High and Lonesome Dave: FOGHAT PUT ON THEIR BOOGIE SHOES

High and Lonesome Dave: FOGHAT PUT ON THEIR BOOGIE SHOES

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Michael Davis

Consider Foghat...

No, no, no. You don't consider Foghat. You boogie with Foghat. You Get Down With Foghat. You ROCK OUT with Foghat. Start again.

Well, I never woulda believed that Foghat would ever sell out the Forum the first time I saw 'em. Caught 'em third billed to Jeff Beck and Argent (Argent stole the show, believe it or not) and when they went into "I Just Want To Make Love To You," I bailed out and hit the bar...

No, no, NO. Nobody wants to read about your lack of vision or hear about a concert six years old. One mo' time.

As I strode along the corridors of the Sunset Marquis, I heard a lotta rock tunes escaping underneath the doors; but when Lonesome Dave Peverett answered my ring, I was greeted by Little Walter blasting out the blues from Dave's cassette deck. I asked to check out his briefcase of tapes and it was the same story; except for a few surprises (the Sex Pistols!! which Dave admitted he doesn't care for much), they were all blues or blues-derived rock. Clearly, this was a man still in touch with his roots.

Not that that should be so surprising. Just turn it around and that's been the main complaint about Foghat: they're too firmly planted in the past. They don't project a distinctive personality. They just boogie.

But, of course, that can also be perceived as a strength. If boogie music is the basis of most rock 'n' roll, then what could be wrong with presenting it without frills or distractions of any kind? Personalities put off as many people as they attract. If we are the blank generation, then maybe the blankest boogie band should be the biggest.

"We f will eventually do more...new tunes but we don't want It to be a shock. Lonesome*' Dave Peverett"

But enough of this intellectual shillyshallying. The facts speak for themselves. Foghat exists. They are popular. And it seems that their relationship with their roots is what keeps them healthy, making good music within the admittedly strict limits they impose on themselves.

They own up to it, too. A few months back, they sponsored a show in New York featuring a number of blues heavies and evidently the thrill hadn't worn off yet.

"It was great," Lonesome Dave enthused. "It took me a couple of months to recover from it. I got to play with Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker; it was like a dream. We were really nervous beforehand.

"We did three songs to open the show and then we brought on guests and Muddy's band was there. It was largely a Foghat audience but the energy of the evening and the spontaneity got to 'em. For a lot of 'em, it was like a new thing; they hadn't heard the roots."

These particular roots may soon become available to the rest of us who weren't there. The gig was filmed and recorded and an hour-long movie is now complete, featuring highlights from the concert and brief backgrounds on the participants. The idea is to get it on Public Broadcasting, which sounds great to me. Educational TV learns to boogie. About time.

And the blues show's influence continues to snowball. Foghat's next LP will be a bit bluesier than usual and Dave said that the band feels it's their best.

"I think the blues show affected a couple of songs on the new album," he acknowledged. "Two of the songs we did on the show we did on the album as well: 'It Hurts Me Too,' which is an Elmore James classic, and 'Sweet Home Chicago.' I'm not sure who wrote the original but Robert Johnson did it. But we do it similar to how Elmore James would do it.

"And we've got this other song on there called 'Chevrolet' which is more like an old folk song. 'Buy you a Chevrolet'—that one. it Hurts Me Too' is done kind of ballady—I hate the word ballad—a gospelly blues. The other two don't sound that different from what we normally do. Energy, but pretty close to the original blues thing."

So what's the new album called, I asked him.

"Stone Blue," he answered. "There is a song on there called 'Stone Blue,' which is a rocker."

That simple little retort was brought home with a whole lot more force the next night when I caught Foghat live. This was the first time they'd headlined at the Inglewood Forum and they'd sold the place out (with a little help from Eddie Money).

Anyhow, they stuck "Stone Blue" in at a crucial spot in the set. None of this "Well, we'll play a couple new ones somewhere in the middle and see if we can get away with it" stuff. Uh-huh. "Stone Blue" came near the top, right after "Fool For The City" and "My Babe" and even though nobody had heard it before, they were up and boogiein' with it from the start and no doubt getting behind its Segerish "rock 'n' roll sure helped me through" message. A rocker. Yes, indeed.

A couple numbers later, "It Hurts Me Tob" functioned equally as well. It gave the band a chance to slow down a bit and Lonesome Dave's impassioned vocals added a bit of emotional contrast to the otherwise exuberant, upbeat stuff.

"We will eventually do more than two new tunes," Dave told me, "but we don't want it to be too much of a shock. We did 'Sweet Home Chicago' as an encore in Chicago. Willie Dixon was at the gig, sitting by the side of the stage with his gold tooth shining."

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Of course, if any band oughtta be able to figure out how to program a live rock 'n' roll set, it's Foghat. I mean;when you spend as much time on the road as they have qver the last six years, you'd better figure out how to make the most of it.

And they have. The album they recorded while on the road is their biggest yet. They write tunes about the road like "Driving Wheel" and "Road Fever." They write tunes while on the road, or more often, come up with riffs and chord progressions during pre-gig jams. Dave estimated that by the time he gets off the road at the end of an average tour, he has three cassettes worth of riffs and ideas, many of which end up on turntables and in tape decks all across the land.

This land. The USA. They've never been onstage in Japan. Or Europe. Or even England. Which sounds kinda bizarre to me. I mean, I don't know about Rod Price or Craig MacGregor, but I know that Dave and Roger Earl were in the English blues-rock band Savoy Brown back in the late 60's/ early 70's. Some of you probably remember Savoy Brown. They boogied pretty well even though they weren't all that distinctive or...

Hold it right there.

But anyway, it's kind of strange for them to have resigned themselves to permanent exile here in the colonies, even if it has worked out in the end. They may try to hit a few festivals in Europe this summer, but England is more problematic. Breaking the BBC bureaucracy to get some airplay is difficult and Foghat do not want to go back to the club circuit after their long years of building up the audience they have over here.

Which is not to say they've forgotten Britain altogether. "Since that's where we came from, it'd be nice to get some recognition there," Dave mused. "We have some friends there that I'd like to see us; I don't think they realize how popular we are over here. Actually, I don't think I have that many friends left over there; they've all moved to other parts of the world."

As I packed up my Sony and questions, Dave regaled me about the joys of Les Paul Juniors while turning the Pistols' cassette around in his tape box so the label didn't show. No use promoting the enemy, I guessed.

But it got me to thinking about Lonesome Dave and Johnny Rotten. Here are two guys who got into rock 'n' roll about a decade apart, changed their names to fit the times and their own aesthetics, decided to stick to the basics, and can't relate to each other at all. And because of the media blitz, Johnny Rotten is better known in this country than Lonesome Dave Peverett, even though Foghat probably moves more albums and tapes in a month than the Sex Pistols have in toto. You figure it out, if you wanna bother. Give ya something to do in between boogies.*®