Johnny Iguana-Interview

Johnny Iguana: adventures of an eclectic piano player

by  Matteo Bossi

“I’ve been to Rome, Florence and Torino, but not to Milan…and of course I’ve been to the italian part of Switzerland. Italy and Spain are two places I want to be more. I have a seventeen year old son and last year my wife and I took him to Rome on spring break and it was something I’ll never forget. Did you ever see the movie European Vacation with Chevy Chase? Where he’s taking his family in Europe and he’s got a whole itinerary, well that’s kind of me. And in Rome you can go to the museums of course but in all the churches you’ve got Caravaggio and great sculptors…so I had like thirty churches I wanted to see. So after twenty seven churches my son goes, can we do something else?” It started like this, talking about Italy, our conversation with Johnny Iguana, one of the most revered pianists out there. And he has a new album coming out in April, “At Delmark“, a brave and fun instrumental solo piano record, further proof of  creativity from an artist who’s been active for more than thirty years, not just on the blues scene. His wide musical vision and deep knowledge have always been there, in every one of the different projects he has been a part of along the way  (his other band, The Claudettes, for example), besides that, of course, a sharp irony that often cropped up even while we talked.

A solo piano record is something rare nowadays.

One of the reasons I’m here doing this, is my father had this compilation called Blues Piano Orgy on Delmark…so they have a history of piano recordings, but certainly no time recently has been a release of a solo piano. Especially once we decided to do all single takes, no edit all analog it’s a challenge because when you’re playing an instrument for three and half minutes straight unless you’re in the symphony orchestra it’s pretty easy to find one or two spots where you go ahh, like your car’s off the road…you’re the whole band and the whole driving force. It’s easy to have a moment where you feel you lost it. The good thing is when they asked me to do it I had been practicing and playing so much I just bursted into the room and started to play. The recording is the furthest from a produced record as possible, its’ just me doing at their piano what I’ve been doing at my piano.

Did you have a specific list of songs that you wanted to record?

Some of the covers are things I regularly play live, some of them are things I had just started working on a version of myself. The first track Bass Key Boogie, by Little Brother Montgomery was one I had just heard and really liked. It’s something I like to do, when I hear something and I don’t know how to play it, it’s an enjoyable, enriching few hours when I sit there at the piano…it reminds me of when I was ten years old and I had a cassette player, fifty feet away from the piano, I would listen to five seconds of music and then run back to to the piano and play that five seconds, then go back and learn the whole song! So for the Little Brother I really like that one. The Neil Young one, I played  it live and Iike that version, the Jay McShann too. The AC/DC one I worked that out but I think I played it live just once. The original tunes a couple of them I have been playing for a while but the other ones I had just been working on them and in fact you can argue that they are practically unfinished, they were so new. Once I knew I was doing the album I just tight up  a couple of spots where I wasn’t sure how to go.

It was very much in the moment.

Yes and there’s a bunch of things that didn’t make the record, I played a lot of things and we kept the takes that we liked the best. The original ones range from very bluesy to having some blues in there somewhere but there is some kind of journey across…some of them sound like you know David Lynch, who just died, and I like him but some of it it’s, like  Moe from the Simpsons once referred to as weird for the sake of weird. I prefer Luis Bunuel, that’s my favorite absurd, surreal movie maker. I can see how somebody can think why on earth does this blues record have parts that sound like gypsy dances on a fire, like things that break out in Tripping In A French Ambulance. And other parts are very kind of classical…I don’t know, I did love Chopin when I was young and I would play some pieces. It fascinates me how they go from a big storming thing then it stops and it sounds like you encounter a little brook in a forest, so peaceful you can hear birds chirping. Then back to the stormy thing. Over time I realize why he did that, just because in the course of writing somehow you get led there, so many unknown reasons why. You go to a new key a new sound but it’s still one piece. You don’t encounter that much in blues, maybe you do in jazz, where there some experimental stuff. Probably there’s not too many things you would call experimental blues, maybe James Blood Ulmer or something like that.

Some things reminded me a bit of James Booker.

