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TWO GUITARS - ONE SOUND DUKE ROBILLARD meets SOULSHOT featuring Andy Bassford and Mark Berney


WhRhode Island guitarist and singer Duke Robillard, a musician steeped in the blues, has teamed up with Rhode Island’s Soulshot, a band steeped in Jamaican music, to make one of the year’s most interesting, listenable and danceable records, ‘Two Guitars - One Sound’, a mainly instrumental album featuring Andy Bassford and Mark Berney.


What do Duke Robillard, Dave Turano and Andy Bassford have in common?


Duke is one of the world’s premier blues and swing guitarists (with over 50  LP and CD releases under his name), and Dave Turano and Andy Bassford guide the fortunes of the East Coast’s premier reggae band, Soulshot. So on the face of it, other than an obvious love of music, probably not much.


A closer look, however, reveals that they were all touched by Island Records in the early days of their career. Roomful of Blues, then led by Duke, signed with Island in 1977, at the recommendation of songwriter Doc Pomus, and Turano and Bassford were introduced to Jamaican music through the movie ‘The Harder They Come’ and its accompanying soundtrack on Island Records in 1972.




Fast forward to this year. Duke and Soulshot teamed up to make one of the year’s most listenable, interesting and extremely danceable records, ‘Two Guitars - One Sound’, a mainly instrumental album featuring Duke, Bassford, and trumpet master Mark Berney. Just as Duke has devoted his career to studying and exploring America’s heritage of blues, swing and rock-and-roll, Soulshot has explored the foundations of Jamaica’s musical heritage, ska, rock-steady and reggae, and this album is the thrilling result of what happens when great musicians from differing genres come together to find common ground, and have a truly and undeniably enjoyable time doing it. artists


And how exhilarating it is to listen to! What a treat in these days of Dancehall, reggaetron and processed neo-Jamaican sounds to listen to a group of musicians who play real instruments together, hitting such danceable grooves, and stretching out into soulful and intelligent solos, absent any noodling, all supported by a rock-steady (pun intentional) rhythm. One of the wonderful things about the early days of Jamaican music was the soloing, the kinship with jazz, and these guys have the chops to do just that. Dig the ska-ish ‘Mellow Man’ with exquisite trumpet work from Berney. You just gotta dance! Berney is, in Duke’s words, ‘a monster’. Indeed, he has worked and toured with artists varying from the Skatalites and Elovaters to Itzhak Perlman and the Klezmer Conservatory Band, and yes, you read that right. ‘Pipe Dream’, a kind of ska-meets-surf-meets-ganja instrumental, has fine solos from Bassford and Duke over a jumping arrangement by Berney, while ‘Sakronimo’ has saxophonist Rob Liguori getting up to hi-jinks with Berney. “Soul Shot’ pays homage to perhaps Rock-Steady’s greatest guitarist, Lynn Taitt, and Bassford and Robillard nail it over a deliciously chunky rhythm. So great solos galore, but solos only become great when propelled by and underpinned by a solidly soulful and pulsing rhythm section, and providing that are Rider McCoy on Keyboards, David “Daveydread’ Turano on bass, Krys Jackson on drums and Robert ‘Zeke’ Carlson on percussion.


Of the ten songs, most are written and arranged by Mark Berney, with one cut, ‘Cornbread’, by Lee Morgan, and ‘Soul Shot’ by Taitt. ’Sturges Street’ is a collaboration by Bassford and Nathan Sabanayagam, and guest vocalist, the veteran Ernie Smith, sings Fred Neil’s ‘Everybody’s Talkin’, a left-of-field but very successful choice of song that fits entirely with the project.


Overall this is a truly great and innovative album, that deserves a much wider hearing than it will probably get. Which is a great shame, as there are few musicians making music like this these days. Give it a listen, tap your foot, dance about, grin and spread the word. It’s reggae, ska, rock-steady, jazz and it’s great.


It is now out on a CD - the vinyl version is in the pipeline - and is available at:


and all your favorite streaming services.




What is it about Rhode Island that has generated such a vibrant and creative arts scene over the last few decades? Is it something in the water? Something in the salt air blowing in from the Atlantic? We’ll probably never know, but what we do know is that the smallest state has given the world some very very fine music and musicians.


