|
|
Tony Braunagel Drummer and Producer |
|
At this stage of his career it is difficult to tell if
drummer, producer and songwriter Tony Braunagel has a preference in terms of the
various aspects of his career, as he appears to get equally juiced, whether he
is talking about his current gig, playing with the Robert Cray band or he is
relating his experience producing an album for the Kansas based Blues band
Trampled Under Foot. Braunagel whose drumming and producing career also includes
working with Eric Burdon both in the studio and for live performances, as well
as several years spent touring with Bonnie Raitt, tours with Rickie Lee Jones,
Bette Midler, Etta James and many other notable artists, got his start in the
music business in Houston, Texas where he grew up and took his first paying gig
as a drummer at the age of fifteen.
During his career, he has called New York City, London, England and now Los
Angeles his home. We caught up with Tony Braunagel after he had finished
recording and mixing his third record with Eric Burdon and in between
performances with Robert Cray. “The other two (records) got great critical
acclaim, but I don’t think that we were with a very good label and they could
not get out and promote them, yet we still got great international reviews for
(the records). (This one) is autobiographical and it is about where Eric is at
right now and what he thinks about what is going on. He has always been very
politically and socially conscious. The record has a lot of that in there. He
has never been able to be an artist and not have a voice. He always had a voice
from the beginning, even when he sang, “House of the Rising Sun,” and I think
soon after that the world noticed that Eric has a pretty strong voice. He is a
very bright man, clever and well read. He has a lot to say and we have some
great discussions. I am really enjoying my relationship working with him and we
get along really, really well. We are soulful friends and he respects my input
and because I have been given the trust of someone who is as great an icon as he
is, I treat it with great respect. We do the best that we can,” he says.
Tony Braunagel also gets pumped when talking about
performing with the Robert Cray band. “Robert is a wonderful man and he is an
incredible singer and guitarist. Every single night this man works his butt off.
Every tune he sings on ten and plays on ten. He never phones it in. He treats
his band members really great and I really enjoy his music. We are going to make
a new record in the new year and I am looking forward to that and hopefully give
him a song or two. I had a co-write on the last one (album). I am really happy
and honored to be playing with him right now.” When he was a teenager, Braunagel says,” (The music
scene) was strong in Houston at that time. Now when I look back at it I go, that
was a very strong place to grow up and for that particular type of music and
style that I play. There were great R&B African American and white Jazz
musicians all over town. There were some really great players. It is a shame
that Houston never became a center for music. If there had been someone with
good business sense and a vision, there is a chance that could have broken out,
not like Memphis maybe, because it doesn’t have quite the history of Memphis,
but it has a similar history. It has the diaspora of African Americans after
slavery and everything and all that reconstruction era and all of that. That
spread all over Texas and in Houston.
A lot of that music was just as strong as it was going up to the Delta in
some ways. You had Lightnin’ Hopkins in Houston and people like that. It was a
really great area to grow up in for that and I am really glad that I did,
because until this day, I still play like I come from Houston.
I have lived in New York and I lived in London for five years and I
managed to compete in that scene in the studio and as a live player. I have been
in Los Angeles since 1979, but I still have this thing about growing up in
Houston.” Bruanagel moved to New York City, as a self-confessed, longhaired hippie, pot smoking, vegetarian, before moving once again, this time to London, England with Island Records and he says that it was at that point that he knew he was going to be in music for the rest of his life. “I went to London, to be
with a keyboard player named Rabbit (John Bundrick), who now plays with The Who
and we grew up in Houston, sort of together on the other sides of town.
We grew up around the same music scene. Rabbit was an Island (Records)
artist and he wanted to do some recording with myself and Terry Wilson the bass
player who is also from our little clan down in Houston. We had done some
recording in the States when he was over for a short while when Terry and I were
out playing live with Johnny Nash (“I Can See Clearly Now”) and Rabbit was
invited to play in the band. Rabbit
had played on the early Johnny Nash recordings.
Rabbit wanted us to be part of this thing so he went to Chris Blackwell
at Island and Chris said if they can get their way over here, we will offer
support to see that you get done what you need to get done as an artist.
