2007-08-13 - 5:24 a.m.
Summer has been great thus far with lots of good music and travel. The fall is shaping up to be the same.
Following is a Bio piece written about me by noted music writer and critic, Don Wilcock.
Hugh Pool 2007
Hugh Pool is a free spirit whose life is dictated by his passion for real music. He has never signed a record contract and has never entered into any management deals, but he’s survived 20 years in the New York music scene, playing what he calls “jacked-up Delta blues and Rust Belt roots rock.” He is pervasive enough for The Village Voice to proclaim, “You can’t swing a cat in this city without hitting Hugh Pool.” He’s also released several albums including Live at The Rodeo Bar. Blues Revue raved, “Before there was grunge, there was Howlin’ Wolf. Now there’s the Hugh Pool Band. This power trio takes no prisoners.”
He opened for Johnny Winter on the nights Winter cut his legendary Live in NYC ’97 CD at the Bottom Line. He once told folk icon Dave Van Ronk that he was the reason he played finger style. Van Ronk slapped him on the back and told him, “Sorry, kid.” He played the 1991 Greenwich Village Folk Concert on 30 seconds’ notice with a broken string and still ended up on The Best of the Greenwich Village Folk Festival album with his “I’ll Make A Deal with You.” As a 20-year-old sound man for The Speakeasy in Greenwich Village , he found himself running down Bleecker St. begging for a better amp for Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist Hubert Sumlin and walked out of Kenny’s Castaways with a twin reverb.
Whether it’s opening for Patti Smith or Merle Saunders, Richie Havens or Vassar Clements, Lonnie Mack or Tony Joe White, Hugh Pool keeps it real. His music reaches deep within, pushing the envelope and shortening the distance between Blind Lemon Jefferson and Z Z Top to a whippoorwill’s whisker, and he makes it his own. He cuts through today’s noise that passes for rock with a dexterity, dimension and depth that puts him in the same game as little appreciated legends like Roy Buchanan or Joe Ely. He’s not so much a blues rocker as he is a blues man who rocks. He brings the largeness of rock to the emotions of blues, but he’s not larger than life. He’s life lived large.
As partner, producer, musician, co-owner and engineer at Excello Studios in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn , Pool works with some of the most talented and varied recording artists today, mixing cutting edge technology with the unparalleled artistry of musicians like Taj Mahal, Michael Brecker, Radio 4 and Olu Dara. When Tape Op The Creative Music Recording Magazine did a feature interview with Hugh, he described the studio’s motto as: “Casual but never unprofessional.”
Pool is widely regarded as one of the finest guitarists on the New York scene today. Writing in the New York Times, noted journalist Jon Pareles said: “Hugh Pool's songs hark back to the 1960s rock that was steeped in the blues. His repertory extends from rolling-and-tumbling slide-guitar boogies to neo-psychedelic jams to reflective, down-home hymns that recall the Band.”
Pool worked his way up through “the couch circuit,” living in a one-room Harlem apartment and even spent a few years on a red tugboat in New York harbor. All the while, he cut his musical teeth busking rush hours on the 72nd St. subway entrance and toured Norway , Sweden and the Arctic Circle . He’s headlined Sweden ’s Linkoping Jazz & Blues Festival with Professor Washboard. He’s played Germany ’s Kielawhoche Festival twice and was featured soloist in the “Downtown Messiah” concert at the Bottom Line in New York along with Randy Brecker, Vernon Reed, Dar Williams and David Johansen.
They say an artist has to be schooled in how to draw before he can take off onto uncharted palettes and create his unique style. The same is true of blues and rock. Among the uncounted myriad of artists who meld the two forms, few are truly schooled because the “academic” background required to capture the essence of the form comes from the street, not ivy walls and hallowed halls. Hugh Pool has his Ph.D in street. He told Tape Op The Creative Music Recording Magazine: “When you think about it, I support my wife and two kids doing what I love. I work my ass off almost every day, and I’ve never had to have a “real” job.” He says that because to Pool, music isn’t a job, it’s his blood, his essence.
Don Wilcock