Hammond B3 Legend Reese Wynans Comes Full Circle On Debut Solo LP ‘Sweet Release’ (INTERVIEW)

There is something about the sound of a Hammond B3 organ. It’s like someone has hooked a monitor up within the depths of a human soul and recorded the deep hum of a life living. The B3 has been a major part of rock & roll, soul, R&B, blues, country, psychedelia & southern rock. Gregg Allman took the instrument to new heights, giving the music of the Allman Brothers a more bluesier feeling than other bands of their genre. Jon Lord brought it to Deep Purple, Booker T to the MG’s and currently Brandon Still is playing his heart out on it in Blackberry Smoke. But truly one of the greats is Reese Wynans. He has brought his B3 style to Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, with whom he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2015, Delbert McClinton and is currently providing his sound to Joe Bonamassa’s band.

As someone who claims he has no professional singing voice, his voice on the organ, piano and keyboards rises high and he has finally released his first solo album, Sweet Release, on March 1st. It is a covers album that doesn’t sound like a covers album. Along with special guests like his former bandmates in Double Trouble, Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon, Doyle Bramhall II, Warren Haynes, Sam Moore, Jimmy Hall, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Keb Mo, Bonnie Bramlett and his boss, Bonamassa, the songs jump off the vinyl with a fun, spirited freshness that oftentimes lacks in other covered songs.

But what Wynans mainly wanted to do on his first record was to feature songs that meant something to him, that provoked memories of his past musical escapades. And he has succeeded superbly. “These songs are windows back into different eras and different times of my career,” Wynans explained upon the album’s release. “It’s a collection of the songs I’ve played with musicians in the past, and it shines a light on blues artists that I think need a little bit more recognition.”

Recorded in about six days, Sweet Release begins with SRV’s “Crossfire” and flows through songs by Boz Scaggs, Otis Rush, Tampa Red, Les Dudek and ends with a lovely piano rendition of The Beatles’ “Blackbird.” With Bonamassa making his producer debut, the guitar god was more than honored to be behind the glass for his friend: “Reese inspires me every day. He encouraged me and was the heart and soul of the entire session.”

Born and raised in Florida, Wynans was playing in a band with Dickey Betts and Berry Oakley called the Second Coming in the late 1960’s. He joined Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1985 and was with him until the guitarist’s death in 1990. Since then he has added his talents to albums by John Hiatt, Bob Seger, Buddy Guy, Joe Ely, John Mayall, Quinn Sullivan and a host of others.

I spoke with Wynans a few days ago about his new record’s magic, stories behind the songs and working with some great artists.

I hear you are out on the road now

Yeah, we’re starting our first leg of this year’s tour so I’m in Chicago today for a two night run at the Chicago Theatre with Joe Bonamassa. We have about a hundred shows to do this year. So busy, busy.

Are you going to get to play some shows for your record at all?

Well, I would like to play some shows for my record. I did some on Joe’s cruise last week and it really went over well. But it’s difficult scheduling it with me being gone so much and then the guys I would want to perform are also busy. It’s kind of a work in progress, doing songs from that record, but here’s hoping I can pull it off.

That must have been fun, doing the shows on the cruise with Joe. Who all got to perform with you?

Well, Kenny Wayne Shepherd was there with my old friend Chris Layton on drums so they played a couple of songs. Noah Hunt sang “Crossfire” and then I brought in Jimmy Hall and he sang some of the songs and then Joe sang one. And that’s the problem, I’m not a singer, at least not a professional singer, so I can’t really do the vocal part. But it all went really well. The people on the cruise seemed to enjoy it and I know I loved it.

Sweet Release is a covers album that sounds nothing like a covers album – it’s fresh and spirited and fun. I want to know how you captured that magic.

