On Stage brings a whole new sound to The Mystix.

Prior to this new album, I never wanted to release any of my slide guitar work, especially the Elmore tracks, as I felt they just weren’t right without the additional horns. It’s a track I played for many years live, but never had the chance to perform it with the proper horns. However, it has always been a dream of mine to record an Elmore James style tune with the original feel created by his slide, and a fantastic sax section. 

We set out and found a fantastic arranger, and sax player, Gordon Beadle, commonly known as “Sax” Gordon. Gordon immediately understood the nature of the project and is a student of all old, blues, horn players and arrangements. He was the key piece in the recording of our first track and really drives the tone of the track. After we played the tunes live, the audio engineers sent them along to Sax Gordon to add his sound(s), and when we heard them for the first time, well, there were a lot of happy grins…

Cutting these tracks live was incredibly fun and I felt we chose tracks that were on nights when we were really cookin’.  We’ve been doing this material over the years as a part of our show, but never thought to record any of it, as we had never considered ourselves a traditional “blues band.” We can play blues if we choose – we’ve got all the right pieces. We had always been a band with no genre, I am so happy to have been able to do this project, and do it live at its core and fold in the blues sound deeply.