe after this, we’ll be able to.”
Mickey Maguire wielding his bass guitar
Maguire’s success at this outdoor Sunday jam comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed his career for the last 20 years. He has been a backup bass player for Muddy Waters alum Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson for five years. Maguire also does some of the managing and booking work for Luther and his band The Magic Rockers.
“Luther was my first blues experience at the Rynborn, 21 years ago,” Maguire said. “It was on my 23rrd birthday. I got dragged to the Rynborn. I didn’t want to go. I was like ‘I don’t want to listen to that blues. That music all sounds the same.’ Those words actually came out of my mouth. I went in for Luther recording Live At The Rynborn. It was when he was ding his Live At The Rynborn album. I left there completely changed, hooked to blues. One show.”
Now, 20 years later, Maguire and Luther are best friends.
“Luther has definitely taught me a lot of blues lessons,” Maguire said. “My ultimate blues lesson one day was when he told me I couldn’t play blues. It was intense. It was good. It was at his rehearsal dinner for his wedding. I was his best man at his wedding. I had no idea we were having a rehearsal dinner BBQ. Luther had a plan going.”
Johnson had set up a guitar and bass in his niece’s backyard and had invited Maguire to sit down and play music for a while. After getting three minutes into a blues song, Johnson turned and scalded Maguire for not playing the same song as Johnson. Maguire assured Johnson, shortly before restarting the song, that he would play exactly the correct notes.
“He showed me a bass line exactly what he wanted me to play,” Maguire said. “We started playing again, and he stopped again. He goes ‘You can’t friggin’ play blues. You may never be able to play blues. If you do, it probably won’t be until many years after I’m dead and gone.”
Dejected, with hurt feelings, Maguire said he had to take a walk. He took off his guitar, and he wandered around the house with tears coming down his cheeks, his chest hurting because he was so pained by Johnson’s rebuke.
When heading back into the yard, other guests stopped Maguire to tell him they heard he and Johnson were playing music for them, which the anguished bass player denied thinking that Johnson was finished with him.
Mickey Maguire
Johnson eventually said “Sit down, Boy.” Maguire reported that he told Luther that he needed to go for a longer walk.
“He goes, ‘Sit down, boy.’ I was like ‘No, Luther. Really. I’m sorry. I’m upset.. I’ve got to put my bass away, and I’m going to go take a walk.’ He goes ‘Grab your bass and sit down, right now.’ I sat down with him and he goes ‘Now, you can play the blues.’ And I played the notes, intense, for 45 minutes, like I have ever had in my entire life. I was in such in a low place when we started. By the time we were done, I was like higher than life. It was the most intense, literally, the most intense blues experience of my life. Luther apologized to me for two days. He goes ‘I’m really sorry, Mickey. I had to do that to you, Mickey. I had to do that. I had to show you what it was. Every time you play, you have to play with the same intensity and with the same feeling. If you’re playing the blues, you have to play blues. You can’t be playing a blues song. You have to be playing blues. Your mind had to be right. You have to be in the right place.’”
“’Mickey,’” the bass player recounted Johnson telling him, ‘I know exactly what that feels like. You know why?’ I said ‘why?’ Muddy did that to me.’”
Johnson was Muddy Waters’ driver for eight years as well as his band mate. “He said ‘Muddy did that to me, and it tore me up. I had to do that to you.’ It’s a lesson that will stick with me through life.” Maguire finds that when, playing blues songs, he digs in deeper, the entire song, and the entire experience, changes.
Maguire has been known as one of the bass players for the Kantu Blues Band, which features Maguire’s godfather, Jerry Paquette, on lead guitar. Maguire also plays with newer local blues act Frankie Boy And The Blue Express, a band that competed in the International Blues Competition in Memphis a year ago. Maguire enjoys working with the younger blues artist.
“He’s really good people. He tours with Eliza Neals,” Maguire said. “She’s all over the place. She plays everywhere.”
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii when his father was in the Navy, a six month old Maguire moved to New Hampshire when his parents returned to their home state, particularly to his father’s old home town of Peterborough.
Soul Repair blues jam at Mickey’s Repair Service; Peterborough, NH
“I’ve been brought up in Peterborough since I was six months old,” he said. “I learned how to walk in the Peterborough Fire Department” when his father was a volunteer there.
Maguire’s future plans include some day opening his own blues venue, touring around the country, and working with national blues artists.
When asked why he turned onto blues after initially refusing to check it out, Maguire said it comes down to who can feel that kind of music,. He has had his share of heartaches.. Music is his medicine. Am empath, Maguire has got a lot of people in his life. He was playing at or attending 320 shows a year before the Covid-19 shutdowns. Maguire does not only play around his native southern New Hampshire scene. He has been seen at the new defunct Smoken’ Joe’s in Boston, Massachusetts, The Salon at 9 Wallis in Beverly, Massachusetts, The Bull Run in Shirley, Massachusetts, and lots more. . Moreover, he had been asked to go on the road with Vanessa Collier for a month, but the bass man could not take the time away from his auto repair shop.
“I think there’s a common thread everybody who is focused by the blues. People can like it and like to listen to it. But, there is a blues family. I think it comes from an emotional place. It’s something that if it hooks you, it hooks you. It’s got you.”
