Chris James and Patrick Rynn: Playing the Blues Is Serious Business

Chris James & Patrick Rynn at the Lucerne Blues Festival. Photo: Alex Rodriguez Cruz.

Chris James and Patrick Rynn took different paths to the blues. Chris has called both coasts home while Patrick was a Midwesterner born and bred. A chance meeting in Chicago changed their musical directions, and they’ve been sharing the road ever since. Music has always been a focal point, with both men being multi-instrumentalists, but their training ground in Chicago blues goes roots deep. With mentors like Junior Wells, Dave Myers, Detroit (Emery Williams) Jr., and Sam Lay, both Chris and Patrick honed their musical chops on stages across the Windy City, playing in those most hallowed of blues clubs and dive bars, with names like Checkerboard Lounge, B.L.U.E.S. on Halsted, Kingston Mines, Tip on Inn, and the Underground Wonder Bar.

Now, after more than three decades, the blues have taken Chris and Patrick around the world, touring Asia and Europe with Jody Williams and “five years, solid” on the road with Sam Lay. You’d think 30-plus years would be enough, but you’d be wrong. Like the song goes, “it’s blues tonight, Ben-Gay tomorrow.” The guys just finished a West Coast jaunt with friends Aki Kumar and June Core and continue to perform their brand of traditional and aggressive Chicago-based blues on a regular basis right here in Southern California.

When we caught up with them it was between an afternoon gig and a late night show in the Gaslamp district. Our conversation started with the early years and the fact that Chris seemed to have both California and North Carolina roots.
“I was born here!” (San Diego) Chris clarifies. “Half of my family says I was born in North Carolina, [but] my mom says was I was born here. There are claims I was born in Fort Bragg because my father was in the 101st Airborne, he was a paratrooper. My birth certificate says here, but I list North Carolina because it sounds better in a blues bio, doesn’t it? [laughing] My Grandmother on my mom’s side says her people were from Virginia, around Norfolk.”

Whereas Patrick’s roots are in Toledo, Ohio.
“Yes sir, Glass City, born and raised there. I’m only third generation in this country; my mother’s side goes way, way back to the Mayflower. The other side…great grandparents immigrated from Europe, Ireland, and Hungary.”

I asked Chris about musical backgrounds, Chris…were there lots of different instruments?
“I started playing the piano at four. Once I started listening to blues, R&B, and jazz, it became piano, harmonica, bass, and guitar. When I was a teenager I played mandolin, clarinet, and saxophone. I had the gift where I could pick something up and play it. I played the tenor banjo and the five-string banjo and when I was nineteen I started studying with older musicians and they were like, ‘look, pick something!’ Instead of being a jack of all trades, pick one thing and be the best at it.”

Does that diversity give you any kind of musical advantage when performing, or even just listening to music?
Chris laughs. “I feel more civilized because I played guitar last. You know, because guitar players sometimes feel the whole world revolves around them, and that was the last thing I learned how to play.”

Patrick interjects. “So now the whole world revolves around him.” [laughing]

Chris smiles. “I actually take pride in that because, no, I’m not just a guitar player…and the only reason I started playing the bass is because when I was playing with Tom (Tomcat Courtney) we lost the bass player and we needed a bass player, not a harmonica player. So, I was literally—if you want to play, you gotta play bass. So, I played bass and Fred Heath played guitar; then he would switch to bass and I would play harmonica. And we did that with Tom for years.”

Patrick, your road ran through the High School Jazz Ensemble?
“It’s kind of interesting how I got into that. I came up in classical music; my mother played the accordion professionally for awhile, my oldest brother played guitar, my oldest sister was a phenomenal singer, another sister played the viola, the next sister played the bass, and I just followed suit. When it was time to play music, okay pick something. When I got to high school, I was playing cello and the director was like, ‘Dude, I already have 13 cellists; your sister just graduated and she was a bass player, so you want to play bass?’ And that’s how it started. I don’t think I was 14 yet. The one bass player that was already there was two years older than I was, and he played in the jazz band. When he graduated, he said you’re playing in the jazz band. The best part of that for me was the exposure to improvisation. We read charts, but that was the beginning of it. So, I was introduced to Count Basie—standards and modern stuff at the time, like Spyro Gyra, we did a lot of ‘25 or 6 to 4’ [Chicago] and that stuff.”

