« ALL BLUES »

When the blues is being told with love and modernity

Album issued on August 21st 2020

« Norbert Galo, genius guitarist, transports his public to a world of enchantments of the senses  »
Le Progrès

« Norbert Galo, sided by impressive and virtuoso fellowes, knows how to drive his public to various lands of the of blues-jazz repertories often tinged with rock energy souvent teintés d’énergie rock. »
La Voix du Nord

LISTEN TO THE ALBUM BEFORE EVERYONE

Booking : Claire Place, l’Enclume
+33 (0)6 18 71 99 04 – booking@norbertgaloanfriends.com

Listen to the entire album on this page 
ask for password at this adress.

Norbert Galo & Friends quartet :
Norbert Galo : guitar, voce (Deep Forest, Ana Torroja, Josh Groban)
Christian Belhomme : keyboard (Steve Shehan quartet)
Félix Sabal-Lecco : drums (Sting, Peter Gabriel…)
Laurent Vernerey : bass (Johnny Hallyday, Manu Katché Quartet)

Ppossible guests on stage :
Beverly-Jo Scott : voice
Steve Shehan : percs
Eric Le Lann : trumpet
Michel Sanchez : keyboard, accordion

As its name clearly indicates, All Blues is a blues album, a work devoted entirely to the art of Black American Music from the first half of the 20th century, music that transforms suffering into poetry. In less expert hands, this endeavour could easily turn into something mechanical or heavily folkloric. But Norbert Galo is too aware of this risk to fall into that trap :
«Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, Howlin Wolf, Robert Johnson… When you listen to their recordings, something very tricky’s going on. It’s extremely complex to reproduce this. Being on their ground, you have to tread carefully, it’s their home, you’ll break something if you don’t watch where you step.»
Some jazz artists have a snobbish attitude towards the blues, they make fun of the apparent simplicity of its approach. But the real greats, those who have gone beyond a showy but superficial display of complexity, understand that blues requires subtlety and demands of you that you put all of yourself into every note you play. Blues is a state of mind more than a clearly defined musical genre. It’s not about trying to imitate the legends, but about taking inspiration from what them and telling your own story while acknowledging not having been born at the same period nor in the same place.
«We’re shooting the same film, but with a slightly more high-tech camera.»
And this approach is as much concerned with the feel of the notes as it is the actual melody :
«Robert Johnson is a powerful example, the bizarreness can be hugely inspiring.»
Norbert Galo is an extraordinary guitarist, one of those musicians who dares to measure himself to Larry Carlton without its seeming misplaced, a poet who has chosen six strings as his medium but whose repertoire soars way beyond what you might usually hear from such an instrument :
«Bessie Smith’s singing gives me ideas for the guitar. You go looking for your bend in the ultra blue, and what you get is from Mars.»
Bessie Smith’s voice, Robert Johnson’s hooting, Norbert Galo on the guitar ; all these hues, so seemingly different, join together, from that deep place, where real quality and honesty are to be found. All Blues, like the title by Miles Davis , himself a musician who took Blues and placed it in a radically different context, from the Delta of Mississippi to the clubs of the infamous New York of the ‘50s.
With this album of the same name, Norbert Galo takes up the flame of a timeless musical style and gives it renewed meaning, he breathes new energy into it. Paradoxically, while most tittles are classics that date from well before Galo was born, All Blues is Norbert’s most personal album, the one that best lets us see the man behind the guitar.

Julien Bitoun