Oh, my father sent me a copy of the DVD documentary on James Booker! Now that you mention that I think in the press material we should have included a note about that. The 2020 album I had for Delmark I remember someone in Finland hated it, I translated this review and it said that my original compositions I vomited them up. Maybe he was a blues  purist. First of all love Otis Spann, I revere Spann so much…some people try to make a record and play like that but you know what, you’re not gonna get there! That was Spann. Even Pinetop. They were them and you should be yourself all the way. If you are being yourself it’s gonna be pretty good, if you’re honest and you’re not reaching for something you’re not. Those parts in there that I hope people enjoy are what’s in my head. And when I listen back to it  I also think about Henry Butler, because Butler probably hit the piano too hard like I hit the piano too hard! And I’ve actually scaled back over the years, I used to be notorious for breaking strings. I’d go into a session and they’d go “oh, no…”But I grew up playing punk rock when I discovered blues and that is not completely gone nor is  the classical love.

That’s what makes the music interesting.

I hope so! Depending on what the listener wants. If they could shut off their blues critic mind they might enjoy it just as music. Last night I was curious if there was any post about it based on the advance copies and believe it or not I found something in russian. I read it and it was very confusing, I have trouble believing the translation itself was not full of errors, but it seemed to suggest that when I do the melody, the relaxe parts, why don’t do that for the rest of the record an he seemed to think that it’s like being on a firing squad or something like that…

I think sometimes you have to turn off your brain and just enjoy the music.

Yes, in this world full of news that seem designed to break your spirit, I think instrumental music is so important…I have loved it for so long. When The Claudettes started it was just piano and drums. We started out wanting to make and album like Otis Spann and S.P. Leary did, just piano and drums. But we had so many other interests in other kinds of music that poisoned the well…yet we decided to make it rootsy, close to the blues. Inevitably some other sounds got in there. As for instrumental music I love coming up with titles and also to do a whole show of instrumental music may not be what everybody wants but it’s a challenge and I like that challenge a lot. My drummer calls it “blood sports” when we go up and do a whole show just the two of us, because it’s fairly intense.

You have a lot of fun playing as The Claudettes and it’s eclectic music that defies categorizations.

Yes and in these days of algorithms or Spotify playlists where you’re supposed to pick from these seven categories…if you’re a bluegrass band the photo is supposed to be on a front porch with a banjo. Everything about it screams one thing. And I’m gonna go through this world without having done that, somebody could advise me like, “you’re doing it the dumb way!” You would think we would break free from that but it’s just the opposite, more virtual boxes.

I see a photo of Junior Wells right there behind you and on the record you do “Messin’With The Kid”. So how did you start to play with him in the early Nineties?

Well, what happened was I finished college and I was in my first job after college, I wrote what was on the back cover of books, we called that cover copy, if it is a hardcover book it was on the inside flap. I was doing that job and I had a keyboard in my tiny New York City bedroom…I was still practicing but I was not really playing much in terms of shows. I was pretty new in New York at the time, moving from Philadelphia and my band had kind of dispersed. I just went out one night and the bar I went to was a country and western bar called Coyote Kates they played country music and you drank beer from a glass boot, like a cowboy boot. And somebody was doing a blues jam in that space, so I played a little bit and it turns out the guy who hosted the blues jam used to play in Junior Wells band. We suddenly realized we had met each other because I tried to sit in with Junior in a suburb of Philadelphia when I was twenty…it didn’t work out, but I had met him and his keyboard player. And he said “oh Junior is coming to town on Friday”. It was like Tuesday. We went there to the show and they still had not hired a new keyboard player. This guy took the road manager in the back room, he was Junior’s nephew, and he said, “this kid really loves Junior and he’s a good player, he came to the jam…” So they let me audition at the Boston House of Blues.

I called in sick to my job and did that. They said, “we’re not quite sure, can you also come and play tomorrow in Providence, Rhode Island?” So I came and sat there too. While I was there my girlfriend was in attendance, she knew how exciting it was for me, because she had seen me play when I was a teenager and half of our set was Junior Wells songs. Sometimes the songs in your first band just come from the records you have in the house. Nowadays you have the whole Spotify thing but back then we just had records and tapes and stuff…we had Hoodoo Man Blues, Southside Blues Jam…some collections with Junior’s early singles, we learned all those songs. That’s how we had enough material to play. The Beatles had the Cavern club and we had a bar where we played three sets at night, three  hour long sets, when I was seventeen. We were white kids playing in a black area of Philadelphia, they let us play because they saw how excited we were about this african-american music. I remember specifically the cook coming out of the kitchen and giving me a thumbs up! That was a long period of fun, playing at parties… and it was rewarding being complemented when you’re a sixteen years old kid playing the greatest export america aver made.