What you are saying is exactly how I feel about it. It’s a covers record but it just feels right; everything about it just feels so great, you know. I loved doing a couple of our old Stevie tunes with Chris and Tommy and Kenny Wayne. I really loved it. That was an opportunity that may never come along again so I really enjoyed it. I loved doing the old Boz Scaggs song, “Sweet Release.” I think we really had a fresh approach to that song. And I’d been wanting to play that Otis Rush song, “You’re Killing My Love,” and I thought Doyle did a terrific job with that. And those Tampa Red songs came out so well. So all in all, I’d say I was pretty happy with the way everything turned out.

Did it take long to get everybody together to get the record done?

No, actually. We kind of went around and around a little bit about which songs would be included. I picked out some that ended up not being on there. Joe picked a couple that I didn’t think were really involved with the story, cause really all the songs we picked sort of have a story to them, sort of my story, and so we finally settled on this group of songs. We decided we didn’t want to have the same people playing on all the songs. We had three different rhythm sections come in. Chris and Tommy came in for two days and we did Stevie stuff and the Arc Angels song. Then I had a couple of friends of mine from Nashville – Greg Morrow and Michael Rhodes – come in and we did two days with them and did “Sweet Release” and “Hard To Be” and a couple others. Then I wanted more of a funky rhythm section for some of the songs so we got Lamar Carter and Travis Carlton to come in for a couple of days and that’s when we did “You’re Killing My Love” and some of the other ones. The whole thing only took six days.

The keyboards are the spotlight on this record, as they should be. With these songs being guitar and vocal oriented, was much tweaking done to make the keys more dominant?

Well, we arranged it to where I would have more to do with the music. For example, on a song like “Crossfire,” which was such a good guitar-heavy song, Joe said we should put an organ solo in there. I didn’t think it needed an organ solo but he said, “Put an organ solo in there,” and I ended up doing that and I played the fills in the second verse. So you are hearing the B3 all through the song and it makes it sound more keyboard-ish. To me, it was just kind of a fun song to play, and like I said, when I play that song with Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, something really cool happens with it cause we’re the ones who recorded it originally; not Kenny but Chris and Tommy and I.

Some of the other songs, for example “Riviera Paradise,” that iconic instrumental that we cut back in the day is all guitar. But that song, the same thing, I thought it was such a great song and kind of disappointed that people haven’t covered it through the years, you know. I had always imagined it as sort of a lush, orchestral movie soundtrack kind of piece so that’s kind of where we went with this and featured the organ on it. Then Kenny Wayne played a beautiful solo and so did Joe; I had both of them play on that song. So it did get tweaked a little bit.

You mentioned “You’re Killing My Love,” which features Doyle Bramhall II. How did you connect Otis Rush to Doyle Bramhall II?

You know, come to find out “You’re Killing My Love” was actually written by Nick Gravenites and Mike Bloomfield but I thought it was an Otis Rush song. A friend of mine had told me that Otis Rush had been living here in Chicago and was sort of a recluse, not getting out much. Of course he passed in this past year, which was sad, but I’ve been wanting to do a song of his and that’s the one we picked. It has a nice funky feel. A lot of the Otis Rush songs are sort of the slow blues and I didn’t think we needed a slow blues. I wanted something kind of funky and down and dirty, you know, which I thought that song was. So when we found that song, Doyle Bramhall was the top person we picked to play it if he would. So we sent it to him and he loved it.

You know, I’ve worked with him and I’ve worked with his dad back in the day. So he was excited to do it. I have to say that of all the sort of modern blues people that are around today – of course I love what Joe Bonamassa is doing – but what Doyle is doing right now, to me, is the best thing out there. I just think his songs, his writing is fantastic, his playing, I love the guys in his band, all the vocal arrangements; the music that comes out is just spectacular. I love what he is doing.

His last album, Shades, was at the top of my list of favorite albums last year.

Me too! I mean, that was as good as anything I heard last year. I was shocked that he didn’t get more awards and everything for that.

Sam Moore is also on here and he sounds absolutely incredible. To be eighty-something years old and still have that voice.

