Chicago bluesman to play Davenport Steeplegate

The 40-year-old Mississippi Valley Blues Society is not having its trademark LeClaire Park festival this year, but it’s not exactly singing the blues.

It’s launching a new concert series (partly to raise money for its 40th-annivesary festival in 2025) on Sunday, April 28, at 2 p.m., with Chicago-based Tom Holland & The Shuffle Kings. The concert is at the Steeplegate Inn, 100 W. 76th St., Davenport, where they had great success with Reverend Raven and the Chain Smoking Altar Boys last spring.

“We had a great turnout last year, over 200 people,” MVBS president Steve Horan said Friday. He’s really looking to Holland, a left-handed guitarist and singer who was one of the first members of the Chicago Blues Hall of Fame.

“They’re just an awesome band,” Horan said. The humble Holland, a 46-year-old native of Chicago’s south side (Beverly), has played Mississippi Valley Blues Festival a few times, with the last at least 15 years ago. The Steeplegate gig will be his first QC appearance outside of Blues Fest.

Holland was asked after MVBS members saw him play at the Central Iowa Blues Society Winter Blues event this past February.

He called the Davenport fest “one of the better blues festivals in the country.”

“You know when you walk in there, everybody is there for the music,” Holland said recently, noting the beautiful riverfront setting of LeClaire Park.

He wasn’t surprised the MVBS had to cancel this year’s fest, due to lack of funds and need of a major sponsor.

“A lot of festivals, a lot of clubs, a lot of blues societies didn’t make it to reopening” since the pandemic, Holland said. “Before the shutdown was the busiest I’ve ever been. Of course this is going to happen, I’m finally starting to make some inroads and do well. Of course, it’s gonna shut everything down.”

He noted Illinois took its time reopening after COVID. During the pandemic, for two years, Holland played solo livestreams once a week.

“Depending on the kindness of fans and strangers is one thing,” he said. “I knew it wasn’t gonna last forever. This might help out a little money-wise now, but it’s gonna be an exercise in keeping my chops up.”

Several Chicago blues clubs didn’t open back up, and some that did said they couldn’t afford to pay Holland’s band, but just him solo.

“I slowly built it back, but still 90 percent of the gigs that I do are solo,” he said. “Just me, guitar and a microphone. It’s taken a lot longer than I think a lot of people have thought. Slowly, I’m getting more and more band gigs.”

Blues on Halsted in Chicago closed, since right before the pandemic they were going to sell the business, after 40 years.

“They almost had the deal and the shutdown happen, which scared investors,” Holland said. “I heard somebody bought the building, they’re going to rehab it and probably open it back up in a year or two. I love Blues on Halsted, but it was a very well-worn club.”

A musical childhood

He grew up on Chicago’s south side and was influenced by the city’s rich jazz and blues heritage from a very young age. His father’s love of music and vast record collection was the catalyst for Tom’s love of music, especially blues.

His parents’ bedroom was lined with LPs, and one whole wall of the living room had bookcases filled with records – classical, blues, jazz, R&B, rock. “He was very well-rounded musically,” Holland said of his dad.

He chose blues because that’s what his father mostly listened to, and picked guitar after seeing Eddie Van Halen on TV. Holland took guitar lessons for about a year and a half, but mostly learned by ear.

Holland began playing guitar at age 13, learning by listening to Muddy Waters tapes, LPs, and CDs. Tom cites Muddy Waters, Earl Hooker, John Primer and Magic Slim as his greatest influences. By the time he turned 18, Holland was ready to start learning from the musicians on the Chicago blues scene.

He studied a year at Columbia College Chicago and got hooked on music after playing his first gig by age 19, at a brewery in the western suburb of Downers Grove.

Holland first patronized the blues great Buddy Guy’s Legends, which was within walking distance from the downtown college.

“I started going to Buddy Guy’s every night and there was a jazz club another block down from the dorms,” he said. They did blues there every Tuesday, and that’s where he went every Tuesday.

“The owner of this jazz club saw that I was not there to get drunk, pick up women. I was there for the music,” Holland recalled.

He was thrilled when he first played at Legends. “I had been on sage before, but in the back of my head, I thought ‘If I get on stage, there’s a chance that Buddy Guy might be here’. 18-year-old me is like, Buddy Guy is gonna be here? I’m gonna be famous. That was when Buddy was at the height of his late ‘90s power, and he was on the road most of the time.”

