By Denny Dyroff, Entertainment Editor, The Times
Foghat
Over the years, Musikfest (www.musikfest.org) has established itself as one of America’s top annual music festivals an event that offers big name headliners as well as a wide variety of folk, rock, pop and ethnic music acts.
It also sports some impressive numbers.
The festival, which is celebrating its 34th anniversary this year, features free music performances on most of its indoor and outdoor stages.
Musikfest, which is running now through August 11, presents more than 300 live musical performances and draws over one million people to the Lehigh Valley every August.
The main concert stage at Musikfest is the Sands Steel Stage which features national touring acts with tickets required for all shows.
This year’s main stage schedule features many classic rock acts including Sugar Ray, Slash, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Black Eyed Peas and ZZ Top and Foghat.
The season finale will feature ZZ Top and Foghat on August 11.
Foghat are an English rock band formed in London in 1971. The band is known for the use of electric slide guitar in its music. Their best-known song is the 1975 hit, “Slow Ride.
The band has released a slew of albums over the last half-century-plus – 17 studio albums, eight live albums and nine compilation albums.
Foghat resume includes eight gold albums, one platinum album and one double platinum album — all of which feature the band’s unrelenting in-your-face hard rock crunch mixed with the blues, a genre of music the band remains passionate about to this day
Despite numerous several line-up changes over the last 53 years, the band continues to record and perform.
The current line-up features Roger Earl – drums (1971–1984, 1993–present), Bryan Bassett – lead guitar, slide guitar, backing vocals (1999–present); Rodney O’Quinn – bass guitar, backing vocals (2015–present); and Scott Holt – lead vocals, guitar (2022–present).
The band initially featured Dave (“Lonesome Dave”) Peverett on guitar and vocals, Tony Stevens on bass and Roger Earl on drums, after all three musicians left Savoy Brown in 1971. Rod Price, on guitar/slide guitar, joined after he left Black Cat Bones in December 1970.
Peverett died in 2000 of cancer after receiving months of intensive chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Price died in March 2005, aged 57, due to a fall resulting from a heart attack.
Later that year, original bassist Stevens left the band and was replaced by former bassist MacGregor, and Price crossed over the same year. Earl, meanwhile, just keeps rocking on.
The most recent album by Foghat is “Sonic Mojo.”
“Sonic Mojo” is Foghat’s highly anticipated and long-awaited 17th studio album—their first in seven years–on the band’s label, Foghat Records, which is distributed by Select-O-Hits (part of the Sun Records family).
The album has spent almost six months on the Billboard Blues charts with no end in sight so far. It’s also still on the Roots Rock charts in both the U.S. and the U.K. It’s also getting rave reviews from both critics and fans.
“‘Sonic Mojo’ has been doing great,” said Bassett, during a phone interview during a tour stop on Monday.
“It came out in November and debuted at Number One on the Billboard Blues charts. It was in the Top 10 for 27 weeks and just re-entered the charts last week.
“It’s been getting a lot of streams and has been doing well on the Sirius XM Blues Chart. It’s also been getting a lot of play in the U.K.”
Bassett is celebrating his silver anniversary as half of Foghat’s rhythm section.
“I grew up in Pittsburgh,” said Bassett. “I played football at Pittsburgh Central Catholic and had a scholarship offer from Carnegie Mellon University. I turned it down and got into a band in Ohio.
“The British Invasion turned people on to rock and roll – ‘Gloria,’ ‘Louie, Louie,’…all those songs. I was playing every night. I got into a band called Wild Cherry. After three albums with Wild Cherry, I had another band called Airborne but it didn’t go anywhere.
“I moved to Florida in the mid-1900s – to New Smyrna Beach. I started my engineering career in 1985. I toured with Lonesome Dave’s version of Foghat for five years and then all the original members came back.
“When Rod left the group, Dave asked me to play. It was really up my alley stylistically – guitarists like Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Green. The hardest thing was learning slide because Rod was such a great slide player.”
Foghat headed to Florida to make the new album.
“We made it at a recording studio – Boogie Ranch South,” said Bassett. “It’s located on a 10-acre ranch in central Florida between Ocala and Deland.
