Like so many touring musicians, Rick Holmstrom found himself at a loss last spring when his chance to play live shows was taken away from him. While the guitarist/bandleader of Mavis Staples’ group enjoyed the time spent with his wife and two daughters, he also struggled with all the free hours. “I was so used to flying out constantly doing gigs with Mavis and work, work, work,” Holmstrom told American Songwriter in a recent interview. “All of sudden, it’s like how many times can I do the dishes and sweep the floor and walk the dog to make myself feel useful?”
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It didn’t take too long, however, before Holmstrom turned crisis into opportunity by putting together See That Light, his first solo album in nine years. “I did have a bunch of songs that were in various states of readiness,” he says of the process. “Because we were working so much and travelling so much with Mavis, it just seemed the years were piling up where I hadn’t made a record. After missing a sense of purpose, or feeling like, geez, I gotta find something to do here, finally once we did start recording, it all started to make sense and come together pretty quickly.”
On See That Light, Holmstrom hooked up with bass player Gregory Boaz and drummer Steve Mugalian for some socially-distanced sessions that focused on sleek blues-rock grooves. But the lyrics steer clear of tried-and-true blues idioms, instead relying on honest confessionals and heartrending character sketches.
“I think there’s nothing worse than hearing a modern blues recording where someone is talking about trains or things that were common in the forties or fifties blues lyrics,” Holmstrom says of his approach. “Sometimes those things work. But I’d rather use them in ways that feel up to date or maybe feel a little bit tongue in cheek. There are a lot of ways that you can spice up that idiom without resorting to just redoing what was common in the old days.
“I spent two decades touring and/or recording with traditional blues artists like Smokey Wilson, William Clarke, Rod Piazza, Johnny Dyer, Jimmy Rogers, Billy Boy Arnold and R.L. Burnside. I have a deep appreciation for blues and the original artists who created it. But whenever possible, in my music, I try to make a left turn where others might go right.”
That also extended to the music he was conjuring with Boaz and Magoulian, which took a more minimalist approach to roots genres. “There’s a reason why 12-bar blues progressions work, both rhythmically and melodically, but I think it can become rote for the modern listener,” Holmstrom says. “At the same time, if you change it too much, it loses its beauty. So I’m always asking myself: ‘Do we really need to go to the four chord now? Does this song really need 12 bars? Does this song need a turnaround, or can we skip it? Why can’t we put this thing with that thing?’
“Of course, the jury’s still out whether or not it works, but I hate what modern blues has become to the average listener. That sort of sports bar blues thing. And especially the guitar solo as an athletic event. I hate that. Call it sacrilege if you want, but I’m just trying to keep some of those clichés out of my stuff. Ideally, we strip it down to the nitty gritty, down to the essential elements, where the groove and the story coexist without any bullshit.”
Holmstrom also changes things up on the album from time to time to keep things from getting too somber, especially with this immediate contender for Song Title of the Year: “I’m An Asshole.” “That’s a question that I’ve had in three other interviews,” he laughs when asked if the song was based on anyone in particular. “No, that was based on a composite figure of a couple of assholes that I know. That’s one that I actually just had a lot of fun writing. And when it was done and the record was about to come out, I actually called my mother and I called Mavis when it was going to be on the record and said, ‘I’m kind of writing a couple songs on the record that have some characters who are struggling. Mom, Mavis, I’ve got a bit of a potty mouth on this record.’ The song wouldn’t have worked if I said, ‘I’m a jerk.’”
Even though the songs were written sporadically during Holmstrom’s travels, a through-line began to emerge. “I might be on a bus on the Bob Dylan tour with Mavis and I’m sitting up front with the bus driver and I’d get a verse and a chorus one day that way,” he explains of how he wrote the record. “And then on an airplane trip, I’d get another verse and a chorus. Maybe a chord progression that I worked out in a hotel room. When the pandemic hit, I was corralling those things, looking at them, practicing them and trying to finish them. And then another bunch came together during the sessions. That’s when I started to notice there is a little bit of a theme: These characters are struggling. Then it was about trying to figure out how those little batch of characters that are struggling can become a record that has a thread.”
To help give See That Light a bit of a hopeful spin, Holmstrom settled on the dreamy “Joyful Eye” as the closer. It’s a song he wrote while he was hustling to gather his gear at home before a local show and was confronted by a question from his daughter Ellie, who painted the artwork for the album. “I’m running out between the house and the garage getting my stuff together, and she points up at the sky and says, ‘Daddy, what’s that light?’ And I pick her up and we’re looking at a star or something and I’m telling her, ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure what that is. I think it might be a star, but it could be a planet, it could be a lot of things.’ You know what kids are like: ‘You mean you don’t know?’ They think you know everything, and you’re trying to explain to them, ‘I don’t really know, honey. It could be this, it could be that,’ shrugging my shoulders. And she jumps back down and runs in the house. As I’m getting my gear ready, I’m jotting down an idea for a song.”
“Fast forward a few hours later to the end of the night at the gig, I put this little two-chord progression thing together and stated playing that. I might have had a vodka in me, possibly. At the end of the night, the bass player is looking at me saying, ‘What was that thing you were singing? That was cool.’ And that’s always the good signal. It’s a lot better when things happen that way then, ‘I’m going to sit down this morning at 8:30 AM and write a song.’”
Holmstrom is thrilled for the release of See That Light, the kind of effortlessly accomplished and affecting record that makes you hope he won’t wait so long before his next solo album. But regardless of how it’s received, just making the album gave him an emotional and psychological boost for which he is extremely grateful. “For me, and I know for Greg and Steve, they mentioned it to me too, it was a good feeling to get back working on something,” Holmstrom says. “It gave us a sense of purpose, a feeling of getting something created. It’s a really wonderful feeling when you go into a studio and you start the day with nothing and then six hours later, you’ve got three, four songs. It feels like you made something and you can come home.
“As musicians, when your work is the first thing that goes and the last thing that comes back, it’s a daunting, depressing, horrible feeling to know for that many months that you can’t really do what you’re used to doing. All of a sudden just to have an outlet and be able to create something and say, ‘All right. We’re back.’ Even if it’s just making a recording, the feeling was huge for us.”
