Blues Agency 1988

The Blues Agency

http://www.snowywhitefanclub.org/SWFC.htm

 

Snowy White's Blues Agency

http://www.snowywhitefanclub.com

 

 

 

Blues Agency : A History

people pushing me ... “

After making three solo albums (White Flames, Land of

Freedom and That Certain Thing) Snowy decided that he

didn't like the life as a single artist and changed his career.

His first two albums had some rather 'poppy' songs but the pressure from the record company can really be noticed on the third album, That Certain Thing. Female backing vocalists have been added to almost every track and the whole album is filled with tunes that follow the familiar 4 minute radio-song structure. The fact that Snowy rarely talks about this period and the fact that he did not find it necessary to include any songs from this period on his 'highlights of my career' album Gold Top although For You was a minor hit - suggests that he's not really comfortable with that period of his life. 

 

 

In an interview on Dutch radio Snowy said: "Bird of Paradise

was okay, it was afterwards where people started pushing me

and trying to make me do this; 'What's the follow-up going to

be' and 'You should record with this American producer' and

all that.... I just got fed up with it, so I said 'Forget it, I'm

just going to play some blues' ... that's what I've been doing   ...

and now I'm broke."

 

 

The Agency

And play the blues he did. In the second half of the eighties

Snowy returned to his first musical love and teamed up with vocalist Graham Bell (of Skip Bifferty /Bell and Arc fame),

bass player Kuma Harada (a close friend and working partner

since '72), and Jeff Allen (ex-East of Eden) - a drummer who

had recently been introduced to Snowy by Kuma - to form '

Snowy White's Blues Agency'

 

 

Jeff Allen: 'The first time

I played with Snowy was in London with Max Middleton and

Bob Weston, one of the Fleetwood Mac-guitarists. We had a

jam in a club in London, must be about six or seven years ago,

and we just started playing together. I've known Kuma longer

and I think it was probably Kuma who introduced me to Snowy.

So ever since then we formed the Blues Agency with Graham

Bell and I did a couple of albums and I've been playing with

Snowy off and on, since then." 'The Blues Agency was formed

just for fun more than a serious career move on anybody's part." November 1996 This four piece band toured through Great

Britain and Europe for three years and finally recorded two albums in 1989. In the liner notes of Gold Top Snowy said:

"We did a few gigs and made two albums. The two instrumentals

on [Gold Top], Out of Order and Open for Business, are of the second.

 

 

Part 2

It was released in Europe as Blues on Me ,although I called

it Open for Business: the first LP was Change My Life.They

came out on Bellaphon in Germany and Rio Digital over here.

We only did it for the fun of it really, we didn't expect to

sell many." The first album, Change my Life contained 7

classical blues covers, a song written by Snowy which was

an outtake from the White Flames/Land of Freedom sessions

and can also be seen on the Live from London video (The Rest

of my Life), three songs composed by the whole band (Change

my Life, The Agency Blues and The Agency Shuffle) of which

two were instrumentals and another song by Snowy which would become a real live favourite; Judgement Day. This first Blues Agency album had a lot of traditionally formed blues songs on

it; lyrics with the familiar repeated first line, refrain- refrain-solo-refrain-solo structure and the well known 12-bar bass parts.

 

 

 

The second album Blues on Me (aka Open for Business) contained 10 songs of which 7 were written by Snowy and 3 by Graham Bell. No covers on this one. Unlike Change my Life most of these songs did not follow the standard blues patterns. Linda Taylor (backing vocals) and Tim Hinckley (keyboards) can also be heard on the second album. Jeff Allen: "We had an equal say in what was played and how it was played, and what songs we did. And we all wrote a couple of songs together, a couple of instrumental tunes. Yes, quite balanced." 'The album we did with the Blues Agency was done in the studio. There wasn't a lot of rehearsing or arranging before going into the studio, so it was very loose. I think that's how it

has always been." November 1996 After a couple of years Snowy stopped playing with the Agency line-up because he wanted to move on. More solo gigs followed and before long he recruited Juan and Walter to join his back-up band.

 

The legacy of the Agency

Especially Judgement Day, Parchman Farm and Woke up this Morning (all from the first album) would stay ever-recurring

parts of the setlists of Snowy's solo gigs afterThe Blues Agency stopped playing together. As we already mentioned, the Gold Top compilation contains the Agency tracks Open for Business and Out of Order. Besides these instrumentals Gold Top also includes an extended Judgement Day, without Graham Bell (Snowy's doing the vocal himself, but with John 'Rabbit' Bundrick on keyboards. Cat Flea Jump, another track on the compilation, also originates from the Blues Agency period. Snowy: 'That was a Blues Agency track as well, something I tried out. It was one of the sessions we decided not to use, but I thought it was okay. It's a shame that

you do a lot of recordings which are never used. They just sit

there on a shelve ... so it's nice to use them." The Blues Agency line-up (minus Graham Bell) would also accompany ex-Rolling Stone Mick Taylor's All Star Blues Band on some of his solo gigs in the nineties and is featured on Graham Bell's solo album All the Romances. Finally, Kuma, Jeff, Snowy and Mick Taylor have also been doing some work on ambient album. Nothing solid has come from that yet. Like Snowy said in the interview in the previous White Flames, 'it's just one of the many projects'.