Primer as mentor

Holland didn’t see Buddy until he started working with John Primer (Muddy Waters’s last guitarist) in 1998.

Magic Slim & The Teardrops used to play at The Checkerboard (originally opened by Guy) in Chicago, and when Holland started hanging out there, he had sold it and launched Legends. Magic Slim played Sundays and Mondays, and Primer played guitar with him.

“I used to sneak out and go see them, and that’s when I met John, through seeing Magic Slim,” he said. “John went solo, left Magic Slim, and when Slim moved to Lincoln, he had John take over Sundays and Mondays.”

Holland went to see Primer regularly, and asked to sit in with his guitar. Holland did that after six months and Primer took him on as a player for an upcoming gig, his first one.

After the first set, Primer asked: “What drugs do you do, how much do you drink, and if I need you, what’s it gonna take to keep you?” he remembered. “I don’t drink; I just smoke cigarettes, and if you need me, call me. I ended up playing for John for three years.”

“I was young and didn’t know anything. I was still living at my parents’ house,” Holland said, noting Primer lived two miles from there. “I got to see the United States and Canada with John. I probably could have paid better attention, but I was happy – I don’t have a 9-to-5 job and people are actually paying me for this.”

As a guitarist, Primer was very open and supportive.

“He obviously saw something in me,” Holland said. “He’d show me stuff – no, not like that, like this. That was a big help for me.”

Now 79, Primer played behind Junior Wells in the house band at Theresa’s Lounge in Chicago and as a member of the bands of Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters and Magic Slim before launching an award-winning career as a front man.

He also taught Holland how to play slide guitar. “I’d fumble around on it and completely be horrible,” he said. “After probably five or six months of getting that every single night, it’s like, this doesn’t sound as it did before.”

Holland toured the United States and Canada for two years with Primer as a member of his band, the Real Deal Blues Band. While in the band, he recorded the 1998 Wolf Records release “It’s a Blues Life.” This was his first time in a recording studio and certainly not his last. It was also during this time that he formed the first incarnation of his own group The Shuffle Kings.

Holland took his place as one of the top sidemen in Chicago. In late 1999, was asked to join Chicago blues guitarist Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater’s band. He toured with Clearwater for three years as the bandleader, and toured across the U.S., Canada, and made his first trip to Europe. He freelanced with Carey Bell, Phil Guy, A.C. Reed, Atlanta vocalist Sandra Hall, and countless other Chicago bluesmen and women.

In November 2003, he was approached by harp legend James Cotton, who was in need of a guitar player. He accepted and toured with James for 12 years. Holland played on both of Cotton’s Grammy-nominated releases, “Giant” and “Cotton Mouth Man,” both on Alligator Records. In 2013, Tom took the band back into the studio, recording “No Fluff, Just the Stuff,” on his own E Natchel Records imprint, which garnered rave reviews.

Hall of Fame induction

Holland was one of the first inductees to the Chicago Blues Hall of Fame in 2013, at just 35.

“A friend of mine in New Jersey, who was real tight with the people who do the International Blues Hall of Fame, said they’re gonna do a Chicago one,” he said. “We’d like you to be in the first induction class; I said, ‘Absolutely not. I’m way too young for that.’”

Holland recalled his friend told him he had already seen more countries than most people would. “You’ve been there for all the major guys in the last 20 years. You deserve to be in the Hall of Fame,” he quoted his friend. Holland finally relented, noting that first class included Eddy Clearwater (who died in 2018 at age 83).

“Eddy was the first band I went overseas to Europe with,” he said. “John put out on the road and Eddy kept me going. For me, it was a little weird. You’re inducting me with guy I was in his band not more than five years ago.”

For more on the Chicago Blues Hall of Fame, click HERE. To learn more about Holland, click HERE.

Future MVBS dates

The April 28 Steeplegate gig has a $15 admission, and will have a taco bar and cash bar available for purchase. The Blues society upcoming concerts include:

• Free concerts outdoors June 15 at Pour Bros. Taproom, Moline, and July 14 at Whiskey Stop, East Moline.

• Aug. 18 fundraiser at Gypsy Highway, Davenport, and a September concert to be determined later.

Coincidentally, John Primer (with opener Kevin Burt) will perform in Davenport in less than a month, at the Redstone Room (at Common Chord, 2nd and Main streets), on May 17, 2024, at 9 p.m.

For more on MVBS, click HERE.

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