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I started a quest to find terrific blues music and incredible musicianship when I was just a little kid. I also have a tremendous appreciation of fine musical instruments and equipment. One of my greatest joys all of my life was sharing my finds with my friends. I'm now publishing my journey. I hope that you come along!
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Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Big Guitar Artist: Omar and the Howlers - I'm Gone- New Recording Release
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Tuesday, January 10, 2012
RUF RECORDS SETS FEBRUARY 14 RELEASE DATE FOR OMAR & THE HOWLERS ESSENTIAL COLLECTION 2-CD SET
RUF RECORDS SETS FEBRUARY 14 RELEASE DATE FOR OMAR & THE HOWLERS ESSENTIAL COLLECTION 2-CD SET
ONE DISC INCLUDES “OMAR’S PICKS” OF SONGS SPECIAL TO HIM
Band to celebrate release with in-store at Waterloo Records in Austin on February 14
AUSTIN, TX – Ruf Records announces a February 14 release date for the Essential Collection, a special 2-CD set from seminal roots band Omar & the Howlers. Ruf Records is distributed in the U.S. by the Allegro Corporation. The twin-disc pack is comprised of one CD titled “The Best of,” while the second one is called “Omar’s Picks,” which are songs that “represent a snapshot of influences and heroes throughout my career and are special to me for one reason or another,” says Omar.
Omar & the Howlers will celebrate the release of the new album with a special
in-store performance at Waterloo Records in Austin on February 14 at 5PM Central Time.
The 30 studio and live recordings on the Essential Collection were culled from albums originally released beginning in the early 1990s and includes selections from such albums as Courts of Lu Lu (named after a blues laundromat in his hometown of McComb, Mississippi), Muddy Springs Road, World Wide Open, Swing Land and his Blues Music Award nominated collaboration with Jimmie Vaughan, Jimmy Reed Highway. Also featured are such fan favorite Omar & the Howlers’ classics as “Magic Man,” “Border Girl,” “Hard Times In the Land of Plenty,” “Wall of Pride,” “Mississippi Hoo Doo Man” and “Boogie Man,” among many others.
“My career has been a long and rich journey from the time I began playing at 12 years old until the present day,” says “Omar” Kent Dykes in the album’s liner notes. “It has been a blast from 1962 until now. The Essential Omar & the Howlers includes songs that are considered my biggest hits combined with songs I believe to be some of my best work. The collection compiles my entire life’s work in the music industry: writing, recording, touring and making the blues rock for over five decades.”
Omar & the Howlers – Essential Collection Track Listing
DISC 1 – Best Of
01. Magic Man
02. East Side Blues
03. Border Girl
04. Hard Times In the Land of Plenty
05. Bad Seed
06. Wall of Pride
07. Mississippi Hoo Doo Man
08. Big Chief Pontiac
09. Tears Like Rain
10. Monkey Land
11. Snake Oil Doctor
12. Muddy Springs Road
13. Boogie Man
14. You Made Me Laugh
15. Jimmy Reed Highway
DISC 2 – Omar’s Picks
16. I Want You
17. Snake Rhythm Rock
18. Burn It To the Ground
19. Got My Heart Set On You
20. Work Song
21. Alligator Wine
22. Do It for Daddy
23. I’m Wild About You
24. That’s Your Daddy Yaddy Yo
25. Stone Cold Blues
26. Girl’s Got Rhythm
27. Life Without You
28. World of Trouble
29. Sugar Ditch
30. Built for Comfort
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Friday, May 6, 2011
Angel Blues - Omar and the Howlers
Austin, besides being the Texas state capital, is home to much of the best in American roots music. Since the 1970s, gutsy blues players, renegade country pickers, and raw-voiced rockers have mixed & matched their musical styles in Austin ’s thriving club scene. And that’s where Kent “Omar” Dykes holds court too.
