Interview: Blues Artist and Harmonicist Brandon Santini

Blues artistBrandon Santiniwill be performing two back-to-back shows locally with Joel DaSilva next month. I had the privilege to chat with Santini about his work and music in prelude to the shows set for Friday, October 1, at The Blue Rooster in Sarasota, and Saturday, October 2, at Cottonmouth Southern Soul Kitchen in Bradenton VOTA.

Santini was born in Burlington, North Carolina. At the age of 15, he discovered a band he liked so much it inspired him to ask his mother to take him to the music store to purchase his first instrument. That band was Blues Traveler, and the instrument was a Hohner Special 20 harmonica. That purchase led Santini into a life of performing and recording the blues, a career he never imagined lay before him when he first picked up the harmonica.

At 17, he performed in his high school talent show with two "bandmates.“ The song was Johnny B. Goode. A lot has come to pass since his first time performing for an audience. Now 39, Santini has been performing for national and international audiences, to eager festival crowds, and writing and recording his own music for more than two decades.

In 2003, Santini moved from Burlington to Memphis with the guitarist from his early band, Delta Highway. The pair headed to Memphis and its famous Beale Street, a Mecca for blues and aspiring blues musicians.

Over the years, Santini’s music has garnered him multiple nominations for various awards, a 2014 recognition in a Blues Blast Magazine write up as, "one of the best harp players in the blues scene today,“ and earned him a sponsorship by Honher Harmonicas in 2019.

Santini was a 2009 finalist in the "Best New Artist“ category for Blues Music Awards, and throughout his career, he would be nominated more than once for the Blues Blast’s "Sean Costello Rising Star“ award.

In 2013, Santini released his albumThis Time Another Year, recorded at the legendary Ardent Studios in Memphis. The album debuted at #12 on the Living Blues Radio charts spending three months in the Top 20, as well as picking up a nomination for "Contemporary Blues Album“ in the 2014 Blues Music Awards.

His 2015 release of Live & Extended! debuted at #14 on the Living Blues Radio charts and received nominations for Blues Blast’s "Male Blues Artist“ and "Live Blues Album“ awards.

In 2016, Santini was nominated again for Blues Music Awards as "Instrumentalist-Harmonica“ and "Contemporary Male Blues Artist of the Year.“

His 2019 album, The Longshot, hit #7 on the Billboard Blues charts and earned him a Blues Blast Music Award for "Best Contemporary Blues Album“. In 2019, Santini received endorsement by Hohner Harmonica, the very harmonica he had purchased roughly 21 years before, a full circle recognition that goes straight back to the start of it all.

John Popper was inspired by guys like Jimi Hendrix and Paul Butterfield Blues Band. He went to school for the New York School of jazz, he is very much jazz-oriented mixed with classical scales, and then you throw in the Hendrix inspirations. I tried to emulate that in the beginning, because I was a huge fan of his –he’s still my favorite player – but I really couldn’t do all that stuff. I grew up listening to rock and roll, classic rock, and country radio in the 80s and 90s. I found blues came more naturally to me. When I first got turned on to him (Popper), I started going down the road of people that I would hear him mention in interviews, like Paul Butterfield, or Sugar Blue, and that led me down this path of seeking out more traditional blues harmonica players. There's just a long list of them of course, heavyweights of blues harmonica like Little Walter and James Cotton. I found the blues was more of a natural thing for me to play rather than all the, you know, the amazing stuff that Popper does. He's a virtuoso, one of a kind, but for me, more traditional blues music came much more naturally. I could relate to the blues.

The Blues world has two main awards, the Blues Music Award which is kind of like the blues Grammys, so to speak, right? It's the more prominent one, and then there's the Blues Blast Music Awards, which is through a magazine called Blues Blast Magazine. As far as the actual BMAs, there have been nominations, but I’ve never won. I'm kind of like the Susan Lucci of the blues. But I get to be in the house, to even be nominated with these other great musicians is really cool. Guys that I look up to.

