West of Memphis members love their Chicago blues

By: JIM TRAGESER Staff Writer | Wednesday, June 27, 2007 1:23 PM PDT ∞

During its short run as an independent online distributor of new music from 1998 to 2001, San Diego's MP3.com (now owned by CNET) gave thousands of bands the chance to reach an audience without having to be signed to a major label.

It also gave birth to a band, local Chicago-style blues band West of Memphis (playing Saturday at Friars Folly in San Marcos).

In a telephone conversation last week, guitarist Tom Walpole explained how he and his fellow bandleader, singer/harmonica player Karl Cabbage, met: "We first got together, Karl and I, back in 1998. We both worked at MP3.com. It was neat being there, because we had a great space to practice and ultimately that's how we ended up meeting Dick, our drummer back in 2000, 2001."

With a regular gig at the House of Blues in downtown San Diego and its second album ("Honey Pie") just being released, the band is doing better than a lot of local bands, particularly bands that concentrate on the blues.

Not that San Diego is unfamiliar with the blues. Jeannie and Jimmy Cheatham played a Kansas City-styled blues in this town for three decades. Tomcat Courtney has been playing his Texas blues even longer.

But West of Memphis plays a Midwestern style of blues, Chicago mostly, but with the obvious nod to Tennessee as well.

Cabbage said the name comes from his own time living in Memphis while going to college.

"I busked on the streets of Memphis. I was playing on the street corners trying to make enough money to go hear some real blues on Beale Street. I was just learning the harp and learning the music."

It was while a teenager that Cabbage got turned on to the blues.

"Basically, I bought a LIttle Walter album when I was 15, 16, and heard blues with a feeling and that was it for me!"

Walpole had a different introduction to the blues.

"I grew up in Hawaii, and had grown up playing guitar and playing Hawaiian music. ... I went to college in Washington and met another guy from Hawaii there and we joined up with an existing Hawaiian music band in eastern Washington and played a few shows out there. He handed me a Muddy Waters greatest hits album ---- I'd been listening to Stevie Ray Vaughan and that sort of thing, but once I heard the Muddy Waters album I was just hooked."

Second guitarist Dick Palmer, who's some 30 years older than Walpole and Cabbage, had found the blues later in life. He met West of Memphis when he hired them for a corporate event that he was hosting ---- and wound up joining the band.

"They're true to their music and they're going to stay true," he said of his desire to be a member of West of Memphis.

With Cabbage and Walpole writing their own songs (the new album is a mix of originals and covers of songs by Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters and Little Walter Jacobs) to go along with their covers of classics, the band members said coming up with their set lists is more fun than ever.

"We try to throw in a few originals," Walpole said. "We try to mix it up and we pick what we like to listen to. We figure if it gets us moving and we dig it, everyone else is going to dig it. There's also the issue that in San Diego, you want to please the bartenders and the crowd, but at the same time you want to play what you want. So it's always a balance."

Palmer added of playing the blues in a rock town like San Diego, "They might not know the song, but the chord progressions are rock, so they can understand it."

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