Blues singer performs at Bears Place

Coming out of a 12-year retirement evoked by back surgery, 60 year-old blues musician Don Haney is on tour to prepare for a new album to be recorded in May.
His band, Don Haney and the Prime Rib Special, performed Tuesday night at Bear’s Place.

“It’s magic to be back on the road and playing again,” he said. “We’ll see how many people remember me.”

Haney, who started playing blues at the age of 12 in Chicago during the Civil Rights Movement, has been named number three on Billboard’s Top 100 Unsigned Acts and number one on several radio stations. He has also been nominated for Guitar Player of the Year at the Los Angeles Music Awards — three years in a row.

After being a musician for nearly five decades and taking a hiatus for a little more than one, his performance at Bear’s marks the first he’s ever done in
Indiana.

He said he’s thankful for the modest size of the venue.

“You can’t connect with 250,000 people like you can with a small audience,” he said. “It’s more personal this way.”

The crowd was indeed small, but the four band members, consisting of Don on guitar, a bassist, drummer, and saxophonist who are decades Haney’s junior, made music loud enough to fill up the room. Saxophonist Shantel Bolks walked between booths and beer glasses with her instrument as Haney belted deep and raspy notes true to his high reputation.

But Haney said that he’s still getting used to writing songs with his bandmates. He said getting lyrics just right for Bolks, who sometimes also sings, is especially hard.
“If Shantel can’t sing it from the heart, we won’t perform it,” Haney said. “Everything has to have soul in it.”

The band definitely has lot of soul to share, and has been compared to blues artists like Janis Joplin, Elvin Bishop and B.B. King.

But it’s not just the big names of blues that inspire the band. Haney said the difference in age between him and his bandmates helps keep creativity flowing.

“Everyone brings something special to the table,” he said. “We all have
different upbringings and influences, and all that finds its way in.”

The band will travel to New Orleans to record their first album together next month.  Haney said he looks forward to recording a more modern sound than what he did prior to his retirement.

“I like to experiment with writing looser music,” he said. “It used to be that certain rules had to be followed, but now I think there’s more freedom in the music-writing process. It will be fun to record with all our creativity going on.”

Haney said he doesn’t see an end to his music career coming to another halt any time soon.

“We don’t plan on stopping,” he said. “We have big plans and we’re going all the way.”