I started playing guitar in the 1960’s and worked my way backwards from the Cream clone band to doing mostly acoustic, playing frequently at the Whole Coffee House at the U, fronting Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Roosevelt Sykes, Leon Redbone. Did a lot of Lonnie Johnson material (a personal favorite) as well as Big Bill Broonzy and Scrapper Blackwell. Teamed up with Butch Thompson on keys and Craig Salminen on harp to form the Bobo Boys Blues Band. Later, when we became the house band for the Artist Quarter (when it was off Nicollet in Mpls), we added Eddie “Mole” DeBourne on drums. Eddie was from Harlem and taught me a lot just by keeping up with him. Playing blues with a jazz drummer who had occasionally played with Charlie Parker will do that.  When Eddie passed we hired “Mean Gene” Hubbard.  Keeping up with Gene was sometimes interesting too, especially when he would take his “interplanetary excursions” during the middle of a tune. He also was one hell of a drummer.

 

In the late 1970’s, Craig and I met Lazy Bill Lucas, who at the time was in a gig slump, and put together a band to get Bill back working again. He became a regular at the AQ, and I was a regular in his band for number of years. I also did a lot of the booking for the AQ and brought in friends Dave Ray, the Minnesota Barking Ducks (when Lynwood Slim was blowing harp for them) and others, but     eventually I was relieved of my duties for packing the place almost every night with people who drank a lot of booze and made the bar a ton of money (?). It was a great club while it lasted.

Recently I was backing George Bedford as a member of the Extraordinaires, until the founding of the Jinxbreakers.

I currently play a 69 Byrdland, a 69 ES335, and a 59 Stratotone, thru vintage Fender amps with a reverb tank.