I’m sure I  wasn’t good at first, but I was enthusiastic, I got good on the job. By the time I met Junior five years later I was just good enough to get the gig, I knew all those songs and I think that counted a lot. He meant so much to me, if B.B. King had hired me it would have been a great gig but it would not meant as much as Junior. He was so sweet to me, he gave me so many solos, the other band members started to resent me a little bit I think…but they gave a lot of advice. They could have turned up their nose at me, but they told me, “hey man, you ever heard of beds?” that means holding chords…instead of going all over like this all the time. Otis Spann was a very busy player, you very rarely hear him play whole chords, he’s mostly riffing around but he’s always so beautiful. He’s like Elmore James in that  I’ve never heard any recording of him where he is not great. They didn’t have a chance to live too long, so they didn’t have a chance to make bad records…they didn’t live to the Eigthies where the records have such a sound that did not date well now. Junior was always supportive. I have a copy downstairs of Hoodoo Man Blues that someone of the band had him gift to me for my birthday and it says Brian aka Johnny Iguana Happy Bithday (he forgot the r, he must  have done it quickly) I love you Junior Wells. That’s one of my favorite things I have.

The other guys in the band where seasoned musicians like Joe Burton, Doug Fagan or Willie Hayes.

Oh yes when you see Tv footage of B.B. King breaking through with The Thrill Is Gone there’s  Joe Burton as the band leader! Fagan played with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and James Cotton, Willie always talked with pride that he was playing with Magic Sam when Magic Sam died. Then he played  withe everybody. Shortly after that I was summoned to Otis Rush’s apartment in Chicago he wanted me to tour with him. That meant a lot too. I just could not believe how incredible he was as a singer and guitar player. I always felt like his voice vibrato and his vibrato on the guitar were the same thing. So I got to tour with him. I also did a Carey Bell album on Alligator and I did some shows with him, Carey was great and his band members were a lot of fun.

When did you get the Iguana name, you were Johnny “Fingers” Iguana on Junior Wells “Live At Buddy Guy’s Legends”, and Stevie Lizard was the guitar player.

No, remember when I told you about playing in a bar in my high school days? That band was called Stevie Lizard and his All Reptile Orchestra. I knew Stevie, whose name is John, since we were fourteen years old, he went to a neighbouring high school and we heard about each other because we were both musicians who loved blues, jazz and stuff. I met him, we played and he invited me to join his band. They just  called me Johnny Iguana because there was bass player called Bobby Iguana and I was supposed to be his brother! Then when I met Junior Wells I kind of revived that name as a tribute to those days when I first learn blues. Now I have so many records as Johnny Iguana but for me it’s a reminder of my entree into the music. And when the guitar spot in Junior’s band opened up Stevie got the chance to try out and he actually stayed with Junior longer than I did. I did three years and then I left…when I joined the band I was a 23 years old white kid from Philadelphia, the other were older african-american musicians who had played with great artists. Over time some of them left and soon it was guys like me…so I felt at that point I didn’t have that much to learn, you know like what Woody Allen or Groucho Marx said, I would not want to be part of any club that have someone like me as a member. So I left the group and about a year after that Junior got sick and he died. I was with him from 1994 to 1996. I still remember when I went to Junior’s hotel room and I said I’m gonna finish up the year and then I’m gonna leave the band. I can’t tour this much, I need to be home with my wife. He said OK, alright…he saw so many people come and go. I always say that Junior died with a broken heart because I left the band but that’s not really true. Stevie Lizard  stayed until the end and also Albert Castiglia joined after I left. Albert has a good career now and I sat with him in Czech Republic at the Blues Alive Festival and we were talking about the Junior Wells band mates and we played some Junior songs like Little By Little and it took me right back.

After you left Junior’s band you put together the Oh My God band?

Oh yes, that was organ, drums and bass. I always say that the organ in that band made Jon Lord sound like a church organist! That organ  played it through a Leslie and I had a pedal that feed extra volume, I had to remove a part called the relay that’s in the Leslie that determines if the Leslie spins fast or slow.  They removed it because there is plastic  in it and I played it so loud it melted that piece! So they  made a special compartment for me to live outside the Leslie. If you hear that music the organ is loud, people would take that sound for a guitar because it was 100% of the time completely distorted. But I like that! Our prime lasted four years then the singer moved out to Arizona and when he came back, I don’t sit still, so  I had  started a band called Them Vs. Them. My partner in that band is the JQ the one I’m writing the score for “The Bear” with which is a big hit series here in the US. He and I have been making music together for twenty years. With Oh My God we did another album and a little touring then we had bad van accident and it was the end of that band.

