The concert hosted by the Port City Blues Society featured an Oklahoma City-based four piece known as Dirty Red and the Soul Shakers.
This installment of the MK Distributors’ sponsored Blues by Budweiser Concert Series convened in RJ’s Sports Grill & Bar earlier this month.
In a pre-concert conversation, band front man and lead singer Eric McDaniel explained his venture into blues.
“I began playing with an Oklahoma blues legend, Dorothy Ellis, who was known as Miss Blues,” he said. “She was originally from Paris, Texas, and moved to Oklahoma in 1968. Ellis performed blues across eight decades. I was her harp player for four years. She was my mentor and helped form me into a bluesman.”
McDaniel introduced his fellow players Floyd “Fish” Parker on bass, Forrest Worrell on drums, and Brad West on lead guitar and occasional lead vocal.
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“This band has been together with a slightly different lineup for 12 years. We play a good mesh of original and Chicago-style electric blues,” he said.
McDaniel expounded on his profession.
“I’m a songwriter and I write most of our songs. Songwriting is the heart of all music and that’s where I begin,” McDaniel said.
“I sing most of our songs in a pretty gruff style. It’s something that goes well with the blues,” he said.
However, over the course of the three-hour show, he covered both ends of the spectrum, turning it down considerably at times to present a sweet soft vocal tone entirely opposite his typical “cigarettes and whiskey growl.”
With an 8 p.m. start time, Port City Blues Society master of ceremonies Dave Sadler introduced the band to a house full of blues lovers from across the state.
“These guys are a modern-day, powerhouse blues band built on old-school influences and a mutual love of the down and dirty style of blues,” Sadler said.
Leading into their first number, McDaniel quoted the saying, “It ain’t no fun when the rabbit’s got the gun.”
The quartet lived up to the hype with a solid rhythm section backing the fiery runs of Brad West’s custom built B.A. Ferguson guitar and the soul soaked harmonica and vocal musings of McDaniel’s animated, high energy stage presence.
Dirty Red and the Soul Shakers have three LP’s, including the rare and difficult to find first album, “Soul Shaking,” along with the most recent 10 song collection, “Cloudless Day” from 2019. A third live album was recorded at Toby Keith’s Hollywood Corners roadhouse in Norman, Okla.
Some of McDaniel’s original compositions performed by the group at RJ’s were, “Hot Sauce,” “Touch a Woman,” “Creepin’,” “Pretty Boy Blues,” “Sweet Potato Pie,” “Hard Bad Habit,” “New Day Dawning,” and “The Party Don’t Start ’til I Get Here.”
The Soul Shakers’ upcoming schedule will see them do a two week stint in Las Vegas followed by a swing through Arizona before returning to Oklahoma City.