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Blues Views: Eric Jerardi's Everybody's Waiting

Artist: Eric Jerardi
Album: Everybody's Waiting

I've been following this guy's career since he first picked up a guitar, granted that's an oft used journalistic ploy, and it's usually fabricated. In this particular application, it couldn't be truer. If I dwell to deeply on it, I start to feel a bit aged.  One very significant aspect of this Blues magic that guitarist extraordinaire Eric Jerardi weaves so well is its/his sense of timelessness.

A magician employs slight of hand, so does Eric.  He's come by his craft in the accepted manner, minus any tragic self deprecating behavior.  You hear the influences, but they are just that. Other blues voices, other blues rooms all employed with the maturation that only indigo dues provide.  No, you don't just order them, they turn up in the strangest ways.  There are those purists that believe dues exist in the genes, to be realized if called upon. Jerardi realized just the correct amount of curiosity and personal experience that allowed those pods to an early fruition.  The Dayton, Ohio native has been developing them for thirty years now, with venerable results.  From this reporter's standpoint, it took his native "supporters" more that a bit of time to catch up.

From Timothy's on Brown Street and the "Don't Ask" period in the early days of 1985, to the "House of Blues" and Beal Street Caravan headline gigs of recent past, EJ has gone about it in one comprehensive model of correctness. If there was one right manual of "How to Succeed in Blues"and still maintain a life, he has "made it", on his own terms.

All the transitions from two inch tape to demanding producers have been incorporated through the years, and Eric's  "product" remains True and definitely Blue.

Listen and try to find inadequacies, you won't.  After five releases, EJ has confronted and exploited all his assets as well as his shortcomings head on . He's what the school of life calls experienced, and you can hear it in every note he hits.  It stands for something or someone in his soul. listen, you'll hear it ...Shakin Dave

Editors note: the Eric Jerardi Band initiated the Hall Pass Program on February 24th, 2014

Shakin' Dave Hussong is a musician, businessman, writer and respected authority on vintage guitars. He's known to many people in this area through his work as lead guitarist for the popular band the Low Rent Blues All-Stars and is internationally known for Fretware Guitars, a vintage guitar business he started in 1978. Shakin' Dave brings you the blues, both old and new, Monday nights on WYSO.
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