ROBERT CROTTY AND DAVID BOBO LAVORGNA: Goin' Down the Wire

Robert Crotty and David Bobo Lavorgna

Goin' Down the Wire

© 2005 Robert Crotty

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New, strikingly unique versions of American blues and folk, some you know and some you don't.

tracks

1 Evil
2 Skin and Bones
3 Kind Hearted Woman
4 What I Say
5 When Things Go Wrong
6 Walkin' Blues
7 Rocky Racoon
8 Going Down the Road
9 Double Trouble
10 Matchbox
11 Hootchie Cootchie Man
12 Watch Out
13 Diddy Wa Diddy
14 Down In The Flood

notes

"Over the years I've seen him dress up standards on the acoustic with delicately placed ninth chords or inspired slide playing. You carry the sounds of those performances with you."
New Haven Arts critic Paul Bass

When two natural born musicians have been playing together for forty-two years you get live sets like this one.


Recently I went out as sound man for Robert and Bobo to a little Irish pub called Ceili's in Guilford, Connecticut. After a couple numbers, David introduced himself and Robert. He said, "Robert and I started playing together about forty-two years ago in the Crotty's basement, and I guess we've never stopped." I started thinking about that, and how true it is, and how little we really let out about Robert with his first CD Baby release called "Stay Away From The Windows".
Robert has been playing the guitar since he was six years old. He met David Michael Bobo Lavorgna when he was ten or eleven. Bobo says, "We grew up in different families together." Today David is known as "the busiest bass player in Connecticut." He has played with several bands in the last three decades, and you would enjoy the history provided on puddingbench.com, Dave's website. (look in the links section)
Bobo plays pounding electric bass, richly varied acoustic bass, and inspired stand-up bass. He plays with Swing 39, a Django inspired and prolific jazz trio, available on CD Baby. He plays with Michael Capezzone, a popular Connecticut singer/writer/player who is well known to CD Baby. Bobo plays every week with the 1917 jazz band and can also be heard on CD Baby in support of the great singer song-writer Anne Marie Menta. I'm proud to be able to say that , as busy as he is, David still loves to play with Robert. Watching them play together is fantastic; they don't even need to talk as they string song after song in awesome sets. I listen to them play almost every day. Together they are the tightest guitar/bass duo in blues today.
Robert spent most of his early years listening to and playing acoustic blues and he has never been a stranger to the acoustic scene, but when in 1973 he put his first working band together with our bass playing older brother Edward, it was an explosively energetic electric five-piece rockin' blues band called SwampRat. Edward Crotty played bass, Robert Crotty and Jon Truelson played guitar, Rob Mitchell played drums and vocalist Pat Clouthier sang her heart out. People would run screaming into the streets and the band dominated the New Haven music scene through the seventies. In the eighties they became Rokabit and survived Disco and then Punk. In the nineties, natural attrition trimmed the band to an extremely tight trio called simply The Robert Crotty Band. Long time friend and jammer Paul Vitelli took over on bass and Rob Mitchell, the original SwampRat drummer continued. This is the best way to hear Robert's electric work. They won best blues band in local polls year after year. At Toad's Place, the legendary New Haven rock stop, they opened for every major blues band that came through town, requested by Johnny Winter, playing in front of B.B. King, John Mayall, John Hammond, Koko Taylor, Albert Collins and the man himself Mr. Albert King, who took enough of a liking to Robert to ask him up on stage and who had the biggest hand I have ever shaken. I remember waiting for the great Roy Buchanan to get out of his limo in front of a gig and who gets out with him but my brother Robert; the rest of us still had to pay. Robert just turned fifty-one on this past May 7th, 2005. I think that he is still the most awesome electric blues guitarist working, but that might just be me. We will be sending out electric discs on CD Baby.
As good as Robert's electric work is, it has always been his acoustic performances that continue to ring in a listener's head. You will be hearing that voice and those guitar licks days later. That's what everybody who hears him tells me. When we decided to go with CD Baby we found that we had so much material recorded that we didn't know where to start. Our decision to start with "Stay Away From The Windows" was made because those recordings show Robert's dedication to and masterful approach to true Delta blues. They exemplify the spirit of American folk. They represent one great way to experience Robert, "at home", all by himself, "crusty and hell-bent". There are guitar sounds on that album that you just don't hear anymore; you'd need to go back to Muddy's early stuff to match it.
The acoustic gig at Ceili's with Bobo reminded me that it was time to move on and show a wider audience the Robert and Bobo shows. This disc, "Goin' Down The Road", is one live set of songs in the order they were done that night, no additions or subtractions. It is one of many recordings we have done but it is one of my favorites, tight unique versions of classic material. David was playing his stand-up bass. I love the sounds he gets out of it and the way he pick's up the bow when it's just right. This is the disc we have been bringing with us to Robert and Bobo shows, in case anybody wants to bring one home.
We will be going back to Ceili's to record more Robert and Bobo music. Listen to this one and I'm certain that you will enjoy their work as much as the people here in Southern Connecticut do.
Thanks to CD Baby.
Tim Crotty

reviews

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  • Amazing, locked-in, the real deal
    author: Blues in the Night

    This album could have been recorded in the 50's, 60's, 70's...it's hard to tell. Crotty and Lavorgna are so locked into each other's playing - it makes this cd an incredible blues find...it's the real deal...a must for any blues collection.

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