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date >> on or before 02-22-1999

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INTERVIEWS: ERIC SARDINAS

Dobro through a Marshall stack, anyone?

Mick Taylor gets some feedback from the blues' newest bad boy

by Mick Taylor, Guitarist

"I'm Southern born, I'm 27 and I'm just a slide player" he says. "I play slide, I play blues, but it's rock'n'roll blues that I play my own way. I grew up listening to R&B and Motown and I started playing when I was about six. I just gravitated towards that, y'know, pretty much straight Delta blues; Bukka White, Charlie Patton. And then Chicago blues; Elmore James, Muddy (Waters) and all that stuff."

He might call it 'straight Delta blues', but how many of those guys put a resonator acoustic flat-out through a Marshall stack?

"Well y'know I don't really play through Marshalls very often" he says. "That's just for today, 'cos that's what's here. I usually play vintage Fenders, but I also had some custom Riveras built."

For the record

Performing around 300 nights a year in the States, the way he plays doesn't go unnoticed. Jim Dunlop USA among others has already taken an interest...

"We've been lucky with the people who back us up; product manufacturers who have gotten behind us and genuinely like the direction we're going in. Jimmie Dunlop actually brought us to England - this is the second time - and it's great to get out here and touch base before the record comes out. Hopefully we'll be back when it does."

Speaking of which, Eric and his band have signed to Evidence records and their debut album 'Treat Me Right' is due out on February 23.

"It's pretty much just what we're about and what we do. We cut it live in about 40 hours in the studio, and it was important to have that raw edge. We recorded in Chicago and it was co-produced by Dick Sherman and myself. Dick has a great track record in the blues genre; Otis Rush to Roy Buchanan.

He's got a real good ear for just capturing things; y'know not over-doing it, just letting it be. So we just let it go - just blues and rock. If you love blues, you can't deny it's blues. It's not the kind of stuff that's over-traditional, but it is based traditionally; you could describe it as tastefully aggressive perhaps..."

Many thanks to Paul Loranger and Todd Wright for their help with this interview.

Who is Eric Sardinas? More to the point, just exactly what is Eric Sardinas? At a recent music show, I chanced upon the Jim Dunlop stand, and there in full flight was six-feet-two-inches of leather, Stetson and snakeskin, hunched over his guitar and making the kind of noise you rarely hear from a Dobro.

Yet despite the dark-man-of-blues exterior and the jaw-dropping showmanship (just check out the exploding bottle of Budweiser manoeuvre) Eric is anything but the bad guy. Instead, he's softly spoken, extremely polite and genuinely chuffed that Guitarist wants to speak to him.