Barry Sides: Home
Barry Sides and the Shore
Barry Sides and bassist Kenny Shore first met in Gainesville Florida in 1977. “I was playing a happy hour gig in the Backstage Bar at the Great Southern Music Hall. In the crowd I see this giant head of hair and foo manchu mustache digging my music” says Sides. The hair and mustache belonged to Kenny Shore, a New York native who like Sides, had grown tired of the winters up north and had relocated to the sleepy college town of Gainesville Florida. “During my break Kenny introduced himself and told me his band, the Archer Road Band, was playing in the Backstage Bar that night after my gig. So I hung out and listened. They were great. They were really great players and were very funny in an educated kind of way. I dug that. I became a fan and we all became fast friends and played a lot of the same clubs and festivals”
In 1989 Sides was asked by a concert promoter to open for George Thorogood. “Out of the blue I get this phone call from a promoter and he asked if I was available to open for Thorogood. This guy had heard a tape of me singing Bo Diddley’s “Who do You Love” and I guess he figured I had this kick ass band. The tape was of me sitting in and singing with a kick ass band. I didn’t have a band. Anyway, I tell the promoter that I will call him back after I check my booking calendar. Hell, I didn’t have a booking or a calendar. What I did have was a bunch of phone numbers of my favorite local musicians. So I called Mike Cripe who was my favorite guitar player, called my favorite drummer Larry Thompson, and called my favorite bass player Kenny Shore. I get these guys on the phone and say “Ah, so you want to join my band? Our first gig will be playing in front of thousands of people opening for George Thorogood”. So later that afternoon I call the promoter back and tell him “Yea, I guess my bands available”. The promoter says “What do you call your band”? I’m thinking “Oh shit! I gatta name it too”! So I just blurt out “Oh, we’re the, um, the Barry Sides Blues Band”. So that’s how my blues band got started and how Kenny Shore and I started playing together. Not long after that first show we added saxophone player Bruce Shepard to the band.
This band was good. I mean really good. I was without a doubt the weakest link in this bands chain but I was a great promoter and also surrounded myself with amazingly talented musicians. I was as my guitarist Mike Cripe lovingly called me “An evil genius”
So after the Throgood show I found it pretty easy to book our band in the local clubs. It was like we had this instant following. People were standing in line to get in to see us. I wasn’t fooled. I was the front man, the singer. People were coming to see these other guys in the band. I mean Mike Cripes guitar work and Bruce Sheppard’s sax playing were so superb and the rhythm section of Kenny Shore and Larry Thompson was just so tight. Goddamn it was a great band!
So I’m buying a lawnmower at Sears and the guy at the register sees my name on my credit card and he says “Hey, you’re Barry Sides. I’ve been looking for you. I’m promoting a concert on campus with Paul Shaffer and Stanley Jordon and I want your band on the show as well”. That’s how it went. Shows were just falling in my lap. We opened for BB King, Leon Russell, John Mayall, Johnny Winter, Koko Taylor, the Radiators, and even Bob Dylan. We also did about three or four shows with a twelve year old guitar player named Derek Trucks. We would be in the dressing room doing what bands do in the corner of the dressing room and little Derek Trucks would be in the other corner of the dressing room doing his math homework. Derek is now an official Allman Brother and is one of Eric Clapton’s favorite guitar players. My biggest regret of that time is that my band never recorded an album. Maybe it’s best this way. In the mid nineties my guitar player Mike Cripe moved to Tampa . I just didn’t want to replace him so I said that’s it. End of band.
After the band ended I went back to what I had always done which was to sit on a stool with my acoustic guitar. But this time I brought my bassist Kenny Shore along. Kenny and I did a duo for a couple of years and opened shows for John Mayall, Johnny Winter, Jessie Collin Young, John Hammond, and others. Eventually Kenny got busy playing in a couple of other bands and I carried on playing solo. I’ve been doing the solo thing for about ten to twelve years.
Then last year Kenny sat in with me at a festival. We hadn’t played together in at least ten years. We sounded great. It was like we had never stopped playing together. Kenny is a great bass player but it is his harmony singing that really knocks me out. He just knows my cadence and phrasing so well. So after that festival I had Kenny join me for a gig the following week. Now we’ve been playing together again for just over a year.
So there is a little history behind my friendship with bassist and harmony singer Kenny Shore and myself. If you get a chance come on out and see a couple of old dogs doing some old songs…
Thanks’
Barry Sides
New Record in 2010
Flying Pig Records anounnces plans to record a new Barry Sides album this year. Lis and Lon Williamson have been secured to produce and engineer the new project. Lon and Lis Williamson (www.elisebethwilliamson.com) will also perform on the album as will guitar virtuoso Gabe Valla. The record will be a more acoustic based record with mandolins, fiddles, acoustic bass and the like..."I have a handfull of new songs and others I am trying to finsh. I can't wait to get back in the studio", says Sides.