Was this when you ran into Floyd “Candy” Johnson?
Patrick: “Yes. I ran track with a guy and his brother played trumpet; one day after school he said, ‘Hey man, you need to come with me to see this group, they play jazz and they don’t have a bass player.’ And he kept telling me about ‘Candy’ Johnson. I was young and not too smart on some levels, but I went, and it was Floyd ‘Candy’ Johnson. He asked if I had ever played jazz before and I said no, but I played classical music. He said good and pulled out this big, huge book full of all kinds of music charts and puts it down in front of me. He counts it off and I can read music and its 12 measures, 12 bars, and no repeat sign. We start playing and I play the 12 bars and stop playing. He gets about 25 bars into it, and he stops the whole band and says, ‘Boy, what are you doing?’ Well, I played what was written and there’s no repeat sign, I thought that’s what I’m supposed to do. He laughed, ‘Son, this is blues, you just keep going.’ The music was Duke Ellington’s ‘C Jam Blues.’ And that was my first introduction to the blues.”

Chris, how did the blues become your direction

Chris & Patrick on stage with Honeyboy Edwards & Michael Frank. Photo: Bengt Nyman.

“I was the youngest grandchild. My grandparents liked to dance; they were jitterbugs. They would go see Joe Liggins here in town, down in Ocean Beach, like where Winston’s is now; it was some other club where they would go down and dance to ‘Darktown Strutters’ Ball,’ so, literally, those 78s were around the house. I tell people I’m old enough that growing up there were 78s around the house. So, Count Basie and Joe Liggins, my grandmother really liked that kind of music, and they liked to dance as far back as I can remember…the King Cole Trio was one of my favorite 78 albums. I swiped that from my grandparents and took it home with me. [laughing] And my mother and grandmother laughed at me, ‘Who is this child latching on to the King Cole Trio?’ I don’t know—I’ve always liked the older music because that’s what I was around. One of my grandmother’s favorites (Joe Liggins of the Honeydrippers) was ‘Darktown Strutters’ Ball’ and that’s a very old song. And when my mom met my stepdad, he liked Doo-Wop so he brought Chuck Berry music into the house. I would see Chuck Berry on the television, and he would mention Muddy Waters and Little Walter, Elmore James, T-Bone Walker, and Charlie Christian…and he would literally mention these guys every time. I would think if Chuck Berry liked Charlie Christian, then I needed to check Charlie Christian out. And at that time, we still had record stores that were a whole other world unto themselves. This is something that is missing in our society now. I was 10 or 11 when I started listening to all this music. I started going to Folk Arts Rare Records; I was around Sam Chatmon and all those guys and my mom was very supportive and as long as she had a book, she would drive me to Tower Records and I’d spend three hours going through all the records.”

Sam Chatmon was part of the Mississippi Sheiks.
“Yeah!” Chris grins. “And with Lou Curtiss, Chatmon spent part of the year out here, he lived out here. There were pre-war guys here in town.”

Clubs in San Diego were abundant.
“The big place was the Creole Palace at the Douglas Hotel, Wolf and B.B. King played at the Silver Slipper on Market Street and another place a VFW down on 28th, where I played there a number of times with Tomcat. That’s where Little Walter and Muddy, Lowell Fulson and all the blues guys played. It was a really nice VFW. There was Club Royale, too.”

Patrick, how did you become involved with the band, the Griswolds?
“My freshman year in college I found out every second quarter that the bookstore had a tape sale. And I saw all these bins marked with jazz and classical, world music, and blues. Oh, I know what blues is…I was going through tapes and had absolutely no idea what I was looking at, but I found one tape and I really liked the cover. On my way home I put it in the cassette player in the car and hit play. From the first note, I didn’t know what to do with myself. It was like a lightning bolt hit me and I’m like, what is this? Well, it was The Best of Elmore James and the track was ‘Dust My Broom.’ I was so excited and so blown away…so my first big influence that got me going to record stores was Elmore James.

“Two weeks after that my cousin asked me, ‘You really like this stuff? There’s a band that plays every Thursday night down at the Longhorn. We went and it was the Griswolds. And that’s where I first saw live blues. The Griswolds were their own thing, their own sound. They played covers but they did it their way. Then I was introduced to another guy, Big Jack Reynolds; they both recorded for Fortune and there was another guy called Little Walter Mitchell. I sat in and played with them one night and they invited me back to play the following night, so I ended up playing with those guys for about five years until I got the opportunity to go to Chicago.”

For Chris it was more of a community environment.

