Swirling guitars ravel around rock-solid bass. A syncopated madman thunders away as a golden-throated maven wails out the pain and anguish of a thousand deals with the devil gone wrong. Notes are wrung from sopping instruments, filling the room to the point of saturated torment. Not ones to dwell on the down side of life, the scene quickly spins around faster than you can say “Hoochie Coochie Man,” ripping into up-tempo tunes reminiscent of the finest days of Little Richard.
Pouncing on the Toronto music scene in 1998, the Groove Addiction (bassist Steve Collins, drummer Rob Bitti, singer Tarey Stone and guitarists Jeff Stephenson and Alan Lewis) are on a mission to bring the blues back to its glory days of juke joint hoppin’, heartfelt passion and instinctual funk. Yet Collins (a first-year business student at U of T) is quick to point out that while the Groove Addiction do have feet firmly placed in the many facets of blues, they are much, much more.
“We don’t cater too much to one style, although the blues is a fairly dominant factor in our sound. It’s something we all love, but there are a bevy of other great styles that affect our sound. At any given show you’ll hear the inspiration of B.B. King or Albert Collins, but that will be weighted with, say, James Brown or Bob Marley. Any group of serious musicians feel the need to amalgamate a variety of flavors into one giant soup, and we’re no different,” states Collins.
“But either way, they’re still songs that people want to hear. We’ll toss in, say, “No Woman, No Cry,” or “Black Magic Woman” by Santana to keep it fresh, ’cause as the joke goes, you can only hear so much about losing your dog and your house. It helps to space out a set with slow numbers, original songs and high-energy tunes that make you want to drink beer and be happy. Besides,” he quips, “have you ever seen a woman dance to “No Woman, No Cry? It’s worth it!”
Meeting through what Collins refers to as “creative destruction,” the Groove Addiction has been fluttering around the blues colony in some form or other for many years. When a previous incarnation of the band folded, each member felt an innate need to reconvene with minor alterations.
“While we did know each other through our various projects,” relates Collins, “the Groove Addiction wasn’t the same in its former state. Once that version crumbled under creative differences, it wasn’t long before we realized that only a few cogs needed to be replaced to make the whole machine run smoothly.”
Somewhat puritan in their approach to music, the Groove Addiction are firm believers in the “keep it honest” form of playing. There is no such thing as the “typical set,” as a hearty dose of improvisation worms its way into every show.
Varying sets nightly and deliberate open spaces in any given song leave moments for instant interpretation. In this way, Collins feels that each performance is blues in its truest form.
“The blues are about guttural feeling at that moment in time, so while there’s consistency between performances night to night, there’s still got to be some improvisation. We play renditions of songs, not versions.
A version is going to be the same every time, but a rendition is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. It’ll never sound exactly the same, which can be magical or truly terrible.
“Live, all solos are improvised. Nothing is preconceived except structure, and it keeps us honest. If you sat down like Pink Floyd and learned a solo front to back, playing it that way every night, you’re not saying anything new. You said it the first time, so you’re just repeating, mocking yourself. The blues is about saying something poignant each and every time.”
And what are the Groove Addiction saying? Laughs Collins, “ask the guitar players. They’re the wankers: I just play the bass!”
