GA-20 and the Revival of Hound Dog Taylor
If you haven’t heard of blues band GA-20 out of Boston, MA, that’s about to change. When duo Pat Faherty and Matthew Stubbs were joined by drummer Tim Carman in 2019, they quickly rose amongst the ranks of Blues names-to-know. With their debut album Lonely Soul premiering at number two on the Billboard blues chart and follow-up record Live: Vol. 1 hitting number one the following year, they’re a band that knows how to mix the perfect combination of classic Blues with 50s/60s era Rock & Roll to a modern standard. Their latest release, GA-20 Does Hound Dog Taylor: Try It…You Might Like It!, is already set to be their biggest hit yet. Read on for a Q&A with the band.
“ GA-20 are poised to be the biggest thing to hit the blues scene in a generation.”
What inspired GA-20’s latest album?
GA-20 already had a new full-length LP ready to go when the pandemic shut everything down in 2020. We wanted to be able to tour behind it, so we brainstormed a project to work on that we could put out ahead of that record. We are all huge Hound Dog fans, and it was the 50th anniversary of Hound Dog’s first release and the founding of Alligator Records. As luck would have it, Bruce Iglauer (founder of Alligator) coincidentally reached out about working together and this idea was born. Our label Colemine Records joined forces with Alligator, and we couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out. It was a bit of a passion project, and we hoped that the love and respect for Hound Dog, Brewer Phillips and Ted Harvey comes through.
How did the band approach doing Hound Dog Taylor's music?
We were already huge Hound Dog fans so there was an immediate and pre-existing respect there. We wanted to get everything a close as possible to the way Hound Dog played and recorded those first records, so I spent some time talking with Bruce Iglauer to get details about what guitars and amps they were using, how they set up, and what the recording process was like, stuff like that. Pat and I sourced some old Kingston Teisco guitars and vintage amps, and we recorded all in one room, in just a take or two for each song. Recording was completed in about a day and a half. We came into the session rehearsed and arranged, but we didn’t want it to sound overly precise. That would have been a disaster. The goal was to make it sound as close to a live club performance as we could. We also got a little drunk. There’s really no spin or “take” on Hound Dog. We could never sound like him or improve upon the original, and we’re not trying to. It’s more like a “thank you” and a way of saying, “man these songs are fun to play.”
How would you describe GA-20's sound on this album?
From a production standpoint, we did a few things differently on Try It…You Might Like It! compared to our first record. One of the biggest things was not using much reverb on vocals or guitars. If you listen to Hound Dog records, they are very dry sounding. That was a different approach for us. What we definitely wanted to capture was the rawness and visceral quality of playing, like they were just attacking their instruments, but there was also an ensemble approach to their playing that is often overlooked. There was great communication and reaction to one another amidst all that energy, and we really wanted to impart that as well.
GA-20 will be performing in the Engineered Air Theatre at Arts Commons on November 27 and 28, 2021. Visit our website for more information and to purchase tickets.
Special thanks to PCL Construction for their long-time support of the PCL Blues series.
