Feedback -- Mudcat -- November 1999

By Art "Corn Squeezins" Howard

As the club door closes behind you, you aren't sure you haven't walked through a break in the time-space continuum. Judging by the sound coming from the stage and the ambience in the room you're in a Biloxi juke joint in the 1940s where the band and the audience are in full swing. The dance floor is packed with dirty dancers, elbows and feet kicking to the beat. Onstage a guy who cuts a Jimmie Rodgers sort of figure is leading his band of gypsies through a set of plugged-in, turned-up Real Folk Blues. Just when you expect Rod Serling to step out from the shadows and welcome you to the musical twilight zone, the conga player steps out from behind his drums and busts an impressive rendition of the Beastie Boys' "No Sleep `Til Brooklyn." You're still in Atlanta, and it's still 1999.

So who the hell are these guys?

Meet Mudcat. With a washboard and a pawn shop acoustic guitar this blues-jam band is taking the music off the well-beaten path back to its roots, and forward into its future at the same time. "I'm white," founding member and vocalist/guitarist Danny "Mudcat" Dudeck says, "but I don't feel at all uncomfortable playing the music I'm playing." Their mix of blues, hillbilly and ragtime styles has won them fans with music lovers of every stripe. During a Mudcat show you're likely to hear anything, from a Mississippi John Hurt blues to Johnny and June Carter Cash's "Jackson" to their own crowd-pleaser, "Rattlesnake."

Live, Mudcat's trademark is taking the show off the stage and into the audience. Those standing in line to see their Blues Revival tours have been surprised to see the band performing on the sidewalk before heading inside and plugging in to continue the jam onstage. During the show the band often strolls through the audience, walks across tables, and leaps onto the bar to toast the crowd. Mudcat has toured extensively, including shows in Switzerland and Paris, and has shared stages with legends like Taj Mahal, Charlie Musselwhite, and Little Feat.

Though Danny "Mudcat" Dudeck's voice has a raspy South Georgia drawl, his tale begins in St. Paul, Minnesota. "My mother was born and raised in St. Paul, and I was born there. She was raised in a family where Mondays you do laundry and make meat loaf, Tuesdays you scrub the floors and make chicken...One day she was down there scrubbing the floor - I guess this was a Tuesday -- and she thought, 'What is it going to say on my tombstone? That I had clean floors?' So when I was eight she snatched me up and went down to Tybee Island (a bohemian enclave off the coast of Savannah)."

Growing up on Tybee Island Dudeck discovered a love for the stage and a flair for theater, and was later admitted to the prestigious National Shakespeare Conservatory in New York. Just after this promising start to an acting career he met a crossroads, so to speak, and decided the theater world wasn't for him after all. "I was looking around at these (theater) people and you never knew when they were being real. They were acting all the time, being real hyper, so I decided I didn't want to be around those people the rest of my life. I mean I love actors, but..."

During high school a friend had given Dudeck a guitar and now, having left the conservatory, he took up the life of a street performer. "In New York I saw people playing and singing in the street, so my first performance was in a subway station in New York." From there he worked as a street musician in Houston and New Orleans before settling in Atlanta in 1989.

In Atlanta Dudeck scored a day job with Greenpeace and left music behind. After a few years the music bug bit again and he returned to performing with his friend, Evan Frayer, on washboard. After knocking around the few blues clubs that existed in Atlanta in the late '80's the duo found a home at the Northside Tavern. The new home was less than cozy. "When we first started playing there the place had a reputation for shootings and stabbings. If you called 911 the police wouldn't come. People have died in there, or were wounded there and later died!" he recalls. The owner of the dangerous little bar thought live music might offset the sounds of gunfire and the screams of the bleeding wounded, and Dudeck and Frayer were hired. Over the next year the Northside's dangerous clientele were scared away by partying engineering students from nearby Georgia Tech, Mudcat evolved into a full band with a rapidly growing fan base, and the Northside Tavern was named "Best Blues Club" by Creative Loafing.

Though the stage may hold any number of jamming guests the band that is now Mudcat consists of Dudeck (guitar/dobro, lead vocals), Lori Beth Edgeman (vocals, tap shoes), Chris "Spidermonkey" Uhler (congas, washboard, spoons and skillets), Jon "Boom" Schwenke (bass guitar, backing vocal), and Janet Daniel (drums).

Most recently Mudcat has toured the U.S. with the Music Maker Blues Revival Tour, a package show assembled by the Music Maker Relief Foundation (www.musicmaker.org). Taj Mahal, a good friend of the band, is also part of the tour, and various dates feature Neil Pattman, Cootie Stark, Beverly "Guitar" Watkins, and a host of other blues acts, many of whom are beneficiaries of the Music Maker foundation.

Dudeck is on the board of the foundation and explains its purpose, "We help elderly musicians (55 and older) in Southern musical traditions who live at the poverty level. Actually our criteria is higher than the poverty level because frankly we think the poverty level according to the U.S. government is unrealistic (Music Maker's criteria is $18,000). We help them with tour support, create gigs for them, and make sure they have a decent instrument to continue their art. We also help them with daily needs and emergency needs." Dudeck cites the example of North Carolina musician George Higgs. "His house has been underwater ever since Hurricane Floyd went up there. He lost everything. So when we played Indianapolis it was $10 at the door, a couple thousand people there, and every dime from the door went to this man's recuperation." Shows from the House of Blues in Chicago to B.B. King's blues club in Los Angeles have all sold out, with hundreds of would-be audience members turned away at every stop.

Just in time for the tour the band has produced a new self-released CD called Mud, Sweat, and Beers. Another CD featuring more of new addition Lori Beth Edgeman is almost finished. The band's first-ever CD, Worldwide Mud, has long been sold out.

Back in Atlanta the band periodically organizes the Giving It Back festivals, 24-hour "Jerry Lewis telethons" of blues that raise money for elder local blues artists.

So what makes a Mudcat show so fun to see? Uhler theorizes, "I think a lot of it has to do with the passion we put into it and the chemistry between us. We just have a lot of fun. And we believe if you're paying good money to see a show, you deserve to get your money's worth."

"We just love being together and playing music together," Dudeck adds. "If there's been a mix-up and everybody thinks we're supposed to be there another night and there's two people in the audience, we give them just as hard a show. We put just as much of ourselves into it." This performance ethic has taken Dudeck and company from street corners to performing in front of thousands. The past two years they've performed before 30,000 people at the annual Stone Mountain Chili Cook Off. What has the transition been like?

"To be honest it feels the same, only a lot better," Dudeck says. "I've always gotten joy from the music, and to have thousands of people that are throwing their love and energy at you, singing along and dancing...these people are having a good time. That's something that won't go away. We're creating something positive in the world. But I loved it when there was no stage and there were drunk rednecks falling on you while you played."

Mudcat usually ends their shows with Dudeck telling the crowd, "We love you unconditionally!" Judging by the response, their audiences feel the same way about them.

The Blues Revival Tour comes to Atlanta's Cotton Club

Nov. 20, 1999.

Visit Mudcat's Web site at www.mudcatblues.com.