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Blues fans know vocalist and lead guitarist Chris James and bassist Patrick Rynn as the leaders of their own band, the Blue Four, as well as for their stellar work with a dazzling array of blues legends. Now they're stepping out on their own.

Over the last 18 years, alternately based in San Diego (their current home) and Chicago, the sartorially splendiferous duo has honed their onstage interplay to ESP-like levels. They're proud traditionalists who delight in digging deep into a postwar Chicago vein, yet this debut album boasts a plethora of satisfying originals. And their rollicking energy level instantly grabs young audiences who may not even be familiar with Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf.

Loving revivals of vintage numbers on this disc mesh seamlessly with the invigorating fresh material. Chris's dazzling slide licks breathe new life into Elmore James's crashing "Hawaiian Boogie," and a reverberating, tremolo-laden "Mona" recalls Bo Diddley at his most riveting. "Confessin' The Blues," the 1941 classic by Kansas City pianist Jay McShann (with Walter Brown his vocalist), holds personal significance for Chris.

"That was basically one of the very first blues songs I remember learning the words to," he says. "That's why it was important for me to put on our very first CD."

While growing up in San Diego, Chris came across McShann's signature theme as he researched his first musical hero, Chuck Berry. "My stepdad got me hooked on blues at nine or 10 years old, and I started playing blues piano by the time I was 11. Chuck Berry was the first guy that was really a big influence on me," says Chris. "He talked about Muddy Waters and Little Walter, Elmore James, and Charlie Christian." Chris tracked down a BBC radio documentary on Berry. "The very first thing they played was Muddy and Walter: 'I Just Want To Make Love To You,'" he says. "That was the song that I heard that I just said, 'This is what I want to do!'"

A gofer job at a San Diego blues festival brought the lad into contact with the city's top blues guitarist then and now, Tomcat Courtney. At the tender age of 13, James joined Courtney's band as a harpist. "I only played harmonica with him for maybe six months or something like that, and then the bass player quit," says Chris. "And then Tom just gave me a bass and said, 'Okay, boy, here's the bass. The bass player's quit. I need you to learn this by next week!'" Chris followed Tomcat's instructions, though he would soon switch axes one more time to guitar, developing his own slashing style along the way. James learned his lessons well during a long stint in Courtney's band, though he did take a brief hiatus when he was 17 to study with jazz saxists Gene Porter and Jimmie Noone, Jr. "I wanted to get myself a music education," he says.

Making his first pilgrimage to Chicago in 1990, Chris happened to hear the muscular piano riffs of Detroit Junior (whose sly "Call My Job" remains a Chicago blues standard) emanating from a nearby bar. Sitting in on a guitar borrowed from the cook, he impressed the diminutive keyboardist enough to earn a regular gig. In his spare time, James made the rounds of the North Side blues jams, including one at now-defunct B.L.U.E.S. Etc., impressing just about everyone in the house with his sizzling fretwork apart from his future musical partner, Patrick. This was by no means a case of love at first sight.

"We did not hit it off when we first met each other," admits Chris, who dropped by the Guitar Center where Patrick worked a short time later in need of picks and a harmonica. "I've got a guitar in my hand, and I'm playing," says Patrick. "I hand the guitar to somebody, and I get the phone. And I'm on the phone, and my back is towards the people, and I'm facing the wall. Well, all of a sudden, about halfway in this conversation, I start hearing the heaviest traditional country blues. And I turn around, and it's Chris. And I just got this big smile on my face, and he stood there grinning at me. He was playing 'Terraplane Blues.'

"We became instant friends."

Patrick had only recently arrived in town himself. Born and raised in Toledo, he was classically trained on bass before joining a high school jazz ensemble led by veteran saxist Floyd "Candy" Johnson. In the orchestra's repertoire was Duke Ellington's "C-Jam Blues." "That's how I got introduced into blues," says Patrick.

A rougher strain of the idiom grabbed him at age 18 while attending college. "Every second quarter of the school year they had a tape sale," he says. "I saw this one, and it was pretty cool, and I said, 'Well, I'll get this.' So I paid five bucks for it, and I threw it in my backpack and I went to school. Then at the end of the day, I was going home and I remembered I had that tape in my book bag. I stuck it in, and I pressed play. And my God, it still puts a lump in my throat. My whole world just changed, man. It was The Best of Elmore James. And that first tune on there, 'Dust My Broom,' he hit that slide and went into it, and man, I got chills up and down my spine."

Patrick's cousin suggested he check out Toledo's top blues band, the Griswolds, led by brothers Art and Roman Griswold. After four months in the audience, he summoned up the courage to sit in on harp. "I stunk the stage up so bad," he laughs. "But I was up there playing, and I was digging it. I was hooked!" Another few months later, he noticed a bass onstage, and when he sat in this time, everything clicked. "They said, 'Hey, can you come back tomorrow night?'" recalls Patrick. "I didn't get paid, but I played the whole night with them.