It was really that bad?

I always say, a rock band and a church secretary get through an accident, guess who was drunk? The church secretary. It was 1 PM we were going over the crest of a hill on a two way highway and this woman who, we found out later was probably asleep, was in the wrong lane and we hit each other full speed at 55 miles an hour. So she died and we had helicopters taking two band members to the hospital. I didn’t play for a year, my wrist was not just broken but displaced, so they had to remove my arm from my hand up and pull the arm down while I was on ketamine. And I had pins sticking out in the right hand for a while to keep the bones back together. The doctor, who was really a very good doctor, he had me crying living the initial appointment when he said I cannot promise you’ll be able to play piano again this is a serious injury. That’s not what I thought he was going to say. The surgery was supposed to be two hours but it took five hours…and then I got right into physical therapy which was not fun. But they insisted I do it immediately. I did not play at all for six months and I didn’t really play for a year but…it came back. I worked harder than anybody ever. I was in Ohio when it happened and they tried to do the surgery there by the general orthopedist but we said no so we came back to Chicago and my wife who almost nine months pregnant drove down from Chicago to pick me up and then drove me back and we had surgery here.

Glad you were able to play again after such a serious surgery.

It took a long time, I was weak for a while…after a while your therapy is doing what you want to do, which for me was playing the piano. I have two cats in the house here and when I was a child I was allergic to cats so we didn’t have cats. But once my wife took them from the streets here I think your body think am I going to miserable and complaining or am I going to get used to it? And I think my hand after a while got used to doing what seemed not possible…when I started physical therapy they told me, “do like this, touch your thumb with every finger”. And I could not do it. It was really messed up. Friends that saw my hand…it was all twisted and this  part here (the wrist) looked like a wide circel, it was bizarre.  And I didn’t have any pain when I woke up from the accident in the van. I could not feel anything, all I knew is it didn’t look good.

You did the Chicago Blues Living History Band recordings right after you recovered?

It was a little bit after that, but it was me getting back on the horse there. You know when I think back about some of the things I got invited to do after that were almost gifts to me presented as loving offerings for what I had been through. That was quite soon, because we recorded in 2008 and we were touring it in 2009.

 You were on all these successful Larry Skoller produced records, like Muddy 100 and Chicago Plays The Stones, with some of the great elders like Billy Boy Arnold, John Primer, Magic Slim…

Yes. I’m really thankful for having crossed paths with Billy Boy. He has come up to my house probably five times, before we recorded he wanted to go over the tunes with me and we really got to know each other. We toured together. Then he published his book and my friend Matthew Skoller said, did you see Billy Boy’s book? No, I have not seen it yet, I said. So he sent me a little photo and there’s a part in there where he talks about his favorite piano players, talks about Joshua Altheimer who played with Big Bill Broonzy, ha talks about Otis Spann, David Maxwell and this guy here in Chicago, Johnny Iguana! Oh my God, that goes instantly in my trophy case. Billy Boy…I mean I have the Alligator album he did with Johnny Jones, it’s so charming I love Johnny Jones so much. Billy Boy sent me through the US mail boxes of burnt CDs he had done of Sonny Boy Williamson I songs, with highlighted sections, tracks he wanted me to listen to. I took it to heart and I practiced them and you really have to coach yourself to part from the Otis Spannism and go back in time and play in a certain way like Big Maceo or Blind John Davis and some of their styles is so different. I remember I could not wrap my head around a thing so I called  my friend Ethan Leinwand who is a St. Louis piano player, he’s a bit like me, he’s a jewish kid from Brooklyn who loved St. Louis piano so he moved to St. Louis and he’s been there ever since. And he sent me a voice memo, he really broke it down for me. I studied Forties and Fifties piano style, most of the stuff I had listen to was Fifties and Sixties. Because Billy Boy is quick if you’re playing and it’s nor right he stops! He stopped leaving his house during the pandemic…when we played at the Cognac Blues Passions festival with the Chicago Blues Living History we did a gig at the Chateau Otard with me, Billy Boy, Billy Flynn and Kenny Smith. It was so good, such a great group and it sounded so right that we talked about doing an album that way. We really should have done it. Now he’s quite old. And he’s one of the few artists who’s from Chicago, he didn’t come from the South.

