'Let Me Stay'
Larry Dougher Band delivers blues with power
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Larry Dougher will bring his blues band for a second visit to Montpelier’s Black Door on Saturday. Submitted photo |
Toolbox
By Art Edelstein Arts Correspondent - Published: September 1, 2006
Blues guitarist Larry Dougher, who has been burning up the strings since he was a teenager of 15, and his band visit the Black Door Bistro on Saturday. So adept is this guitarist that the music could turn Montpelier's popular downtown nightspot into a Vermont version of a smoky Chicago blues club (sans the smoke), on this, Dougher's second visit.
Dougher, who graduated from Windsor High School, along with bassist Mike Fralish and drummer Bobby Gagnier, are a blues power trio with a new CD "Let Me Stay" that highlights an impressive set of guitar driven songs.
Power trios of this kind are fairly uncommon. It's a lot of work for the guitarist who generally plays lead and usually handles most or all of the singing. That's a lot to ask of any musician but Dougher handles it well.
A successful blues or power trio requires very solid bass players and drummers to get it right. George Thorogood and the Destroyers were really good at playing blues in this set up. Probably the most famous trio is ZZ Top which played Texas blues. Currently Vermonter Seth Yacovone and his band are established players. And then there was the Jimi Hendrix Experience in the late 1960s, but Hendrix was a player beyond categorizing.
Dougher's playing on his first CD shows a guitarist/singer/songwriter with great promise and considerable maturity considering he comes from an area not known for producing blues musicians.
Dougher, who is just 24, is traveling in some heady company as he interprets his own version of the blues style popularized by Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Magic Sam and Otis Rush. Or, if this isn't familiar to you, think of the music of the Blues Brothers and you have the Chicago style. For a young Vermonter, who's probably never been west of Hoboken, to hone in on Chicago blues is quite a feat and he does it well.
With solid backing from his rhythm section, Dougher can rock with the best or, alternately, squeeze out the most mournful notes from his guitar. The 10-song CD contains a variety of songs from rockers to moaners. Dougher handles the vocals with precision and a solid singing voice. On a couple of songs I thought I heard BB King singing, Dougher has gotten the idiom down so well.
Dougher is something of a musical prodigy. He didn't start playing guitar until he was 15, after watching Michael J. Fox play guitar in the movie "Back to the Future." Dougher must have missed a lot of homework or sleep, because within a year he had earned a spot as a finalist in the 1996 D'Addario National Electric Blues Guitar Competition, one of five in a field of over 100 competitors.
Eschewing the music more common to teens, such as AC-DC or Motley Crue, Dougher built his repertoire and formed bands which opened for J. Geils in 2000, when he was just 18.
In the past six years, this mostly self-taught musician he has been playing the New Hampshire-Vermont-Massachusetts club circuit and also been a member of the house band at the Rynborn Restaurant and Blues Club in southwest New Hampshire. Tomorrow night the Windy City will be well represented musically at the Black Door Bistro as the Larry Dougher Band blows into town.