Burrillville, RI native Duke Robillard moved to Westerly, RI in 1964, and met up with Dave Turano, who was into music as much as Duke. Duke recalled:  “I met Dave when I moved to Westerly from Burrillville in 1964. He was one of the first people who were into music that I met.  And he had just gone to the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. He had heard that I was into Chuck Berry and things like that. Actually, he introduced me to the Blues. The real deep stuff. You know, Muddy and Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson and all those people. He was really into it. And he, with Tony Lamb, who actually sang in the original version of Roomful of Blues, they both kinda latched onto me and, you know, hipped me to the blues. They would come over to my house and bring piles of records. And so, really, Dave is kind of responsible for me getting really deep into the blues. You know, I was into flip sides of Chuck records like ‘Wee Wee Hours’, the flip of ‘Maybelline’, and stuff like that. That was the first slow blues I ever heard. I loved it. But you know, back then, if you didn't know these people, you had to look at  Rolling Stones and Animals records to find out who the writers were, trying to find out the original artists that did all this great material. So he really helped me get quickly into the blues.”


Duke’s exposure to Jamaican music came from the ubiquitous Bob Marley on the radio, and artists Dave turned him on to, such as Toots and the Maytals, but he didn’t think he’d be involved in it. “I love to listen to it, but I just didn't think it was, you know, my bag. When we made this record, uh, it took a little convincing. I said, well, you know, I'm just not used to that kind of rhythm. I play over a swing rhythm or a shuffle rhythm. But doing it was really fun. Having those great tunes to play to in the studio. Mark Berney, besides being a great musician, is a really great writer. He's just got great tunes. And he's a monster player.  And then Andy Bassford, a great guy and a lot of fun. He had known about me, much earlier than I knew about him. But when we got together today, it was pretty magical in the studio.”


Back in 1964 Westerly native Dave Turano had heard there was a new guitar player in town and wanted to meet him. “His family was great. His mother was great. His father was the most mellow, nicest man.  After school, we’d go and hang out in his house, we'd go in his bedroom and he'd be playing music, playing guitar or listening to stuff, he knew like rhythm and blues and uh, rockabilly and that kind of stuff. But he didn't really know the hardcore blues, like BB King, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, those guys, you know?  So that's the direction we sent him in. It's all my fault!”


Dave was introduced to Jamaican music on a trip to the UK in the early 70s. ‘I was in Ireland with my old girlfriend and we were heading back to England on the ferry, and we were next to this young English guy, and we got to talking and he started telling me about this music that he was into, 'cause I was mentioning, you know, the blues and Louis Jordan and whatnot. And then he said, ‘Well, you don't know any ska or blue beat music?’I said, ‘No, I never really even heard of it.’ So he kind of turned us onto it and he even let us stay at his apartment in Brixton. His flat wasn't quite acceptable to my girlfriend, so we just spent one night there and then left. So we didn't really get the chance to listen to too much of his music. The apartment was, in layman terms, pretty disgusting. I could have stayed there, but my girlfriend didn't want to be there at all.”


“So that was that. I had been listening to Little Feet. And then from Little Feet I got to Robert Palmer, and Robert Palmer did the ‘Pressure Drop’ album. And I said, Oh man, ‘Pressure Drop’. And then I went to see the movie, ‘The Harder They Come’. And, you know, that was it. I just took off from there, to Bob Marley and Tosh and Dennis Brown and all those guys, I was really a lyrics man. But, you know, the music was in me from the blues, and this Jamaican music stuck. I tried to get Duke turned onto it as well. I drove up to his house and went with a whole pile of records, you know, trying to get him to change his direction a little bit or at least get interested in it. I left him with the records, and he still has 'em.”


Andy Bassford was at Trinity College in Hartford, CT in 1972.

“They had a fantastic film society and a little gem of a movie theater on the campus. It was maybe $3 to get in to see two movies. So I simply went to everything that was there. I love movies and I went, oh my god, I can walk across the campus and I can go see two movies. They had a little sheet to advance coming attractions, and one was “The Harder They Come”. The sheet said it was about reggae music from Jamaica, and like many of the foreign movies they showed, it had subtitles. So I said, ‘Oh, music, I'm going.’ “


“I didn't understand the words they were saying, so it was a good thing they had subtitles and I'm watching the movie, and I'm totally getting into it, and I'd never seen anything like Kingston. And they get to the scene where Toots and the Maytals are singing in the studio, down at Dynamic, and they're cutting ‘Sweet and Dandy’. And I heard that, and I had a reaction, like I've had three or four times in my life.”