I went down and met him and he’s just the nicest guy. When we were writing “Crossfire” back in the eighties with Chris and Tommy and Bill and Ruth Carter, someone had mentioned that this should be a Sam & Dave song. When I was telling that to Joe, and he was wondering who we should get to sing it, he said, “We should send this to Sam Moore.” I wasn’t sure Sam Moore could handle it but when he sent it back, I thought it just sounded fantastic. When I went down to meet him, he reminded me that we’d worked together on Presidential inauguration parties back in the late eighties. But what an entertainer he was in his day. It was truly an honor.

You’ve said that “Take The Time” reminded you of your days in the Jacksonville club scene. Out of all the songs that might have also worked, why pick this old song by Les Dudek, who is someone a lot of people don’t really know?

We didn’t want to do something obvious. We could have picked a Lynyrd Skynyrd song or an Allman Brothers song or something like that. And I almost picked an Allman Brothers song. I thought about doing the song that the Second Coming did, “Don’t Want You No More,” that Steve Winwood song that the Second Coming did, that the Allman Brothers also did on their first record as sort of a tribute to the Second Coming. But I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. So I was talking to Joe and he said, “Let me see what I can come up with,” and he’s searching through Southern Rock and we thought it would be interesting to get a Les Dudek song, somebody who is a little less well-known. Then we found this cool, funky groove on “Take The Time” and Joe knows Warren Haynes – I didn’t know him very well but Joe knew him – and he said, “He’s the perfect guy for this song” and he just nailed it. So to me, with the slide guitar and that funky rhythm, it does remind me of the early days of Southern Rock.

During this time in the late sixties in Jacksonville, did you happen to run into people like Tom Petty or Don Felder? Cause Gainesville, I’m assuming, was on the same circuit as Jacksonville.

That’s an interesting question. They were getting together in Gainesville the same time we were getting together in Jacksonville. And they were doing the same things as us, sort of. They were playing in clubs and doing free shows, free jam sessions on the weekends. I guess we were the psychedelic band, you know. For instance, we had the flashing lights and the flashing dance floor and the strobe lights and the liquid projection all over, a real hippie scene you know (laughs). And the Sunday jam sessions were just unbelievable because all the musicians wanted to come out and play those songs with us. We were the only ones that were doing that kind of thing back then. Butch Trucks came out from his gig and some of the Lynyrd Skynyrd guys would come out. It was really a great experience doing it. But the answer to your question is no and looking back on it, it’s surprising that we didn’t travel more than we did. Occasionally we’d get down to St Augustine but we never got as far as Gainesville, which is only three hours away.

Also during this time you were in your early twenties and Vietnam was going on. Did that make you nervous?

It did, it made everybody nervous at the time. I had an eyesight issue. I was blind in one eye so that gave me a deferment. But a lot of guys had to go do a lot of other things to not get drafted. Nobody I knew really wanted to get drafted. One guy, you know, would take too many drugs and some other people would do all sorts of things, but that was that era and it was scary for a lot of people. My brother was in the Air Force and he went over there and my other brother was in the National Guard and they served but my name was never called. I was, like I said, blind in one eye and that kind of kept me out.

Getting back to your record, was it intentional to pick more well-known songs from your time with Stevie Ray instead of pulling out something really deep in the catalog?

I wanted to do “Riviera Paradise” and I thought “Hard To Be” is another song that nobody ever plays and I thought it should be like a Bonnie & Delaney kind of house rocker. So those are the two I picked. Joe picked “Crossfire” and “Say What” and I was a little reluctant about “Crossfire” cause I thought it was, like you said, our most popular song ever. It seemed strange to me but he said, “Well, you’re a writer on this song, you wrote this song, you should have it on your record. It really is a way for people to know who you are.” I think he was concerned that nobody knows my name and probably for good reason (laughs). I haven’t been a household name.

When you came into Stevie’s band following Couldn’t Stand The Weather, what was he specifically looking to you to add to his band at that time?

