Out of the Blue
Out of the Blue
Life on the Road with Muddy Waters
Out of the Blue: Life on the Road with Muddy Waters begins with a moment lifted from a young musician’s dreams. Brian Bisesi, a guitarist barely out of his teens, is invited on stage to fill in for a missing member of the band backing blues legend Muddy Waters. This life-changing quirk of fate opens the door into a world of challenges and opportunities that Bisesi, an Italian American reared in the comforts of a New York City suburb, can barely imagine. Despite their differences, Bisesi and Waters hit it off, and what might have been a one-night stand turns into a career. From 1978 to 1980, Bisesi works for Waters as his road manager, bean-counter, and at times his confidant, while often sitting in with the band.
Bisesi’s years with the band take him to Europe, Japan, Canada, and across the United States as Waters tours—and parties—with rock gods like Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, a Beatle, and the gamut of musicians who came of age with Waters and introduced a younger generation to the blues. In Out of the Blue, Bisesi captures it all: from the pranks and tensions among bluesmen enduring a hard life on the road, to observations about Waters’s technique, his love of champagne and reefer, his eye for women, and his sometimes-acrid views of contemporary music. Bisesi has sharp insights into the ill-conceived management decisions that led to the dissolution of Waters’s longest-serving band in June of 1980. This book will rivet, amuse, and occasionally infuriate blues aficionados. It is a raucous and intimate portrait of the blues scene at a pivotal moment in time that fascinates music historians and blues fans alike.
It is not Muddy’s biography but adds much to his story. It is clear that Brian has a great affection for his one-time boss and was close enough to eat ribs cooked by Muddy in his kitchen. Ultimately this is the story of a young man living his dream, not without bumps in the road of course, but his dream nonetheless.
In the new book Out of the Blue: Life on the Road with Muddy Waters, he provides the reader a fly-on-the-wall perspective of traveling with one of the most lauded Blues legends… Bisesi leads the reader on a chronological journey through two and a half years of touring with one of the all-time greats.
I owe everything I know about the blues to Brian. We sat for hours in his room as he played DJ and hipped me to all things Chicago. I didn’t know then, but he was setting me up for life.
If you love blues and Muddy Waters, you’ll love reading this book as much as I have. I ain’t lyin’!
In Out of the Blue, self-styled ‘itinerant blues musician’ Brian Bisesi offers an insider’s view of Muddy Waters, his musicians, and life on the road in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Mexico. Affiliated with Waters from 1978 into 1980—at times as road manager and guitarist—his privileged perspective permitted him to chronicle Waters and such sidemen as Luther ‘Guitar Junior’ Johnson, Calvin ‘Fuzzy’ Jones, and Pinetop Perkins. Cameos by Jeff Beck, Pattie Boyd, Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac, George Harrison, the Rolling Stones, and Big Joe Williams enhance the text. In sum, this well-written, perceptive, and compelling narrative is mandatory reading for anyone interested in Waters specifically and the blues generally.
Brian Bisesi went on from touring with Muddy Waters to play across the US, Europe, and Canada with blues masters Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson, J. B. Hutto, and others. He also toured and coproduced albums for Waters’s son, Big Bill Morganfield. Blues Explosion, recorded with Hutto, won the Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album. Bisesi’s writing has appeared in the magazines Big City Rhythm & Blues and Rhythms.
