News

Check out Terry performing at the Blues Music Awards!

(Photo by Jon Didier - www.jondidier.com)

Big News from Memphis and the IBC: Tooting that Horn!


We want to congratulate Terry's East Coast crew, J.P. Soars and the Red Hots, for taking the championship win-- Best Blues Band--at the 25th Annual International Blues Challenge in Memphis this past weekend.J. P. also won the prestigious Albert King Award for best upcoming blues guitarist.

Head over to our tour page for lots of new dates!

Sax Man Terry Hanck Receives
30th Annual Blues Music Awards Nomination

Sax man/singer Terry Hanck has received a nomination for the 30th Annual Blues Music Awards. The nominations were announced by the Blues Foundation in Memphis yesterday. The award ceremony is on May 7, 2009.

This is Terry Hanck's first BMA nomination in the BEST INSTRUMENTALIST-HORN category.20 The tall tenor's new CD is ALWAYS on TVR/Vizztone and streeted in mid-October.

From Steve Hoffman, WPFW/Washington D.C.:
"Damn, I listened to this CD 3 times in a row all the way through!! This album is GROOVY to the highest degree of groovisity. Hanck, a grey-bearded veteran who has been around the West Coast for decades playing in various bands (including a long stint touring with Elvin Bishop), blows a real greasy saxophone -- best way to describe it is like he's channeling Junior Walker much of the time, and I do mean that as a high compliment.

His latest CD, co-produced by Kid Andersen, is just a stone delight from start to finish. It's all originals. Often that's not such a good thing. Ain't but a tiny percentage of us out there who have the talent to write great songs. But this guy's got the songwriting talent. There are some great instrumentals -- the last cut in particular ("Deep Fried Twinkies" gets me ROTFR -- rollin' on the floor rockin'). And some terrific tunes with fine lyrics and earthy R&B/bluesy melodies and riffs. Some of the songs have a sly humor to 'em. There's a sense of showmanship throughout - makes me think the guy probably puts on a great live20show as well. Anyway, here I am at midnight typing and hyping about him. I don't know if everybody will have the same rousing reaction I have to this CD ... but if you like your blues with a heaping dose of 60s-style R&B this probably will be up your alley as it is mine. "

Voting for the 30th Annual Blues Music Awards is now open at The Blues Foundation for current members at http://www.blues.org/bluesmusicawards/vote.php4 and will continue until March 2. For more information about The Blues Foundation and a complete list of nominations, visit www.blues.org.

In times like these, a little boogaloo is necessary.


THE NEW CD FROM TERRY HANCK
Worldwide release on Oct. 14

“I love this record! Terry has some really good originals here, the arrangements are cool and the performances great.”
- Tommy Castro

“One of the most formidable saxophonists in the blues and soul business.”
-Lee Hildebrand, San Francisco Chronicle and Living Blues contributor


Jump back, Jack! Soul and blues hipster, singer/sax man, Terry Hanck and his new 2008 CD, ALWAYS is coming out next week, October 14. This is his 5th CD and first as partners with the Vizztone Label Group/Redeye USA.

As a saxophonist, singer, bandleader, and songwriter, Terry Hanck is a rare breed these days. Anyone who’s followed the tall, tan tenor man over the years – around the San Francisco Bay Area with Grayson Street and the Rat Band, on the road for a decade with Elvin Bishop, and at clubs, festivals, and county and state fairs for the past 20 with his own hard-sockin’ band – knows that he’s one of the most formidable saxophonists in the blues and soul business. He has a virile tone and attack and an uncanny command of upper-register notes never meant to be played on the Selmer Mark VI he’s long favored. Unlike many early R&B honkers who hit squealing notes of indefinite pitch by biting down on their reeds, Hanck can climb to true pitches an octave above the instrument’s intended register through the use of tricky fingering, much as his main tenor hero, the late, great Jr. Walker, once had. And Hanck’s big tone and ability to sustain notes can be traced in part to the breath control he developed during his lifelong passion for free-diving. For most of his adult life, Hanck has lived near water: First, Chicago, his hometown, and beginning in the 1960s, southern California, and most recently, Florida.

Blowing the horn has contributed to making Hanck a commanding singer. “It helps the diaphragm and control and everything,” he says. Listen to the way he so effortlessly and soulfully navigates the gospel-derived melismas on such songs as the swamp-tinged “My Last Teardrop” and the Memphis-styled “Good Kind of Lovin.’”

Hanck’s current rhythm section consists of guitarist Johnny “Cat” Soubrand, bassist Michael “Fly” Brooks, and drummer Butch Cousins.

ABOUT THE CD:

Hanck's former guitarist, Chris "Kid" Andersen (Charlie Musselwhite, Rick Estrin & The Nightcats), solos on many selections, plays rhythm & bass, and contributed his all-around wizardry in producing the disc. Elvin Bishop lends his signature touch to two numbers, and Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin blows baritone sax on two others. Also making guest appearances are keyboardists Jimmy Pugh and Bob Welsh. Tracy Nelson adds harmony vocals to "Good Kind of Loving", an original Hanck tune performed years earlier with her. Nelson had sung the Hanck composition “Quicksand” (with Hanck himself on tenor) for the soundtrack of the 2005 motion picture Forty Shades of Blue starring Rip Torn.

Hanck has long been writing songs, but Always is the first CD on which he penned every one of them. “Stylistically,” he says of his songs, “my time frame goes from, like, the early ‘50s to the early ‘70s.” From the instrumental title track, inspired in part by Ben Webster’s 1951 recordings with Johnny Otis, to the Motor City sounds of “Stingy,” the Twist-imbued “Deep Fried Twinkies,” the Rolling Stones-like treatment of “Quicksand,” and, of course, the blues, Hanck cuts a wide stylistic swath.

So pull back the furniture and cut a rug with Terry’s tunes. In times like these, a little boogaloo is necessary. -Mindy Giles

* * *

Forty Shades of Blue movie soundtrack. One of Terry's songs on the new CD, "Quicksand," was featured in the 2005 indie film, Forty Shades of Blue, a Sundance juried Grand Prize Award Drama winner. Rip Torn stars as a character loosely based on the legendary Sam Phillips, the guy who signed Elvis and Johnny Cash for his label, Sun Records, in Memphis. On the film soundtrack (pictured below), Terry's friend, the great Tracy Nelson sings it. They are planning to re-record this song together for Terry's upcoming 2007 album.