“The first was to Percy Sledge. The second was BB King. The third was John Coltrane, which happened about the same time. And the fourth was Toots and the Maytals in the ‘Harder They Come’. And the reaction was, why have I been kept from this? Why didn't anybody tell me this, this shit was on the planet?”


“So as soon as the movie was done, I ran out and got the soundtrack album and took it back to my room. I was a pretty good guitar player, even then. So I said, you know, let me try to play this. And then I couldn't play it. I could hear the chords, but I couldn't play it.”

“I didn't understand it, and I said, ‘This is not acceptable. I have to figure this out. This is not acceptable. I love this and I can't play it.’ You know, I could play along with Percy Sledge or BB King, you know, those things. So it became a mission.”


“I went to Berkeley, CA for a semester in 1974 as reggae was making inroads in non-Jamaican communities in Boston and Berkeley. Berkeley had these incredible record shops that had reggae sections. If it was from Jamaica, I bought it. I got the first Wailers album with the lighter cover. Right before we went to Berkeley, I went to England with my parents, and I went to one of the big record stores on Oxford Street, and I got the Maytals ‘Funky Kingston’ LP.


And so I started looking for this stuff. Then I went back to Hartford, and started my band. And I used to listen to the gospel show on the R & B AM station in Hartford on Sunday mornings on the way to rehearsal. And right after that there were all these little reggae shows sponsored by the local record shops, which is what used to happen in Jamaica.”


“So after listening to this thing a few times. I had the realization, oh, there are record shops in Hartford that have these records, Belltone and Sporty’s. So I got up the nerve to go into the hood and I had to go by bus, which was interesting. And I went to Sporty and they thought I was a cop and they wouldn't wait on me. So I just got back on the bus and went to Belltone and he said, ‘Oh, you're interested in reggae? Who do you like?’ And the only name I can remember was Toots and the Maytals. In those days, black record stores would play the songs out of a speaker on the sidewalk to draw people in from outside, which I wasn't used to. And they would play the record for you before you bought it. Because some of the customers were illiterate. And they didn't want to be fooled into buying the wrong records. So they knew that that was the thing that they wanted. So this was paradise! A record store that played the records for you before you bought them so you could be sure you liked them. I went out of there with about six albums and a bunch of 45s, and it became a regular pilgrimage.”


“Shortly thereafter, Beltone was promoting a show with Marcia Griffiths and I met the band that was gonna back her and they needed a lead guitarist and they liked me and they hired me. And that's where Horace Andy heard me, and that's how everything fell in line.”


That led to Andy making his recording debut on Horace’s classic album ‘In The Light’ in 1977. At Horace’s urging, Andy went with him to Jamaica in 1980 to record an album. Though the project never materialized, Andy then began playing sessions with Roots Radics through the end of the year. He then joined Lloyd Parks and We The People, the island’s top backing band, at the beginning of 1981. As a member of We The People, he performed or recorded with nearly every reggae artist of the era, most notably the legendary Dennis Brown.He joined  Toots and the Maytals, in 1988 and stayed with them for twenty two years. His playing appears on nine Grammy Award-nominated and three Grammy-winning albums, as well as a platinum album with Rihanna, a #1 Jazz Radio album with Monty Alexander’s Harlem-Kingston Express, and a #1 Billboard Folk Chart album with Natalie Merchant. In addition, his credits include at least 200 more albums and 2500 songs over a career entering its fifth decade. In 2003, he was honored by the Jamaica Federation of Musicians for Outstanding Contributions to the Jamaican Music Industry, one of the few non-Jamaicans to receive this award.


His first solo album brought him full circle with his introduction to Jamaican music, the film ‘The Harder They Come’.  Entitled ‘The Harder They Strum’ it is an artfully creative homage to the soundtrack LP,  recreating each track in the Bassford manner.










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