Sam Chatmon

“The place to hang out was Folk Arts Rare Records and Lou Curtiss put on folk and blues festivals. I went to the very first blues festival in ’78. That was where I first saw Sam Chatmon. I had just missed seeing Thomas Shaw, who was a Blind Lemon Jefferson-era musician, but there was Bob Jefferey, Bonnie Jefferson who was in her 70s then, and she did older stuff like Frank Stokes, so I was around some ’20s-era musicians, real pre-war guys. But Folk Arts was like the meeting ground for musicians and hanging out listening to 78s and going to the blues festivals; that’s how I met Tomcat and Fred Heath. I was like 11 or 12 years old. They were the local blues guys, Louis Majors and Henry Ford Thompson, who was a partner of Tomcat’s. So, for me it was from records directly to Tomcat and Fred. I was 13 when I started playing with them.”

Coming at blues from different directions just how did you guys meet in Chicago?
Both guys say simultaneously. “At a jam session. The first place I saw Patrick,” Chris says. “I was at the jam in Buddy Guy’s place.”

Patrick says, “But I didn’t meet him. Every night of the week a club had a jam, and I think it was a Wednesday at Blues Etc… we passed each other in the bar. A couple of days later I was working at Guitar Center and I was the only guy at this store at the time who was really into blues. Everybody else there, young guys wanted to be rock stars. As I was showing someone a guitar, the phone rings, so I hand the guitar off to answer the phone and 10 seconds later I start hearing the most authentic, real country, low-down finger-picking blues and I stopped talking on the phone mid-sentence and said sorry, I’ve got to let you go…and Chris is just grinning at me, playing and we instantly hit it off, right there.”

Chris smiles and remembers, “I was playing ‘Terraplane Blues.’”

Patrick finishes the story. “And that’s how we became instant friends in 1990.”

When you reflect on it, the blues have always had duos and partnerships…
“Muddy Waters and Little Walter, Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell, Dave and Louis Myers.”

Speaking of Dave Myers, you guys had a connection with the Aces.
Chris says, “Especially with Dave I think that’s one of the earliest reasons he took a liking to Patrick and me. We reminded him that not saying we’re like Louis and Dave Myers, but he liked the fact that we were partners. That was the thing. In Chicago we were called Blues Incorporated because that was the time when there were still band names.”

Did you work, get to play with them?
Chris remembers, “Below…Fred Below had passed; he died in ’88. Patrick and I were around Dave, but Louis was sick and dealing with his health. We only got to see Louis a handful of times. We were around Dave all the time.”
Patrick adds. “Man, we were so fortunate that all those people let us into their circle. It was the real guys.

“The very first time we had Dave (Myers) over to the house.”

Chris tells me, “I cooked dinner for him. It was his birthday, and I had a CD collection of about 1000 discs. I asked him what he wanted to listen to and he said, ‘Lester Young!’ These guys knew blues because that is what they were. But they also knew music…Mozart and Bach, these guys knew music.”

There were some special moments in time that Chris says he’ll never forget.
“Patrick and I were already playing and had been in Chicago for a while; they had a gathering to put a headstone on Little Walter’s grave. So, they had a big celebration at Rosa’s.”

Patrick laughs, “We go to this place and two seconds after we get there, Chris is losing his mind and says, ‘Do you have any idea who’s in here?’ And the list begins. “Sunnyland Slim, Honeyboy Edwards, Sam Lay, Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith, Calvin ‘Fuzz’ Jones, Jimmy Lee Robinson, Billy Boy Arnold, Dave and Louis Myers, Golden Wheeler…of all the guys that were still alive, they were there. Those guys played all night, but on a break Chris and I got invited up to play.”

Chris says, “I was a harmonica player first, and I knew every Little Walter song on earth. Then every harmonica player in Chicago came up that night and we were backing them up. I remember very specifically while we were on stage playing, getting eyeballed by Willie Smith and Calvin Jones. When we came off stage, they were full of compliments.” Patrick grins, “That was pretty awesome!”

Patrick, you worked for a period of time with Junior Wells.

Patrick on stage with the Junior Wells Band. Photo: Patrick Rynn.

“Toledo used to have a great blues festival. On this particular year, Jr. Wells and Buddy Guy were still playing together and they were the headliners. The festival got rained out—thunder and rain, everything. The drummer in my band said he knew those guys, so we got to go backstage and I got to sit with Jr. Wells for almost two hours…talking! This guy was so deep and had so many cool stories and I got a chance to meet him. So, my buddy says, ‘The festival got rained out, you guys got paid so why don’t you come to the club tonight? [Theo’s Tavern]. You guys can come down and hang out and be our guests.’ The whole band showed up except the bass player. I was talking to the guitar player, Ed Wooten, and we heard a conversation behind us; it was the club owner and Junior… Junior said, ‘I wanna play but I don’t have a bass player.’ Ted, the owner, said I have a bass player right here. He said, Patrick you got your box? I go, Yeah, I got it, and Junior says, ‘C’mon then!’ So I got to play an hour and a half with the band. When it was all done, Junior said, ‘Hey, son. You play pretty good. Would you like to be my guest at the Chicago Blues Festival in a couple of weeks?’ Are you serious? Junior said, ‘Oh yeah, man!’