That’s a good question. When I joined the band it was in the studio while we were making the Soul To Soul record. I guess they had already been in the studio for a week or so and from what I hear things were going kind of slow. They were getting tracks but it was just going kind of slow. So the first night I went in there, which was sort of a fluke by the way, they had hired a friend of mine to play saxophone and he brought me along to play piano on one song. So we got that track and then I stayed around to play organ on “Say What” and we got that track. Then I played “Change It” and we got that track. So we got three tracks in one night. So then all of a sudden things are moving along and this record is happening and it has a different sound with the B3 and piano so they invited me back the next night and we did three more songs. I just think that the band and Stevie loved having the additional instrument there to kind of work off of. I don’t think, as far as I know, they had had a lot of keyboard players in the past. I know he had a keyboard player on the Carnegie Hall record but other than that, all that early stuff, there wasn’t any keys on his records at all.

When he invited me to join the band and we started playing shows, I thought they would do the whole show as a trio and I would just come in and play on the songs I had recorded on Soul To Soul. That’s what I thought it was but Stevie said, “Oh no, no, we want you to play on everything.” So they just kind of threw me in the fire, you know; come on, here we go (laughs).  And it went like this: the first show, 10,000 people at Dallas; the second night, 75,000 people at the Chicago Fest; third night we flew to Europe and played Montreux, which you hear on Live Alive. That was my third show in the band. So they just threw me in there (laughs) and I’m not going to say no cause I thought it was quite an honor that they wanted me to play on everything. And I think it still felt like a trio to me, just sort of an augmented trio. All of a sudden Stevie had a little bit more freedom, the band had some more direction and it just seemed to work out. I loved working with them.

Did they let you improvise more when playing live?

Oh yes, it’s the blues so it’s all about improvising. I mean, we’re going to play the songs and then when it’s your time, just go ahead and go for it. And we did that every night.

Did you pick “Blackbird” because of The Beatles or just that wonderful melody that could work with that solo piano?

I don’t often play solo piano in front of people. The songs that I play are just songs that occur to me. Sometimes I play Cat Stevens songs, I do different kinds of things. But that Beatles song, “Blackbird,” is probably one of the best songs ever written. I love the melody, I love the lyrics. It’s just a glorious, nostalgic, happy and sad song at the same time, lyrically. Melodically, the melody just soars so I just love playing it and I thought it would be a nice song for a sort of jazz trio when I was originally playing it. And Joe said, “Just go ahead and play it and do your version of it. It’ll be fine.” So that’s what we did and it turned out like that. I thought it was a nice way to end the record.

How much has your equipment changed over the years?

That’s funny that you ask that cause I’m actually playing the same B3 with Joe that I played with Stevie, the same Leslies and the same B3. But the piano has changed in that it’s a better sounding piano but it’s still a piano. So I play the piano and organ. Joe doesn’t really want a lot of synth. With Stevie I used a synth pad a little bit every now and then and we used the clavinet a little bit. The keyboards that I use, they update them every year or so and the sounds get a little bit better. But it’s basically piano and organ is what I like.

All musicians can get frustrated with their instrument at some point. Since the keys can do so many things and get so many different sounds, have you had any frustrations working with them?

No, no, as long as everything is working, and for some reason my B3 has been working great since 1985 and of course it’s a lot older than that. So no, I’m not frustrated with it at all.

Your regular gig is with Joe Bonamassa. With him producing this record, were you able to kind of boss him around a little bit?

(laughs) You know, this is the first record he’s produced and it was fantastic having him on that side of the glass. I knew once he agreed to do this that he would put his whole self into it. And he really did and it was great and he came up with a lot of really cool ideas for arrangements and for sounds. So kudos to Joe and congratulations on a job well done.

So did I boss him around? No (laughs). On this record, nobody bossed anybody around. It was all right from the start, it was a labor of love and I can’t remember ever feeling this much love and support from the musicians around me. Like, every day we’d come in and everybody was excited to be there, they loved playing these songs, I loved playing these songs. It was just very nice and it felt like a gift that everybody wanted to make sure was exactly right for me.

And that’s why it doesn’t sound like a covers record because everybody loved being there

It felt that way to me. Every song was important and it didn’t matter if it was covers. They were going to put their heart and soul into it and that’s what happened.

Photographs by Ed Rode