Album Notes

Got to pay your dues to play the blues. That's the first canon of the blues life. Mike DiBari has paid his dues in some most unlikely places. In Greenwich Village in the 1980's he was known as "Mike Remain" and his folk duo was called "The Remains." In Bloomfield, New Jersey, his punk rock band gigged at a dingy dive called "The Dirt Club." He played for gas money, often to an empty house, under a panoply of sacred dirt -- glass jars filled with earth -- which was the collection of club owner "Johnny Dirt." On the street corners of Tokyo's Shibuya District, the center of Japanese youth culture, where he played for the odd 100-yen coin, he was "Mykaru," until a coffee house proprietor spotted him, brought him inside and made him "Bari-san."

"I came into blues from jazz with help from the British blues boys," says DiBari. "I worshiped Wes Montgomery, the great jazz guitarist, and his playing lead me to the music of Robert "Jr." Lockwood [whose jazzy blues was an influence on B.B. King]. From Eric Clapton I went straight to Freddie King. " His blues idol remains B.B. King, not for his distinctive guitar style so much as for his approach to music and his great performance craft. "B.B. knows how to hold an audience and carry them with him until they shed all their worldly cares, " DiBari observes. When asked to single out one player he identifies with more than any other he offers Freddie King. "I love Freddie's hand. His hand fits my own like it's part of me."

When Mike DiBari plays his guitar I get that special mellow feeling that comes when I hear blues played right and righteous. He is one of the most interesting guitarists to make it on the Boston scene in recent years. He's the only blues player I know with a thorough training in classical and Spanish guitar. Years of conservatory study learning Baroque and Castillian guitar have given him a powerful knowledge of the guitar neck. A degree from Berklee College of Music only broadened his preparation so that when he resolved to conquer the great stylists of blues he took them in through his pores. Listen carefully to his playing and you'll hear the thunder of Freddie King, the delicacy of T-Bone Walker, the class of B.B. King and the fierce intensity of Guitar Slim. Mike DiBari is a bluesman for all seasons.

- Charles Sawyer, author of The Arrival of B.B.King (DaCapo Press)