Larry Skoller produced also your first Delmark album, “Chicago Spectacular!”, with a lot of friends, like Primer or Lil’Ed.

Yes, but truth is I didn’t know Lil’ Ed that well, we called him because I wanted to do that Otis Spann song, “Burnin’ Fire”, which was on Chicago the Blues Today compilation. He didn’t know the song and now it is part of his repertoire when I see him at Rosa’s. And Shake Your Money Maker is not exactly a deep cut but but I knew it would be good with him. I had the idea to take the guitar figure and do that on the piano and him answering me on slide. I introduced Hot Dog Mama to Billy Boy, he did not know it and he struggled with it, I think at this point he just knows the songs he knows. It was Larry’s idea to have Bill Dickens play bass on the instrumentals, he just this sick, funky virtuoso on the bass. He came to the house to rehearse those parts, to figure out what the bass would do. Making the record was special, everybody was in good spirits it was just before Covid…then unfortunately as for what I felt was the best Claudettes album, it came out in 2020. That hit me hard. I never invested more in myself than in that year, I had two albums coming out and shows all over the world…The Claudettes had a video for a song called The Sun Will Fool You, a hand drawn animated video, so beautiful, it got us to film festival all around. All of it was canceled.

It must have been tough.

Yes and I had the first writer’s block I had in a long time. But it all came back. I do think every house should have an acoustic piano, it would solve a lot of problems. As soon as we had the first Zoom call and a glass of wine we said, let’s make an album. And we actually made it during the pandemic, recording our parts to a click separately, one at a time…the first half of the record we did it like this. The second half we were in the same room live.

the claudettes

The last couple of albums came out on Forty Below.

Yes they lean more towards blues but the guy who runs the label, Eric Corne,  is friends with Ted Hutt who produced the Claduettes, so that is part of the reason he wanted to put that out. Eric and Ted work in the studio together some times in Los Angeles.

You have a new singer for The Claudettes, Rachel Williams.

She’s incredible, we had a great practice last night, I got an SD card here with our practice. She is six foot tall, from Texas, with a big, powerful voice…she studied theater so she loves to dress up and play the characters of the songs. She has this Annie Lennox/David Bowie thing too…On the website you can see a lot of live footage. We’ve recorded enough for an album already, we just want to get it right because it is really a new level. I will be in Europe in November with The Claudettes, I’d like to do some solo shows too, I did one in Berlin the last time, or with Michael Cuskey, our drummer, whose first instrument is the piano.

Is there a reason we have very few young piano blues players, except a guy  like Ben Levin?

Well, I don’t think  any kid looks at a guy sitting on a bench as a side  person in a group and goes: I wanna be that! He wants to be in the spotlight singing or playing guitar. Even drums you get to smash things…playing keyboard is like a nerdy scientist. I think a lot of parents have their kid take piano lessons, because it’s good for their developing minds…but I will say that playing acoustic piano for an hour it’s hard, it’s a workout. And often you can’t be heard because guitars and harmonicas are so loud, you have to play harder than you want to, not that many people can do it. It’s tiring. Oh My God and The Claudettes I started them because my mother would come to see me play and she would say in her Boston accent, “I  can’t hear the keyboards! My boy is up there”. So I started bands where I played through 80  inches amps, two speakers and a Leslie all on 10! And The Claudettes is based around the piano. You got Stevie Wonder or Elton John in terms of people who were keyboard stars or Jerry Lee Lewis of course…Billy Boy Arnold would tell me that piano was king until Tampa Red came along. Then with amplified music it was not king, you might not have space or budget for it. In jazz it is different. But one of the best compliments I have ever had was after I finished a soundcheck with Junior, I was 23/24, standing outside was Lucky Peterson and he said, “man you sound great”. Believe me when I got the gig with Junior I was listening to his most recent recordings and on keyboards there was Lucky  Peterson. He was taking the organ to a new place, I was disappointed he switched to guitar, on organ he was so good,  churchy and exciting…Even on the Blues Cruise the piano players are all older, except Eden Brent, I became friends with her, we were label mates on Yellow Dog, she’s really cool. It’s sad Lucky passed away too young, I guess musicians have a shorter life expectancy…if you’re not Bob Stroger!