Top British harmonica specialist Giles Robson (The Dirty Aces/Giles Robson Band) has teamed up with legendary Grammy-winning guitarist/vocalist Joe Louis Walker and virtuoso piano player Bruce Katz for an exciting new collaboration on Munich Records.

The trio will release Journey To The Heart Of The Blues on October 26th. The record consists of eleven raw, energetic classic blues numbers, along with a newly written instrumental, and will also be released in North America, Australia, and Japan by Chicago’s hallowed blues label, Alligator Records.

The work was self-produced by Walker, Robson, and Katz at NRS Studio in Woodstock, New York back in January of this year and the songs chosen include cuts by Sonny Boy Williamson, Jazz Gillum, Blind Willie McTell, Smiley Lewis, Papa Lightfoot and Big Maceo. The group set out to breathe new life into these old standards which see Katz’s intricate playing combining delightfully with Robson’s fiery harp. Walker, meanwhile, is at his very best, soulful and spirited in equal measure.

Says Robson, ‘Journeys To The Heart Of The Blues celebrates the dynamics, grooves, lyrics, and feeling of pure, traditional blues. It’s blues played intimately and at a low volume and with the wonderful space that is created when drums and bass are taken out of the equation.

Joe Louis Walker is a Blues Hall of Fame inductee and four-time Blues Music Award winner, with a career that exceeds a half a century. Born in San Francisco in 1949, he took up the guitar at age 14 and was well-known on the Bay Area music scene within two years. Later he worked with Mike Bloomfield, then spent a decade in a gospel group, the Spiritual Corinthians. Throughout the 1990s he fused his gospel, blues, jazz and soul influences into a series of recordings for Polydor/Polygram, which featured collaborators including Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Taj Mahal, Ike Turner and James Cotton. He’s known for his deep, evocative lyrics, with NPR Music calling him a ‘legendary boundary-pushing icon of modern blues.’

Bruce Katz holds four nominations for the Blues Music Award's, for the song "Pinetop Perkins Piano Player of the Year." Bruce leads the Bruce Katz Band, and also plays often with the Delbert McClinton Band, John Hammond and other artists. He was a member of the Gregg Allman Band from 2007-2013. He was also an Associate Professor at the Berklee College of Music for fourteen years (1996-2010), teaching Harmony, Hammond organ labs, Private Instruction and Blues History and has appeared on over 70s albums, including works by Ronnie Earl, Duke Robillard, Joe Louis Walker, Jimmy Witherspoon, David “Fathead” Newman and many others. 

Giles Robson first came to widespread attention with his band The Dirty Aces, where the group’s high-powered, riff driven blues was garnished by the maestro’s swirling blues harp. In 2016 he formed The Giles Robson Band who stripped things back even further with raw, sweaty, authentic 12 bar blues the order of the day on their debut album, For Those Who Need The Blues, which was recorded live in one session to really capture the energy of the band. Robson is lauded is one of the best harmonica players in the world today with players such as Sugar Blue and Paul Jones counting themselves among his fans – indeed Jones noted on his seminal Radio 2 blues show that ‘There are many living harmonica players of note, from Stevie Wonder to Giles Robson and back again.’

The first single from Journey To The Heart Of The Blues, Mean Old Train, is released this week and can be listened to/purchased here: https://munich-records.lnk.to/MeanOldTrainPR

For more information visit the Munich Records website: http://munichrecords.com/