Officially, I was hired as a staff musician at Island Records with Terry
and we played for a lot of Island artists at the time. We did that for a while
and they gave us an apartment and a stipend and we were able to go out and do
other things if we wanted. I went there as a songwriter as well, because I was
writing songs for Johnny Nash’s publishing company. When we arrived in London,
it was at a time when English artists were looking for that soulful American
sound, so Terry and I would get hired to play on other people’s records and who
weren’t with Island. Towards the
unofficial tenure of the Island part of it Paul Kossoff (the band Free) was
looking for a band. Free had broken up and Bad Company had formed. He was
attracted to the soulful bluesy southern style that we (including Terry Wilson)
could (bring to) his music and how we could rock it as well, so we put a band
together called Backstreet Crawler with Paul Kossoff. We had a keyboard player
from Texas (Mike Montgomery) come over and play with us and there was a singer
from the north of England, from Newcastle named Terry Slesser. Island was
supposed to sign the first Backstreet Crawler record and they didn’t so we ended
up going to Atlantic (Records). Ahmet Ertegun was flying around trying to
convince us to sign with the label and we were being courted. We did get signed
for the first record. We were a big deal for Atlantic and they were willing to
spend a lot of money on us and make us the next Led Zeppelin, of stature, not
musically. Then there were problems. Back then drugs were pretty prevalent and
the drugs got kind of heavy. Paul had already had a problem with drugs and it
didn’t get any better. It worsened and worsened and finally Paul died one night
on a plane on a red eye from LA to New York. We had finished the recording of
the second record and it was going back to London to be mixed. Atlantic kind of
wanted to end it, because we couldn’t get a big name English guitar player. They
looked at the Mick Taylors (The Rolling Stones, John Mayall) and anybody else
that had sort of had a name in Rock ‘n’ Roll in England. What they had wanted
with the Kossoff situation was that he was the guy from Free who had a band, the
offshoot band. Back then that was very viable and was a lot more salable and
marketable than it is today. It kind of does not mean that much anymore. That
was the super group era when you could put together a bunch of names and
everybody bought the record, just because of all the names on it. Paul passed,
the second record came out and we got another guitar player.
He wasn’t a big name, but he was a great guitar player. We carried on.
Rabbit joined the band and we sent the other keyboard player home, so we had
three Texas guys and two English guys in the band. We got out of the contract
and we made two records on CBS and we did pretty well with them. We got some
radio airplay and we were an opening act for a lot of the big arena acts
throughout the United States. We did our own tour of theatres in England and we
sold them out. We had a good reputation. When I came back I brought (to the
United States) my style that I had developed as being a guy from Texas who had
moved to London for five years. It gave me a little bit different personality,
as a drummer, than most of the guys in LA. I am more multi-dimensional in some
ways,” he says. Tony Braunagel appears to
have fond memories of most if not all of the musicians and singers with whom he
has worked. He says of Etta James, “Etta just had her way of doing it and it was
just incredible.” Of Rickie Lee Jones, Braunagel says, “She was very Bohemian and very artsy. There was not a cookie cutter style going on here, you had to open up and loosen up. You had to really almost close your eyes and play it sometimes. You had to be aware of what was going on and you had to be watching her. The band was kind of large. It was a seven or eight piece band. I listened to some live stuff recently that someone sent to me and that band was a great band. I really enjoyed working with her. She is a very talented artist.” He says that Bonnie Raitt is like a sister to him and
that they are still really close. “When I landed that gig with her it was
another situation when it felt really natural. There were no auditions. I just
showed up one day at rehearsal and I was referred to her by a couple of other
musicians whom she really trusted. When the drummer chair opened, I went and
played and we all went okay that’s it.
Let’s learn the songs and move on from here.
Being with Bonnie for the seven or eight years that I was with her,
really gave me a chance to establish myself in Los Angeles.” Braunagel recalls working with Bette Midler, “Bette is a
trip. She is very, very talented and a great show person. She really knows how
to put it together and she never phoned it in. If you went to see her ten shows
in a row, you would think, how does she do this, because you always think, she
can’t do this every night. She can’t be this good every night, but she was and
she really was that consistent. She was a real sweetheart and she treated
musicians really well. Though she came off as a diva, she really showed the guys
a lot of respect, not only musically, but she had a lot of respect for them in
the business. She took good care of the musicians. I really respect her a lot.” Other artists for whom Tony Braunagel has produced
albums recently included Blues guitarist and singer – songwriter Billy Thompson
and Alligator Records artist Curtis Salgado. Whether he is sitting in the drummer’s chair or wearing
his producer’s hat two words come to mind when thinking of Tony Braunagel,
respected and very good. I guess that is three, but you get the idea.
|
Tony Braunagel and Eric Burdon first met when Braunagel
moved to Los Angeles during the 1980’s and he was asked to play on some demos
that Burdon had made for licensing to films. Later, Braunagel was asked to be
the drummer for Eric Burdon’s band when he toured in Europe and throughout the
United States. About ten years ago, the two were reunited shortly after Burdon
celebrated his 60th birthday. Burdon phoned Braunagel just to catch
up with his old friend and one thing led to another and soon Tony Braunagel
found himself producing an album for Burdon and when the drummer for Eric
Burdon’s band became ill, the two were reunited on the stage. 