The year was 1994, and James Ferguson (The Evil One) and I had been burning up the road for 5 years together. The band had just half-broken up after a particularly brutal (and low paying!) 5 week European tour. We then hired a young, gifted guitarist named Oliver Wood and veteran drummer Stu Grimes to round out the band and keep right on going. The Blues scene was much healthier back then, and there was more touring gigs than we knew what to do with.
It was also time to make a new album for Alligator, and my dear friend (and manager then) Michael Rothschild and I chose Eddy Offord to produce. Eddy had produced two Heartfixers album, and we loved his sound. We chose Triclops Studio because they had a big cutting room, great gear, and we had enjoyed working with the engineer there - Mark Richardson. Bruce Iglauer at Alligator Records gave a double thumbs up, and we were ready to start recording.
It was time to start, and we showed up at the studio on a cold winter day along with trusted roadie Dan "Stumbles" Stanford. Everyone was surprised when I announced that we would set up just like at a show, with no separation between amps and drums. But, Eddy Offord understood and said "Ahhh, Let it bleed!", meaning that the loud volume produced by guitar amps would be picked up by the ultra sensitive drum mics and give the whole thing a big, live sound. In fact, that's what Storm Warning is. It is basically a live album with some other heavy cats added on for good measure. Those heavy cats were percussionist Count M'butu, famed keyboardist Chuck Leavell, and a 14 year old guitarist who had never seen the inside of a big studio before. His name was Derek Trucks, and he was making his recording debut.
It was Oliver Wood that suggested we use Derek Trucks to play the slide guitar parts on Storm Warning. Oliver knew that Derek had "it", and he unselfishly gave up his own slide parts for the sake of the album. We met Derek in Fernandina Beach, Florida when he was 12. His dad Chris is a good friend of the band and brought young Derek out to hear us play. We made him wait till he was 13 to sit in, and he absolutely blew our minds. To this day, I've never seen a more seasoned player at that age. Oliver and Derek's great guitar playing really inspired me on stage and in the studio.
Another thing that Oliver brought to the album was in choosing songs for the album. In late 1993 he gave me a cassette tape of a song that he had demoed with drummer Donnie McCormick and bassist/vocalist Chris Long. Chris had written the song, and it was called "To The Devil For A Dime". I knew immediately that I wanted to record it, and that it would be the lead off cut on the album. Oliver also talked me into doing a couple of old Blues standards on the album. One was Jimmy Reed's "The Sun Is Shining" which featured my old running buddy from The Alley Cats Albey Scholl on harmonica. He nailed the Jimmy Reed style. The other song was the Junior Wells classic "Early In The Morning". That song almost didn't make it onto the album. It was the end of the session, and we had enough songs to call it an album. Oliver said "lets do that song we sometimes play at the end of the third set when it's a slow night". I started the song and despite the fact that the tape was running, no one in the control room paid much attention. When we went into our nightclub routine with it, going back and forth between loud and quiet playing, I could see Eddy Offord frantically working the Neve console. We knew we had something with it then. I'm so glad we recorded that song!
So that's pretty much the Storm Warning story. All the planets were in alignment for Storm Warning. The whole album was recorded and mixed in just 5 days, and remains my biggest selling and most critically acclaimed album. Sometimes I go to a bar and I hear a local Blues band doing "To The Devil For A Dime", "A Quitter Never Wins" (thanks again Jonny!!), or "Cut You Loose". It makes me both proud and nostalgic.
A great big Thank You to all involved in making of the record! Let's all do it again sometime!
Love,
Tinsley
www.tinsleyellis.com