"After a couple of nights of that, I ended up playing with them for five years."

When visiting blues great Junior Wells needed a bassist to sit in at the Griswolds' club gig, Patrick was there to answer the call. "That night changed my whole life," he says. It also got Rynn invited by Wells to the 1990 Chicago Blues Festival. He was so thrilled by the experience that he moved to the Windy City. "I packed up everything I could get in my car, which wasn't very big at the time," he says. "I had a thousand bucks in my pocket, and I went to Chicago."

With both young bluesmen settled in the Windy City, the more experienced Chris drilled Patrick on the traditional aspects of the blues. "Nine hours a day, every day, having to listen to records and learn how to play with the music and learn how to get that internal music without a drummer. He was teaching me how to play bass lines and walk the bass and how to do different grooves, like a lump or a slow Muddy or a B.B. King shuffle," says the bassist. "I was learning and listening and going out to the clubs every night. Man, I was exhausted. But over time, it started happening."

The duo's first big break came as an outgrowth of attending a tribute concert to harp immortal Little Walter at Rosa's Lounge. With giants like Louis and Dave Myers, Sunnyland Slim, and David "Honeyboy" Edwards in attendance, Chris was in awe. Neither knew they'd be called on to perform. "There's Willie "Big Eyes" Smith and Sam Lay and all these guys, looking at us playing," says Chris. "I was so nervous it was unbelievable. It was a miracle I could play, because these guys were all looking at me and Patrick playing."

That winning performance eventually paid off. "The phone rang, and Chris runs in the house, and he's in there for about a half hour," says Patrick. And he comes running out. He says, 'Get packed! We're going to Atlanta!' I'm like, 'What do you mean?" He said, 'Sam Lay–we just got hired! We're going down to Atlanta for a week and playing!'" The pair anchored the drummer's band for five years, extensively touring the U.S. and Canada and making their first recordings with him (1994's Sam Lay Blues Band Live was the initial release). While on tour with Lay in Colorado that same year, they encountered college student and budding harpist Rob Stone, who soon felt the Chicago blues scene's gravitational pull himself.

The three formed a unit and eventually made their first trip into a studio to cut Stone's 1998 debut CD, No Worries, playfully naming their band the C-Notes. Just My Luck, the C-Notes' 2003 encore album, was released on Earwig and featured guest appearances by Lay and Dave Myers, who grew close to Chris and Patrick. "He was a friend first before he was an influence. And I miss him a lot. I still think about him when I play," says Patrick. "We used to go over to his house and spend all night just sitting in his kitchen playing. Chris on guitar, Dave on guitar, me playing Davey's bass. I always knew I was doing okay if Dave was smiling." With Sam Lay on drums, the C-Notes' 2000 Chicago Blues Festival performance was excerpted in Godfathers and Sons, part of Martin Scorsese's PBS-TV blues documentary series.

More recently, the pair has recorded with piano man Dennis Binder on his 2007 Earwig disc Hole in That Jug and Chicago guitar legend Jody Williams on his encore comeback CD, 2004's You Left Me in the Dark, where Chris had the dual honor of playing alongside not just Jody but another of his avowed heroes, Robert Jr. Lockwood. Chris and Patrick began playing with Williams in 2000 after backing him unexpectedly at a Mississippi blues festival; Jody hired the Blue Four, then including Chicago drummer Willie Hayes, and they subsequently toured Europe and Japan. And Chris and Patrick backed James's original mentor, Tomcat Courtney, on his just-released and long-overdue national debut album, Downsville Blues.

In 2005, Chris toured Europe as a member of harpist Bob Corritore's band. That led to both James and Rynn joining the Rhythm Room All Stars, the resident combo at Corritore's Phoenix nightclub of the same name. Since then, they've toured Europe as well as the states with the All Stars. Their explosive Rhythm Room exploits can be experienced on House Rockin' and Blues Shoutin'!, a live disc from 2007 where they back Big Pete Pearson and Billy Boy Arnold.

Neither Chris nor Patrick can explain their uncommon musical compatibility. "When I started playing with Chris, I didn't know anything," says Patrick, whose bass influences in addition to Dave Myers include Willie Kent, Ransom Knowling, and Big Crawford (as you might expect from the latter two hallowed names, he's just as comfortable on upright bass as on electric). "Because I've learned all that stuff," he says, "I have the tools and I have the way of playing to make the chemistry between me and Chris just work.

"We're trying to put some thought into it, and we worked hard on our songs that we have on this new CD. I think we're staying very traditional, but with a modern edge, because we play aggressive. We don't hold back. We like the real stuff."

Truly something to stop and think about!

– Bill Dahl