Little Charlie and the Nightcats: Old school, new students

Little Charlie and the Nightcats take blues tradition to new crowds

By Mike Prevatt

Rick Estrin, vocalist and songwriter for the Sacramento-based blues/jazz outfit Little Charlie and the Nightcats, is struggling to find a scapegoat. The issue is songwriting in contemporary blues, and Estrin is juggling theories and asides when it comes to the dilemma facing the art of the song in his genre. And then, just like that, it hits him.

"Oh, okay, this is what ruined everything--the Beatles!" he says. "Prior to that, people would use outside material. The Beatles were great songwriters, but then it made it almost mandatory to write your material. You weren't legitimate if you didn't write your own stuff, it seemed. That spilled over into the blues. It's been like that ever since."

You'd think such a problem would force blues songwriters to get in gear, but it hasn't. Whereas pop acts have had to hone their craft, Estrin complains that a lot of his musical peers fail to edit themselves properly, or discern the good stuff from the bad. Or maybe he's just nostalgic for the sounds of the past. "Years ago, there seemed to be a lot more quality songs," he says. "I'm not too up on the contemporary scene; I don't really understand it." Bob Dylan couldn't have said it better.

Little Charlie and the Nightcats are pushing 30--guitarist Charlie Baty founded the act, and Estrin has been a member since 1976--and they are arguably as artistically relevant as they've ever been. Though they don't release albums with the frequency that they used to, they still prioritize performing high-energy concerts all over the world. They set themselves apart in many ways--notably, for Baty's distinctive guitar-playing style, which bridges rockabilly, jazz, jump and Chicago blues, and West Coast swing. And, Estrin, unlike most of his blues brethren, pens stories within his musical narratives, often to subversive effect.

"I prefer to think of it as irony, but it's probably satire," he says. "There are other songs that people think are funny, and I don't understand what they're talking about. And other songs are just serious. I know I'm a kind of peculiar person, so people won't always react they way I envision their response."

The band is gearing up for the release of its latest album, Nine Lives, the follow-up to 2002's well-received That's Big! And like its predecessor, Nine Lives was recorded to sound more classic and roots-based. Though the band is always evolving in its musicianship, it still finds a comfort in its aesthetic representation.

"I think the last two [albums] we've done in a way that was more suited to us," says Estrin. "We had an engineer who knows how to record things in a more traditional way. It sounds more real to me. Sometimes I think some of our stuff sounds overproduced. This is a lot more natural-sounding. Other than that, what we do, we have some different things on here, but mostly, whatever the individual songs requires or seems to dictate, that's what we've ended up doing."

Already, Little Charlie and the Nightcats have been previewing the new material on the road, which has proved to be an ego booster. While the band has remained a top attraction for blues lovers, in Europe and parts of Asia it's something of a crossover act. Even after nearly three decades of genre fusion and globetrotting and finding its audience niche, there's another generation to introduce itself to.

"Often we're playing to the same kind of audiences in the U.S.," says Estrin. "When we were in overseas in Poland and Russia and Turkey, there were completely different kinds of audiences--much younger, bigger audiences. And we had a good effect on them. We were on Russia MTV. It was a great trip. It showed me we still, with the right kind of exposure and maneuvering, we could put our popularity further."