The first night I was in Chicago, I was in the Checkerboard (Lounge) where everybody met. I got to play with James Cotton, Junior Wells and his band with Willie Hayes on the drums, a great horn section, Lefty Dizz was in there and all these blues people from that time period and I got to play with them.”

Chris, you mentioned earlier your association with one of San Diego’s blues elders, Tomcat Courtney?
“Well, I started off with Tom, but we came back to San Diego from Chicago and were back for good in 2006. But I started off with Tom in 1980. I met him and Fred Heath in 1978 or’79 when I was still learning the harmonica. By 1980 I was 13 and felt competent enough that I could play onstage. It boils down to what you know, and I got cross-examined. They would ask me who I liked, if I would have brought up Steppenwolf or something they would have immediately stop talking and walked away. So, I was talking about Muddy and Walter and all those guys, and they were intrigued. I was a kid.

“San Diego State had blues festivals and I was working as a ‘gofer’ for Lou Curtiss; Roy Brown and Lowell Fulson were the two headliners. Gatemouth Brown was in town doing something and he actually came down to do a solid, a favor for Lou Curtiss and actually performed a set for Lou at the blues festival out of the kindness of his heart. When I was 13, I really loved Lowell Fulson and I’m talking about his early stuff with just him and his brother, Mark. I got to hang around with him and I asked, ‘How’s your brother? I really love you and your music, with you and your brother.’ And the look that came over him. Fulson said, ‘No one ever asks me about my brother.’ I told him, those are my favorite recordings. I was a ‘gofer,’ so I was in the green room with them all the time, hanging out. I remember asking Lowell Fulson about Texas Alexander because I really liked the pre-war stuff.

“But with Tomcat, I got really lucky because Tom liked down-home stuff and Heath really liked Chicago, so I got real lucky because we played Lightnin’ Hopkins and Little Walter and Muddy, and that’s why I gravitated toward him while playing harmonica.”

Was this at the Texas Teahouse?
“When I first started playing with Tom, it was a place called The One Night Stand. [laughing]“It was a biker bar.”

Considering the list of artists you’ve played and recorded with, you both have a direct connection to the early bluesmen and that list is phenomenal. Honeyboy Edwards, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Homesick James, Sunnyland Slim, Pinetop, James Cotton, Snooky Pryor, Henry Gray…it just goes on.
Patrick just nods his head, “The word that comes to mind, is lineage. When you hear about Howlin’ Wolf, he talked about Son House. Son House would talk about Charley Patton.”

Especially with blues music and the storytelling, it’s literally passed down artist to artist. You guys worked with Sam Lay, who of course worked with Muddy and the Wolf. Paul Butterfield. That’s an incredible bloodline.
“Just think about that lineage.” Patrick says. “And how you’re influenced by the people in that lineage, it’s very cool.”

How long did you guy’s tour with Sam Lay?
“Five years, solid. We toured the entire U.S., Hawaii, and across Canada. We never made it to Europe with him because Sam was involved in a really bad car accident.”

You guys have been so productive over the years, how many albums now?
“We have four albums together. But collectively Patrick and I are on 32 CDs. We recorded with Pinetop Perkins, Eddie Clearwater, T-Model Ford, and Honeyboy Edwards. Several of those are with the C-Notes with Rob Stone.”

Tell me a little about your connection with Detroit Junior.

Chris & Patrick w/ Troy Sandow & Jon Price. Photo courtesy C. James and P. Rynn

“My cousin was a sound engineer.” Chris tells me. “She worked with Lily Tomlin and did theater work. That’s how I ended up in Chicago. I went to visit her for Thanksgiving. I needed cranberry juice and went to the 7-11 around the corner and I hear—what is that…Otis Spann? I hear blues piano, the real shit. I love this place! I followed the sound and it’s coming from a speaker outside a club. It wasn’t a record it was Detroit Junior. He was playing live around the corner from where I was staying. I completely forgot the cranberry juice and sat there and watched his first set. He was literally the first guy I saw in Chicago. Something you should never do, I asked if I could sit in. Initially he said no, but after talking with him a little he said okay. I borrowed the cook’s guitar, who had a red Stratocaster. I played two songs with him and said thank you. He grabbed me by the arm and said, ‘You can stay.’ I finished the set and he asked me to finish out the night with him. That was my first job. About that same time is when I first met Patrick.”