Back in the day, I used to do it throwing some songs out at the band. You get to the gig, and it would be like, "Hey guys, I’ve got these lyrics and a loose melody“, and you know, "we're gonna go to the change here“. We would experiment on these little bar stages in Memphis because it was laid back. We used to create songs basically on the fly, with little rehearsal. Nowadays, it's mostly done here in my home studio. I'll grab a guitar or a bass, technology makes it a bit easier because I can lay down the bass or the guitar, and then I "live" with the song for a while. Before I know it, I've got a demo of an entire song.

It used to be the other way around for me, especially when I was in my early 20s. I would just write tons of lyrics. I was something like, "Yeah, I'm Bob Dylan over here, man“. Just typing stuff in my phone if I had a random idea or lyrics come up. Now it's a little different, having access and being able to lay down grooves and being able to live with the songs, you know? Sometimes songs come easily or quickly to what they are, and then others take a little bit more. For instance, One More Day, that didn't get recorded until 2018, but I started it in maybe 2013 or 2014. It started out with me playing a voice memo on my phone, just playing the acoustic guitar and singing. One verse, that's all I had for a little while, but then at some point, it hit me. I finally got it, it was there. I wasn’t able to finish it until the universe gave me the rest of the song, I guess.

One More Day is definitely my favorite song as well. Lyrically and musically, it's very simple. When I write, I'm not a cerebral kind of writer, and I don't get all dreamy. I'm very meat and potatoes. I sing songs for the people, that kind of thing, you know? One More Day is a song about those times in our lives, whatever they may be. My life, back in my 20s, it was drug and alcohol addiction. Those things can drive people to dark spots, and it drove me there. You get to a point where you don't really feel like people care or you feel isolated and alone. But the truth is, people do care, but maybe you're too –speaking of myself here– too clouded by substances to realize that those people really did care about me and wanted to see me get betterÉ and I knew I wanted to be a better person for myself and for the people around me. Basically, that song, without being all religious and all, it’s about how you gotta keep praying. You keep praying to whoever it is, however you pray to your God, it's open-ended, but anybody who has something going on in their lives, no matter how minor or severe, you're going to get through it. Just keep fighting. I never went to Alcoholics Anonymous, but it’s that same principle, "one day at a time“. When I write songs, I don't want to dictate what a song is about, I want people to relate to it their own way, but with that song, the cool thing is, I’ve heard from so many people. Especially when it first came out, asking us to play it live, or messages about it. People would come up to me after a show and tell me how much it meant to them on a personal level. For me, that's the reward in being able to get my message out. It's just a simple song about hope and love, that’s really what it is.

For me, and I know a lot of people will have a totally different story on their experience, but for me it was easy. By the time I got my shit together I was around 30 years old. I wasn’t to the point of needing to check in anywhere, I didn’t experience withdrawal or anything like that, but I became aware I was in a tight time. If I had been 24 years old, I don’t know that I would’ve been able to get out of that hole because I just wasn't ready. I didn't want to make that change at that point. I think if you're at the point mentally, where you know what you want, and you know you need to make a change, it makes it a lot easier. Going back into the bars after that point, about four and a half years without a drop of alcohol, it opened me up. There was a freshness about it. I remember walking into the bar on Beale Street in Memphis one night, after having decided I wasn’t going to drink anymore, and I remember talking to people and realizing, "This is great, I can still talk to people. I can still talk to people without having to drink to get that edge off.“ I didn’t need to do whatever else to get that edge off. I enjoyed it and I felt like I was able to refocus on the business side of things, I was able to keep things more in order than I had been because I was just kind of floundering up to that point. I felt like I finally had mental clarity, and I was feeling better physically too. After that time off and a reset, I drink now on occasion, but I know my limits. That was the one thing I learned about it, and I had to learn for myself, can I go back into this and have this drink or should I not? I know my limits now and I know I don't want to be where I was before. It’s an entirely different mentality.

Oh sure, I mean, that's straight-up our rock anthem basically. And you're right, that song is in C but when I started writing it, it was D, C, G, and F. So, I mean, the country flare and those country chords are obvious for sure. It's straight-up got that feeling you’re explaining for sure. The harmonica part in Back to Tennessee, because with what I do, what I've made my money on, what my career is based on, there’s a lot of that blowing like hell harmonica, you know? Maybe that's the Popper student in me, harmonica going and going. A lot of the old blues greats, as frontmen in harmonica they were soloing a lot, and I love that aggressiveness. And maybe I go too long sometimes, but what is too long when it comes down to playing, right? I do like that part specifically about Back to Tennessee because it is a very minimalistic approach. On that track, the harmonica is not really a featured instrument. It's there and it’s gone. We focused on more of the vocal aspect of that song, which is something I would like to try to do a bit more of.

