Willie McBlind is a Harmonic Series Blues band featuring vocalist Meredith ‘Babe’ Borden, guitarist Jon Catler, bassist Neville L’Green and drummer Lorne Watson. The Blues has always existed between the notes, but Willie McBlind goes all the way – using 64-tone Just Intonation and fretless guitars to recast the blues in a different Harmonic framework.
Willie McBlind plays original blues as well as modern rearrangements of some of the Delta masters including Charlie Patton, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Howlin’ Wolf and Blind Willie Johnson. The arrangements often start simply enough, and develop in new directions informed by the unique tuning. Willie McBlind has mastered the subtle shadings of pitch so crucial to blues feeling, yet so trampled in the modern day rush of our time. In songs such as the Catler composition Shallow Gray, the band unearths a mountain
of overtones evoking Clouds over the Delta………..
August 2010 – 4 stars **** DownBeat Magazine
Read the review by Frank-John Hadley about Willie McBlind’s CD, Bad Thing
“No other blues band in creation sounds like the one fronted by microtonal (notes-between-the-notes) guitarist Jon Catler and New England Conservatory-trained singer Meredith Borden.”
News Flash!! Willie McBlind’s title track from the CD “Bad Thing” will be featured on Paul Fischer’s “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” on WBAI, 99.5 FM @ 11am – Sunday, July 25th – click here to listen live!