Patrick says. “And he dragged me down there. [laughing] That was the first gig we had.”

Chris continues. “I was there visiting for the holidays and didn’t have my guitar, so I called my mom and said please send me my guitar. That was it, man.”

What was the name of the club?
“The Underground Wonder Bar. [laughing]. That gig started at one o’clock in the morning and went to 5am. We played for the tips; we didn’t get paid. And that’s what we used to buy our groceries for the week. We were lucky. On the high end it was $15. But we learned how to live off of $15.”

Tell me about touring in Japan.
“Yeah, that was with Jody Williams and the Blue Four. The Blue Four was the band name we used in Chicago. The original Blue Four actually started here in Southern California and that was Chris and I and Brad Karow on drums, Tom Mahon on piano. In Chicago we had different players but when we toured Japan with Jody Williams, we toured under the Blue Four band name. We played in Tokyo for nine days at the Park Tower Blues Festival.

“We toured Europe with Jody above the Arctic Circle where you have to watch out for polar bears…literally! Umea, Sweden has a very, very famous jazz festival, and we were the only blues band. But the previous week someone had been killed by a polar bear. It broke into their house…and ate them.”

If you had to describe the kind of blues you play…

Chris & Patrick at Humphrey’s Backstage with Sue Palmer & Ric Lee. Photo by Yachiyo Mattox.

“We play very traditional blues,” Patrick says, “but really aggressive; we drive really hard.”

Chris adds. “It is Chicago blues, it’s hard-hitting. Little Walter, Muddy, Elmore…What is more gritty than Elmore James? Otis Rush, Magic Sam, all of those guys played very aggressively. Being around the early guys you don’t play this music note for note; you don’t play it like the record. I sing the way I sing; I don’t try to be anybody else. This music is improvised, but if you try to play it note for note…there’s a big difference from copying and emulation. Muddy Waters thought for sure he was emulating Son House perfectly. He wasn’t, he was playing like Muddy Waters.”
Patrick contributes, “You know the other thing about these older guys that was instilled in us was just by observing. When the older guys were playing music, they were serious. It was serious business; it wasn’t fun and games. They were professional and there was self-respect.”

Looking forward, any new projects or recordings?
“This has been on our mind since before Covid. We were performing with two guitars and a harmonica with Aki Kumar. We just recently got home from the road with Aki and June Core in the Bay area. Those guys are our other brothers, man. We feel like we’ve known those guys our entire lives. We go up to the Bay area two or three times a year and it’s always special.”

Patrick says. “Chris and I have played with the originators, the real guys. And June Core played with Robert Lockwood when he started out. But Aki is a young man from a completely different culture but when we play together, the four of us together, that’s the best for me.”

San Diego’s Queen of Boogie Woogie, Sue Palmer, can occasionally be seen or heard pounding the ivories in support of Chris and Patrick. It adds new dimensions to their blues, and I asked her how she came to know them.

Sue says, “I first met Chris when he sat in with Earl Thomas at Croce’s Top Hat downtown. I was playing with Earl and Tobacco Road; it was probably in the ’80s. We bumped into each other over the years and always had interesting discussions about jazz and blues history in San Diego. We both had been mentored by people like Preston Coleman, Daniel Jackson, Winfred Stewart, and Fro Brigham.” Palmer adds, “Chris and Patrick are so fun to play with and always put on a good show. It’s great being a side person for a change. Chris is obviously more into guitarists and Chicago blues but I always learn something from him. He is somewhat of a savant and remembers everything! We are also both from Point Loma.”

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Again Patrick, you guys seem to have that connectivity, a musical bond to other artists.
“We take pride in the fact that when you look at our resume, it’s not padded…it’s real. We’ve played and recorded with them,” Chris says. “Play well, dress well, show up on time, and you’ll never want for work. I remember being backstage in Chicago with Junior Wells, Dave Myers, and Robert Jr. Lockwood and getting to hang out with them, literally like a fly on the wall.” Patrick says, “The point being is that area was kind of their sanctuary, they were holding court and Chris and I were always there and sitting with these guys. That moment of being accepted into that circle, to be called by our names, and laughing along with them…we became family to those guys, but they were our friends first.”

Chris just smiles. “When we’re on stage, we’re not standing there alone. Those early players who had faith in us, the one thing in my mind is to honor them, and never to disappoint them.”