- Big Bad Sun

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- Prospects

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Native New Yorker, long time studio musician and session guitarist Chris Juergensen is in constant demand as a sideman, front man and clinician. He has played sold out venues as intimate as the world famous Blue Note and as large as the Long Beach Auditorium.

As a studio guitarist, sideman, frontman, session player and clinician, native New Yorker Chris Juergensen's guitar playing has taken him around the world. After being invited to be a faculty member at the prestigious Musician's Institute in Los Angeles for six years he left the states to become the Director of Education at Tokyo School of Music in Japan where he currently resides.

His newest CD, "Prospects" has been critically acclaimed throughout the world. Chris has played and/or recorded with such artists as Lincoln Goines (Mike Stern), Richard Hartley and Soul Resurrection, Toss Panos (Steve Vai, Mike Landau), Billy Sheehan (Mr. Big), Keith Wyatt (The Blasters), Ralph Humphrey (Manhattan Transfer, Frank Zappa, Wayne Shorter), Kim Plainfield (Tania Maria, The Pointer Sisters), Jay Dibbs (Vanessa Williams), Steve Bailey (The Rippingtons, Dizzy Gillespie), Jennifer Batten (Jeff Beck, Michael Jackson), Mike Shapiro (Al Jarreau, Sergio Mendes), Jerry Watts (Andy Summers, Billy Idol), Russel Ferante (Joni Mitchell, Yellowjackets), Kevyn Lettau, Hussain Jiffry (Robben Ford, Michael MacDonald, Whitney Houston, Chaka Khan), The Hideous Sun Demons.

Big Bad Sun - Traditional in nature, contemporary in sound, "Big Bad Sun" is a bold departure from the blues you may be familiar with. Passionate guitar playing, good story telling plus crystalline production makes this CD destined to become a true modern day Blues classic. Beautifully recorded and performed, guitar lovers will want to make this CD a part of their collection. "Big Bad Sun" was chosen as the music for the annual, five day Toofy Film Festival held on September 14-18th in Boulder Colorado.

"With my newest release, 'Big Bad Sun' I tried to create a type of blues that is modern but seeped in tradition, contemporary in sound, traditional by nature. I paid attention the rules of the blues but bent them ever so slightly to accommodate my musical heritage and influences. Although I am a guitarist, in regards to the blues, I don't consider the guitar as important as the story that I tell."

"The misconception that the blues has to be dark is plain wrong; my one and a half year old daughter Melissa proves this. She came down to the studio during the "Big Bad Sun" recording session. We where mixing "Come Out Baby" when she came in the control room and as soon as I put her down, she started laughing and dancing, spinning like a ballerina. It's true, the Blues can be dark and brooding but they can also be uplifting and fun. All of today's music was born from the Blues and for that exact reason everyone, although they may not realize it, is familiar with it. When done right, it welcomes the listener with its familiarity, the familiarity of its form, harmony and subject matter. As I said, the Blues is about stories. After all, it is the music of the common man and must, by its nature, deal with his life and times, and mine." -Chris Juergensen, July 12th. 2005.

Tracks:

1. "Sweet Melissa" - Written for my beautiful daughter Melissa. Symbolism is not big with the Blues but it shows up in this song. My constant traveling leaves my lonely for the company of my daughter. One night I watched the moon sail across the nighttime sky, sinking in the west. Being in Tokyo, I thought to myself that it is pointing me towards my home, the country of my birth. I play with the form a bit with this tune also, making it a ten instead of twelve bar blues.

2. "Come Out Baby" - Song about a man waiting outside for his woman to come out. There's a party going on and he grows impatient. He says; "Come on Baby, put on your dress and fix your hair." He wants to dance but she is inside doing whatever women do to get ready. Something I've experienced ever since my first date.

3. "Big Bad Sun" - The title cut of the CD, a song about insomnia, the kind of sleep disorder a woman can give you. A slow blues in G, the first key I ever played the Blues in at twelve years old. G is the best key for the Blues because of all the open strings you can use. A lot of players think I'm using some kind of open tuning but I'm not, I'm just making a guitar sound like a guitar.

4. "House On The Hill" - A song about financial misfortune, something most musicians know about.

