Tom Walbank lives the Blues
By Gerald M. Gay
ggay@azstarnet.com
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.18.2007
Memphis, Chicago, St. Louis – cities synonymous with the sounds of the blues.
Now you can add Tucson to the list, at least for this weekend. Three major shows will bring in several high-profile acts from all over the country. Among the talent hitting town: B.B. King at the Desert Diamond Casino, Mavis Staples at Centennial Hall, and Piedmont blues duo Cephas & Wiggins at the Southern Arizona Blues Heritage Foundation's free festival at Reid Park.
These national musicians will complement the local blues artists performing including 56 Deluxe, Arthur Migliazza and Tom Walbank.
Caliente has your complete guide on what to do with the blues this weekend.
Tom Walbank has a hard time nailing down why he is in such high demand in Tucson these days.
"Maybe it is the music I grew up with," said Walbank between sips of coffee at Hotel Congress' Cup Café last week. "The down-home nature with the kind of blues I play."
The British-born performer's gritty, sweat-inducing approach to the blues — incorporating elements from Muddy Waters' guitar to Phil Wiggins' harmonica — is a far cry from the norm in a Downtown music scene full of desert rockers.
Yet Walbank has grown quite popular with the scenesters since moving to town in 2000. His versatility and willingness to share the stage with a wide variety of musicians have earned him respect from performing newcomers and elder statesmen alike.
"He has a very raw and very intense sound," says Marty Kool, host of "Marty Kool's Blues Review" on KXCI (91.3-FM). "But then he's also got a sound of his own, a contemporary feel that is firmly planted in tradition."
At age 38, Walbank leads his own band, the Ambassadors, and lends his vocals, slide guitar and harp talent to the 17th Street Band when he can. This weekend he is sitting in on a few songs with Arthur Migliazza's group, New Town, at the Southern Arizona Blues Heritage Festival.
"I have been on bills with all kinds of bands," said Walbank. "I like it. It mixes things up. You just don't target blues fans. When you do, you kind of make it elitist. It should be for everybody, and it is cool to surprise people."
Humble beginnings
Walbank recalls, as a 15-year-old boy living in Devon, England, the first time he was truly touched by the power of the blues.
"I saw a clip of John Lee Hooker playing on Maxwell Street in Chicago," Walbank said. "I was transfixed. I thought, 'Who is that? I've got to try and get some of his music.' "
Walbank was impressed with Hooker's way around the guitar, but was even more enamored of Hooker's accompanist, harmonica player Big Walter Horton.
"I went out and bought a harmonica and practiced every day when I first started," he said. "I homed in on certain players. You are more likely to sound like the person you want to sound like if you are doing it by trial and error and trusting your own ears. It was an obsession."
For a while, blues music was just a hobby for Walbank. Drawn to the big-city lifestyle, he eventually found himself in Edinburgh, Scotland, dividing his time between bartending and drawing for a series of underground comic books to make ends meet.
Walbank was a talented artist and thought that's where his life was headed for many years.
"I enjoyed the challenge," Walbank said of his comic-book work. "I was very much going by what my idols had produced in the comic-book world, pushing myself to emulate the achievements of the past."
But the pull of the blues was too strong. Walbank would find himself sitting in with bands and gained notoriety as the bartender who played harp riffs between pouring shots and filling pints.
When a local blues duo, 32-20, asked him to join up, he gladly accepted.
"I thought it was about time," he said. "I had heard about them and I don't know if they had heard of me, but I had been making noise trying to be heard."
Walbank never looked back.
His time with 32-20 kick-started a musical career that would follow him from the clubs of Edinburgh with Steve O'Connor to the streets of San Francisco, where he picked up the guitar, and finally to the venues of Tucson, where he and his American-born wife, Leia Maahs, have resided for the last seven years.
Walbank hit all the usual spots up-and-comers play when he first came to town. He was a regular at the Grill's Red Room and remembers the 7 Black Cats open mic nights as an important vessel in getting his career started in the Old Pueblo.
"I would meet other players there," he said. "I would come in, play pool, drink and watch the other musicians."
"He was a hell of a guy and a hell of a musician," said Floyd Haxton, 76, who ran the open mic nights at 7 Black Cats for four years. "He always got toes tapping. That is one of my claims to fame as far as my shows went. That I gave Tom Walbank his start in this town."
Aside from a sharp increase in gigs, not much has changed since Walbank first moved to Tucson. He still lives, eats and breathes the blues. He is knowledgeable in many different styles, including Piedmont, Delta and Chicago, and he uses that knowledge to help customers at his day job in the 17th Street Market's music department.
"Tom is dedicated to music, obsessed with music," said Emilie Marchand, vocalist for Pearl Handled Pistol and a friend of Walbank's for the last five years. "He is fascinated by its history as well as keeping up with what's new in the industry."
Walbank still gets around by bike, his main mode of transportation, and also continues to draw and paint. The mixed-media artist estimates he has more than 600 portraits of blues musicians that he has created at his house. He even sells a copy or two on occasion.
"When the music took over as the main focus of what I do, I wanted to keep going with the art," Walbank said. "So I thought I would link them together. I started doing these portraits of musicians. I was getting into the more illustrative style, so I was learning to use a very fine brush, getting different effects. Trying to evoke the heat of Mississippi with the strong black and white."
Forever blues
Walbank realizes his role in the Downtown music community is constantly changing. Where he once was a fresh face on the scene, he now considers himself an "aging hipster." He has seen many of his friends "getting things together, starting businesses and moving forward with their lives."
Walbank does have goals for his own future. He has written an illustrated a children's book,"Robert's Sunny Day Dance" — a story that follows a harmonica-playing kid from Mississippi as he interacts with various riverside creatures — that he hopes to get published someday.
In the meantime, he is extremely busy getting his music career to that next level.
Walbank is shopping around for a label for his band's latest album of mostly original works, "Sugar Mama," a follow-up to the 2005 release, "Mudhook Vol. 2." "Mudhook" served as "the ideal foundation for reinventing the lowdown sounds of early electric blues" according to Blues Revue magazine.
He also wants to keep working on perfecting his own sound.
"I am still learning," he said. "If I got smug or self-satisfied or rested on my laurels as far as playing was concerned, I might as well just give up. There is always something to learn."
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