He hails from McComb, Miss. , a town with the distinction of being home turf for Bo Didley. Omar started playing guitar at seven, took to hanging out in edge-of-town juke joints at 12, joined his first band at 13 – the next youngest player being 50 – and started honing his music. He was still Kent Dykes in those days, but by the time he hit 20 he had hooked up with a crazy party band, called the Howlers, looking back, he says, “We had two saxophone players on baritone and tenor who wore Henry Kissinger masks. They were called the Kissinger Brothers. Not on every song, mind you. Sometimes it was Dolly Parton playing saxophone. Or Cher. And we had these cardboard cutouts from record stores for skits.” They even did fake ads for Sunshine Collard Greens and Howlers’ Fried Chicken – “for that old-fashioned taste that tastes just like Grandma.”
It was a crazy time, but a lot of fun too, with the rough & tumble Howlers playing R&B, Rock & Roll and even the occasional polka and western swing tunes. But Kent Dykes mostly just wanted to play blues. And by then the other Howlers had taken to calling him “Omar Overtone” because he tended to let his guitar feedback on stage while he dropped to the floor to spin on his back in a spontaneous, Big & Tall Store take on break-dancing. As he says, those performances were “sometimes fueled by, a-hmm, alcohol.”
By 1976, the Howlers decided to move and relocate to Austin, where such clubs as the Soap Creek Saloon, the Broken Spoke, the Armadillo World Headquarters and Antone’s had created a haven for renegade music. “We worked out of Austin for about a year,” Omar says, “but a lot of the guys decided they weren’t cut out to play music full-time for the rest of their lives. They headed back to Mississippi and Arkansas , and I decided to keep the name. Nobody objected.” And as Dykes says, Omar & the Howlers works better than Kent & the Howlers. Of such decisions are careers made.
Fronting a new lineup, Dykes honed a band capable of the sort of raw, rowdy, rambunctious blues that made Howlin’ Wolf and Hound Dog Taylor legends. Omar's first release was Big Leg Beat in 1980, shortly followed by I Told You So 1984, earning Omar & the Howlers consecutive Austin band-of-the-year awards in 1985-1986. Hard Time in the Land of Plenty followed in 1987.
But really that was just the beginning as Omar followed up with another twelve albums in the next fourteen years; Wall Of Pride 1988, Monkey Land 1988, Live at the Paradiso, Courts Of Lulu, Blues Bag all in 1992. Blues Bag 1992 was Omar's first solo album followed by a second solo album, Muddy Springs Road in 1995. Omar also released World Wide Open in 1995. Next up was Southern Style 1996, Swingland 1998 followed with two releases; Live At The Opera House and The Screaming Cat both in 2000. But that's not all; Omar came on with Big Delta in 2001 and Boogie Man in 2003.
On Boogie Man, Omar brought in songwriter friends he’s made since he left Mississippi for Texas 27 years earlier. “Co-writing at that point in my life was a lot of fun. To me it’s like free songs. These are ones that I wouldn’t have had the patience to sit down and write on my own. But when you get with friends and drink coffee, tell jokes and stories, and then write something, it always turns out to be something different than what you might have done on your own.”
Plus it’s not exactly heavy lifting to work with such Texas icons as Ray Wyle Hubbard, Darden Smith, Alejandro Escovedo and Stephen Bruton.
Besides the songwriting collaborators, Omar also brought some friends into the recording studio, including guitarists Chris Duarte and Jon Dee Graham (True Believers), Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Double Trouble, George Rains (Sir Douglas Quintet and house drummer on scores of Antone’s label releases) and his frequent running-mates Terry Bozzio (Missing Persons, Jeff Beck, Frank Zappa) and Malcolm “Papa Mali” Welbourne.
In 2006 Omar was back with more and did another four albums in the next four years; Bamboozled 2006, On The Jimmy Reed Hiway (with Jimmie Vaughn) 2007 (with an episode on Austin City Limits - see Photos/Videos section), Chapel Hill (with Nalle, Omar and Magic Slim) 2008 and then in 2009 with Big Town Playboy.
2011 finds Omar tighter, funkier than ever and slated with a great new release in 2012. But Omar always loves to play live; “I still do 150-160 shows a year, and with travel days that adds up to a lot of time away from home. It always seems like we’re on a plane headed somewhere.”
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