Dang Blues: The return of Jawbone.
January 16, 2022 11:12 PM Subscribe
Dang Blues: The return of Jawbone.
When Bob "Jawbone" Zabor, a one-man blues band from Detroit, played a 2004 live session on John Peel's BBC radio show, the DJ declared him "almost a definition of what I would like this programme to be about". Peel played nearly every track of Jawbone's homemade CDR on the show and immediately invited him for another live session - but died before that offer could be made good. Jawbone, who still struggled to find gigs in America, released a couple of official albums here and remained a cult favourite on the UK circuit until 2008, when he suddenly dropped out of sight. Now he's back with his first new songs in over a decade and this exclusive PlanetSlade interview telling the full story.
This piece came about because I was a big Jawbone fan back in the noughties and always wondered what had happened to him. When he started putting out new music again in 2020, I contacted him and suggested the interview - mainly because I wanted to satisfy my own curiosity. I like his new stuff a lot, so if I can help it find some extra listeners, that'd be very pleasing.
Another bonus of the interview for me was that I got to chat with a couple of Peel's producers from the show's Jawbone era and ask them how Peel coped with the constant flood of unsolicited new music he received to consider for the show. "John would gravitate very clearly towards demos and CDRs," they told me. "“He was very conscientious, and he wanted to listen to everything he was sent. [...] I remember him saying a couple of times, 'The next Elvis might be in there'.”
When Bob "Jawbone" Zabor, a one-man blues band from Detroit, played a 2004 live session on John Peel's BBC radio show, the DJ declared him "almost a definition of what I would like this programme to be about". Peel played nearly every track of Jawbone's homemade CDR on the show and immediately invited him for another live session - but died before that offer could be made good. Jawbone, who still struggled to find gigs in America, released a couple of official albums here and remained a cult favourite on the UK circuit until 2008, when he suddenly dropped out of sight. Now he's back with his first new songs in over a decade and this exclusive PlanetSlade interview telling the full story.
This piece came about because I was a big Jawbone fan back in the noughties and always wondered what had happened to him. When he started putting out new music again in 2020, I contacted him and suggested the interview - mainly because I wanted to satisfy my own curiosity. I like his new stuff a lot, so if I can help it find some extra listeners, that'd be very pleasing.
Another bonus of the interview for me was that I got to chat with a couple of Peel's producers from the show's Jawbone era and ask them how Peel coped with the constant flood of unsolicited new music he received to consider for the show. "John would gravitate very clearly towards demos and CDRs," they told me. "“He was very conscientious, and he wanted to listen to everything he was sent. [...] I remember him saying a couple of times, 'The next Elvis might be in there'.”
Role: writer / interviewer
This project was posted to MetaFilter by ellieBOA on January 17, 2022: Dang Blues: The return of Jawbone.
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