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Frank Bang's Secret Stash:
Former Buddy Guy Guitarist Makes His Move

By Scott Baker

       Five years out of Buddy Guy's band as the blues legends backing guitarist, Frank 'Bang' Blinkal is at home just doing his own thing.

Thanks to the taste of the road life with Guy and the quick growth of his former group The Buzz, the Chicago guitarist owns his own label, produces his own music, and calls all his own shots. Next month he will be getting to the national release of his new sophomore solo CD, Frank Bang's Secret Stash on his own Sacred Lily Records (Burnside Distribution). It is also his first solo studio album.

Joined live by the stellar band of Tony McQuide on guitar, Mike Davidoff on bass, and Mark Diffenderffer on drums, Blinkal is on a journey to restore the sounds he believes are missing in today's mix of blues and rock.

Having the patience to test the waters everywhere, Blinkal believes he can win any music market over, utilizing time, consistency, and a brilliant plan.

On his second journey to Frankenmuth this Saturday, the 19th of March (along with Larry McCray), Blinkal is just a few more gigs from getting a street named after him in the Bavarian town. He tore it up during the first Blues Bash on the Cass last August, hitting the stage before the Dickey Betts Band. He plans on using some more of those fan-pleasing tactics this time around once again. He might even have something new stashed up his sleeve this time around.

The Review Magazine took 15 minutes with the guitarist and let him wax ecstatic about life, music, and taking over the world - musically, with love that is.

 Recording tracks at home and promoting his material:

"I've got a little basement studio at my house. Me and Tony, the (other) guitar player, have been getting together and writing songs for the next record. We've got so many songs in the porta-studio right now; we've got over 30 tunes. So I think what we're gonna do is just kind of start working them into our shows eventually. And on nights where we do our long two-set shows, we'll go ahead and start breaking some of that in. I don't think we're going to rush anytime into the studio this whole year. The thing we were kind of talking about was just focusing on the record that's already done and taking a full year, because it's my label and nobody can tell us our three months are up in terms of just promoting it. And if that means we don't get into the studio until the end of this year, the beginning of next year, we're pretty cool with that.

Again, we're musicians that play out for a living and we've been home for a while now since I had the baby (November '04), so if we didn't do something and write or get together and write, we'd go nuts. So basically what we've been doing for the last four months is just writing songs so that when it's time, hopefully we'll have 45-50 songs to choose from."

 

--The Internet and www.frankbang.com...

"I've got songs. The thing I'm trying to kind of find a focus for now is, the nice thing about the Internet and the website of mine is, now instead of actually like busting a move and trying to get more records out, I think what I'm going to try to do this year is just give away some shows. We did a show here in February in Chicago and the only other one we did (was) in January when Tony and me just set up and played acoustic. And that came out really, really strong. We added a percussion player. It was a nice little three-piece thing. I think we're going to use that as an outlet to kind of get some of these records out. In other words, instead of maybe selling all these records and trying to just keep putting these things out maybe we'll just make sure you can get 'em free off the web. One of the things we're talking about is maybe a one-time fee for like $20 so you can download five or six different things in the course of a year.

We (already) gave away the first record we did, which was a live record from the bar; we kind of just did on Thursday nights when I was still with Buddy Guy's Band. That's the Frank Bang Alive One, record and we give that away on the website and we literally get a person a day taking that record.

Now sometimes they're taking half the record if they've got old dial-up.  If they've got high-speed, they're downloading the record in a couple of minutes and it's nice to see. It's definitely one of the reasons why we have a steady grass-roots thing going with our popularity, because we're offering something out there for free and people are taking advantage of it, even if it's one person a day. I think we kind of spoiled some people, because now we get a lot of people asking for free shit all the time (laughing). But that's cool too. It's all about supply and demand in any type of business situation, even if you're giving something away for free. If you have people that are demanding it, well you've got to supply them. So I think there again, instead of rushing a bunch of stuff, the nice thing about this distribution deal is it allows me to put a couple of records out before the year, like maybe another live record - a real good one.

We're talking about maybe doing something from a couple of different shows we've got coming up in the summer here in the city and if that goes down, we'll be really happy. We might put a DVD/Live record together. So we'll see how it goes. I'm kind of excited by all that."

 

--Why he can't play locally often and the road ahead.

  "Literally, we worked from March to November pretty much non-stop and now being home all of November, December, January and February, I'm going nuts.

We're playing a Catch-22 with the local gigs now. We're drawing so well in Chicago, if we play all the time then we can't play any of these places. (It's like) Yeah, we could do that, but we wouldn't be playing Double Door as the headliner if we did stuff like that or puttin’ 250 people in the Abbey. We won't do that.

It was easier for us too to get out, I mean what we noticed about it last year when we started doing it was it gave us an opportunity to get out of town and develop markets, because we are a young band. It's not all about how much is the guarantee, are all the rooms covered and all that. Now don't get me wrong, it's a business too and we get paid, but if we ain't in a market, we're trying to figure out how to develop that market and get into it. That was one of the nice things about touring with Buddy man, is we hit so many markets that it made me realize there's places to play all over this world. You just got to develop them and have the patience to do it.

A lot of people get depressed and upset because they're going in on a weekday and they deserve to be a weekend band. Hey man, my band pretty much kicks the shit out of any band I've ever seen except a few. But I still know that if I got to go into a room for the first time, you've got to do that. You can't walk in there like, 'Hey man, I'm better than this or I'm bigger than this.  So we’'re kind of taking advantage of that this year, too, and that allows us to do like a February show in Chicago and not be back to Chicago again until April and then come back and play the beginning of June, then come back and play the end of July.
 

--On his newfound crew behind the scenes and the year to come.

I've got a lot of help. This is the first year, starting in January of this year, the first year that we've had a bona fide manager, a bona fide booking agent, a bona fide publicity person. And that's kind of new for me, so I'm kind of learning to deal with that.  I'm trying to be hands on, but not too hands on and let people do their thing, but not (look) over their shoulder constantly. But it seems like it's going good.

I'm excited about this year already. So that's making me feel good. When you own a label and you play in a band like I do and again, having the hindsight of five years with Buddy Guy to see the other side of it too, I have something out there that I want to share musically with people and I think the reason that we put the band together and why I put the band together the way it is, is that I just saw a void for what kind of music we play, you know.

We're not a blues band, we're a rock and roll band, but at the same time you can hear all the same type of elements you hear in the Allmans, the Crowes, in Zeppelin’ and the Stones. And those bands were blues bands once too or at least were a root of that or were inspired by a root of (the blues). So that's kind of just like my mantra for this year. Let's just go out and knock 'em down."

                                               
Larry McCray with Frank Bang and The Secret Stash. Presented by Blues Bash on the Cass live at the Frankenmuth Brewery, Saturday, Mar. 19, $15. Doors at 6 p.m., music starts at 8 p.m. Last month's show with Carl Weathersby with The Sauce Cats was a sell-out, so get tickets early! Call Satow Drugs at 989-652-8001 or the Brewery at 989-652-6183 for tickets, reservations, and availability.

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