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Chris Waller Blues Band
Published: January 2003
Story: Jeff Royer
Photo: press photo |
To say that the Chris Waller Blues Band has a good pedigree is an understatement.
The group's members have toured the world, shared the stage with the likes of
Sammy Davis Jr., Wilson Pickett, and Ray Charles, and rocked around the Central
Pa. blues and jazz scene for the past 30 years. And, according to drummer and
namesake Chris Waller, they're just hitting their stride. "I would love to be
able to see us go up on the charts, to get the recognition, because I think the
guys in the band are some of the greatest players I've had the opportunity to
be with," gushes Waller. "We are together because we just love playing together."
Waller is joined by keyboardist/vocalist Ross Mounds, guitarist Ben Martin (of
the Ray Charles Band), and former Wilson Pickett saxophonist Jerry Swalla. "[Jerry]
gets all kinds of offers to go where the big money is, and he has turned it down
simply because of the love of playing with us," Waller says. The Chris Waller
Blues Band has been a work-in-progress for over three decades. "I was on the road
with Sammy Davis and Bob Hope for several years, and I came back home in '73,"
explains Waller, a Pa. native. "I was playing with the Steve Rudolph jazz trio
for a long time, and then I had my own jazz trio, and I decided to go with the
blues thing, and the blues funk, because that's where the money was." Eventually,
Waller teamed up with Mounds and Martin, with whom he would perform intermittently
for 10 years before recruiting Swalla about three years ago. Fast-forward to the
present, and the Chris Waller Blues Band is still delighting fans with a mix of
blues, funk, and jazz standards. "We play a wide variety, because we aim our music
to the preference of the audience," Waller says. "We do some original material;
however, most of the music we do are cover songs. We do 'The Thrill is Gone,'
songs from the Wilson Pickett era. Then we can go into doing 'Bad to the Bone'
and various jazz songs." "I say to the people, 'If you have any special requests,
please write them down on a very small piece of paper, preferably a $100 bill,'"
Waller laughs. "We'll play the music for you even if we don't know it! "The energy
that we get from each other and that we give to each other when we're on-stage,
it's awesome. It's awesome to see," he continues. The group's most recent album,
Slammin', was released in December 2002.
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