“We recorded ‘Sonic Mojo’ all across last year. We came to Boogie Motel South several times. We finished the mixing in October. The album has six originals and six covers. We always experiment with songs.”
The six covers are “Let Me Love You Baby” by Willie Dixon, “How Many More Years” by Howlin’ Wolf, “Song for the Life” by Rodney Crowell, “She’s Dynamite” by B.B. King, “Promised Land by Chuck Berry and “Mean Woman Blues,” a song written by Claude Demetrius and sung by Elvis Presley on the soundtrack of the 1957 film, “Loving You.”
“In our live shows, we’re always going to play the hits – ‘Slow Ride,’ ‘Fool for the City,’ ‘Drivin’ Wheel’ – and some deep tracks,” said Bassett. “We play three or four songs from ‘Sonic Mojo’ and we play some blues songs.”
Video link for Foghat – https://youtu.be/IC1VMK4Hd4I.
The show on August 11 will start at 7 p.m. on the Wind Creek Steel Stage at PNC Plaza.
Ticket prices start at $30.
Classic rock acts are like fireflies. Each summer, they faithfully appear – seemingly from out of nowhere.
There will be another event on August 11 featuring several popular acts that have been around for decades including Rebirth Brass Band and Yellowman.
The event is the annual Ardmore Rock’N’Ride (ardmorerocknride.com) which will get underway with a series of bicycle races starting at 10:15 a.m. The music will start at noon and will run into the evening with performances on two stages – Suburban Square and the Schauffele Plaza.
Yellowman
Yellowman, one of the greatest reggae singers to come out of Jamaica in the 1980s, is still going strong.
Also known as King Yellowman and by his birth name of Winston Foster, he was born in 1956 and grew up in an orphanage in Kingston.
Yellowman is an albino. Known as dundus in Jamaica, albinos have always faced racial prejudice and are usually shunned.
This happened with Yellowman, but he got the last laugh by becoming a major reggae star internationally and a sex symbol in the Jamaican music scene.
King Yellow first gained wide attention when he won a toasting contest event in Kingston. Toasting was a Jamaican singing/talking vocal style that was the precursor of rap and hip hop. In 1981, Yellowman became the first dancehall artist to be signed to a major American label and released his “King Yellowman” album on Columbia Records.
Yellowman has always been known for his high-energy shows. Fueled by the driving reggae sounds of the Sagittarius Band, Yellow is a non-stop whirl of action every show from start-to-finish.
“I’m in my 60s but I’m not slowing down at all,” said Yellowman during a phone interview.
“I know how to keep my energy up. I take care of myself physically. And I drink soursop juice and oatmeal porridge drink.”
One of Yellowman’s first big hits was a song called “Zungguzungguguzungguzeng.” In many of his numerous hit singles in Jamaica, he boasted of his sexual prowess – songs such as “Them a Mad Over Me,” “Letter to Rosey,” “Yellow Like Cheese” and “Going to the Chapel.”
“Reggae has been kind of stagnant for a while, but my fans have stuck with me,” said Yellowman. “The best reggae was in the 1980s.”
Yellowman is a true survivor. In addition to still making vibrant music, he has shown the strength to overcome obstacles – such as the prejudice he faced as a youth.
In 1982, Yellowman was diagnosed with skin cancer, and was initially told that he only had three more years to live. After several surgeries Yellowman was able to continue his career and the cancer went into apparent remission during this time.
In 1986 it was diagnosed that the cancer had spread to his jaw. Yellowman then underwent very invasive jaw surgery to remove a malignant tumor. This surgery permanently disfigured Yellowman’s face, as a large portion of the left side of his lower jaw had to be removed to successfully remove the tumor.
“I’m still all right,” said Yellowman. “I didn’t let it beat me. I’m doing fine – cancer gone.
“I just keep playing my songs and performing live. Younger audiences are coming out. I do songs that draw young people. They understand classic reggae.”
Video link for Yellowman — https://youtu.be/9Y2F9yVNEVE?t=113.
Yellowman will go onstage at 5:10 at Schauffele Plaza and Rebirth Brass Band will start their set at 6:45 at Suburban Square.