Thanks. You know, I keep it in my box. I usually know where the lid to the box is, and I try to keep it in the box and work with what I got. But I want to focus on that a little bit more as well and not just have harmonica every song because if I go to a show, even as a harmonica player, I get tired of hearing harmonica every night on every song. I think I would like to explore a little more vocally.

Yeah, 2019 was great. It was a fun year for us. We did a Joe Bonamassa cruise, Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea, that was early 2019. Then the Hohner endorsement, The Longshotalbum came out, and then the Tennessee Redemption album came out as well. I was feeling really great about stuff and then boom, the pandemic. The Hohner endorsement was incredible because I played their harmonicas all my life. I started out on a Hohner special 20 harmonica, the one I got when I was 15. I loved, loved, being endorsed by those guys.

We didn’t do any of that really. When the pandemic was just beginning Tennessee Redemption was down in Florida. It was one of those things, "Oh crap, what am I (are we) gonna do?“ You know? We were thinking it might last a few months, we’d be back on the road in three months. Then it was, well, maybe we'll be back up at eight months, and it just went on and on. But at the end of that tour, I knew I was going to have to figure out how to adapt. Adaptation is the key to survival when it comes to things like that. In my brain, I knew music wasn’t going to be at the forefront for a minute, and that turned out to be many minutes. That was how I got through 2020 basically, focusing on survival, adapting to not being able to be a full-time musician like I was before.

I did, I had to keep writing. I had to stay busy. I've written quite a bit, songs waiting to be recorded, I guess. For now, we're focusing on releasing a single, we’ve never done that, so we’re working on one right now and I hope to have that up in October. Mid-October at the latest. It’s titled, "Don't Shake the Devil's Hand“, it's another meat and potatoes thing. I think it's a good mixture of traditional and our sound (familiar on The Longshot album- classic and southern rock influences) and a more modern thing we’re going for. I think it doesn’t alienate any of my traditionalist fans, but it's got a little edge to it.

Oh, wow, I've been very blessed with a lot of great opportunities. 2019 was a good year, yeah, but having Buddy Guy up on stage with us a couple of times has probably been one of the highlights. That’s a blues legend that I grew up listening to, and for him to be on stage with us is up there. I've got a lot of great memories. Even though a lot of my 20s with Delta Highway were years that I lived a bit clouded, I got to travel the world. That band, I take away a lot of great memories from those years, because I was still developing as a person. Getting to play music all the time, and touring. We played in Egypt, in Cairo. We were part of the Bluesapalooza Tour, which was almost like a USO kind of tour. We played two shows. One was at the Cairo Opera House, and the other was at the, what's the name of it? It's the place where all of the embassy personnel and their families gather. Like a house with a big ole yard and playgrounds, and picnics and stuff. It's kind of like their house where they can all go to chill out. We played a big backyard party for generals and personnel, and their families. The Cairo Opera House, we played for the ambassador and local Egyptians. That's probably my favorite memory. I think Egypt was for sure my most memorable trip, it was just phenomenal.

Thanks, you too, it’s been a pleasure.

You can catch Brandon Santini live as he performs with Joel DaSilva for five shows scheduled along Florida's Central and Southern Gulf Coast, and The Villages, beginning in October.

On October 1, the pair will be performing live together at The Blue Rooster in Sarasota. You can get more info on that performance by clicking HERE.

October 2, they take the stage right here in Bradenton, at Cottonmouth Southern Soul Kitchen in the Village of the Arts. For more info on that show click HERE.

The remaining lineup has them with dates in Port Richey, The Villages, and Fort Myers. After Santini wraps up the short Florida tour with DaSilva, he will pick up again end of October for his own eight-state Fall Tour beginning in Ellicottville, New York on October 23, with the last show on November 15, in Springville, Illinois.