The Blues Project, formed in Greenwich Village in the mid-’60s, has postponed their October 30 show in Saratoga Springs at Caffe Lena.
The band will announce a rescheduled date soon, when they will celebrate their first new album in 42 years, Evolution, which finds the band from a well of various musical styles and influences throughout the album’s 12 tracks.
One of the first album-oriented, “underground” groups in the United States, the Blues Project offered an eclectic brew of rock, blues, folk, pop, and even some jazz, classical, and psychedelia during their heyday in the mid-’60s.
The original group featured guitarist Danny Kalb (who had played sessions for various Elektra folk and folk-rock albums), Steve Katz (a guitarist with Elektra’s Even Dozen Jug Band), flutist/bassist Andy Kulberg, drummer Roy Blumenfeld, and singer Tommy Flanders. Al Kooper, in his early twenties a seasoned vet of rock sessions, joined after sitting in on the band’s Columbia Records audition, although they ended up signing to Verve, an MGM subsidiary.
The current lineup for The Blues Project performing at Caffe Lena later this month features Katz and Blumenfeld leading a powerful new lineup that includes young and talented members Chris Morrison on lead guitar, Scott Petito on bass, and Ken Clark on keyboards and vocals.
After the release of their debut live album, the band recorded their second album Projections in the fall of 1966, receiving rave reviews and containing an eclectic set of songs that ran the gamut from blues, R&B, jazz, psychedelia, and folk-rock. The centerpieces of the album were an 11-and-a-half minute version of Muddy Waters’ blues standard “Two Trains Running” featuring Kalb on vocals and lead guitar, and Kooper’s instrumental “Flute Thing” featuring Kulberg on flute.
Soon after Projections was released, Kooper and Katz left the band and in 1968 joined forces to form jazz-rock icons Blood, Sweat & Tears. While Kooper led the band on its first album, Child Is Father to the Man, he did not take part in any subsequent releases. Soon after, Kooper, then a producer for Columbia Records, recorded with Bloomfield, Stephen Stills and Harvey Brooks for the album entitled Super Session, before doing several solo albums. Katz, who was instrumental in the band’s phenomenal success, remained with B,S & T, into the 1970s. Katz went on to produce Lou Reed’s best-selling and still-influential live LP Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal (as well as its follow-up Sally Can’t Dance, Reed’s only top-10 album).
The Blues Project, with a modified line-up, reformed briefly in the early 1970s, releasing three further albums: 1971’s Lazarus, 1972’s Blues Project, and 1973’s The Original Blues Project Reunion in Central Park. After disbanding again, Blumenfeld formed Seatrain and in the 2000s performed with former Country Joe & the Fish member Barry Melton.
The original Blues Project disbanded for good in the 90s (although Katz, Blumenfeld and Kalb performed a successful reunion tour in 2012) but realizing they still had a passionate fan base who cared about the band and its music, Katz and Blumenfeld decided to give it another try in 2021.
Get tickets for The Blues Project here.
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