5. "Tell Me a Story" - Probably the most traditional of all the cuts on the CD, I had the engineer mix it fairly dry.

6. "Love Dog" - Originally written and played on an acoustic guitar, I re-arranged this song for an ensemble. The vocals double the guitar and I play the intro on an acoustic guitar. The lyrics wrote themselves and reflect what my wife once told me when I asked her why she married me; "I couldn't escape" she said.

7. "Revelation" - My forte, the medium blues shuffle in E.

8. "Some Sympathy" - Just a jam song, really. I played a way too long solo on the end so I had the mastering engineer do a fade.

9. "Bug Lips" - The only instrumental on the CD, "Bug Lips" is a wacky song. People say it describes my personality perfectly but it was really written for a good friend who I affectionately names "June Bug". For those who know my playing, this cut is more of what they would expect of me.

"Prospects" was recorded in two days using a different set of players for each session. The whole thing went down pretty much live without any punch-ins so the CD has the vibe of a live record but maintains a crystalline quality throughout because of the fully digital recording. I mostly used my Warmoth run stereo through a Fender Dual Professional and a Peavy solid state amp.

1. Prospects - This song is based on only three chords; Emaj, Cmaj and Amaj. The first section is based on descending E lydian chords starting with the root on top; 1-7-6-5-#4-3-2-1. The head is all based on an A lydian theme with the exception of the one bar of 3/4 which changes to Cmaj for a brief moment before returning to the E lydian intro. The solo section is a vamp of Amaj-Cmaj-Emaj for four bars a piece.

2. When Love Greets You - A blatant love song. Took the name from a line in a poem I once read. "Love comes and greets you and the loveless have nothing to say", or something like that. The first three chords; Fmin9-C/E-Ebmin9 creates a nice chromatic bass movement to set things going. Dale James plays beautiful bass throughout the song and the solo by Touru Nakashima is soulful. I made Tetsuya Hoshiyama get out the brushes for this tune.

3. Extraordinaire - I wrote this song for Don Coen, the guy who got me started on the guitar when I was twelve. He lived in the same neighborhood as me and asked me over to his house one day after school. He took out this guitar and played some blues for me. It left such an impression on me that I asked him to teach me how to do it. He would eventually get me to go to lessons every Saturday with him. We would jam the blues after school everyday. It kept me out of trouble. He turned me on to Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Led Zepplin. Without him my life would be completely different today. People always ask me how I got started on the guitar and his name always comes up. I started thinking about him a lot and decided to look for him to thank him. What I found out is that he had died. I was deeply saddened because I never got the chance to to thank him. I named the song "Extraordinaire" for him because he had the habit of answering his phone; "Don Coen, Extaraordinaire !" He turned me on to the Jeff Beck "Wired " record which contains Jeff's version of the Mingus tune "Good-bye Porkpie Hat". I fashioned this song after that one as my way of thanking Don. It is basically a minor blues in C with the standard Cmi7-F9-Ab9-G7#9 turnaround bringing it back around.

4. Shepherd Moon - I used a tap delay for an unusual effect on my guitar. I liked the way the band opened up on my solo. They took my rhythmic cue and took off. I think I must have played for three or four minutes at the end so I had the engineer do a fade out because it was way too long. By the way, the Shepherd Moon is one of the small moons that orbits the planet Saturn. It keeps all the other smaller bits and fragments orbiting from floating out in space. Without the Shepherd Moon you would have a Saturn with no rings.

5. Absolution - Got the idea for this song from Miles Davis' "Nefertiti" record. Gotta be honest, even though I wrote it, this is a rough song to solo over. Its full of odd times and strange changes. E7#9-Bmin11-Gmin11-B7(#5,#9)-Bmin11-Eb7(#5,#9)-C#69. I like to drink Absolute vodka when I need a solution to a problem, that's where the name comes from.

6. Where Spirits Dance - Wrote this song for my wife. The band takes a big breath before my solo that lets me make a big entrance.

7. Papa Legba - Dedicated to the guy that Robert Johnson sold his soul to in order to become who he became. You know the story, you go down to the crossroads and all that. It is a vamp in A with the exception of the standard blues turnaround: A7-F#7#9-B13-E7#9. Dale plays some nutty bass that cracks me up to listen too. A fun guy to play with!