Peter Nande’s Danish Blues

Denmark is a long way from the Mississippi Delta or the south side of Chicago. It’s not a likely place to find a genuine mojo hand, or even your basic John the Conqueror root.
However, if you believe that blues music expresses a human condition, not just a geographical or cultural one, then you’ll no doubt take great pleasure in the emerging artistry of Danish-born bandleader Peter Nande.

Nande is currently touring in support of his second CD, Big Boy Boogie: California Sessions Vol. I, produced by blues icon James Harman. The CD documents Nande’s evolution from student and neophyte into legitimate blues songwriter, singer and harp player, and features a diverse mix of blues shuffles, swing, Louisiana swamp grooves, mambos and even a taste of ska.

Harman’s considerable artistic influence and production savvy are evident throughout the recording. However; Nande is his own man. He sings his own songs, replete with grooves that you’ll find yourself remembering long after the music’s stopped. His voice is rich and inviting; his harmonica work is lean, crisp and articulate, each note impassioned, yet purposeful. And the vibe is right, too: Close your eyes and you might imagine yourself in a Southern honky tonk circa 1960, rockin’ amid the sweat and sawdust of a summer night.

It Happened Overnight, Nearly Twenty Years Later
As is true with most success stories, this one didn’t happen overnight. For the better part of two decades, Nande has dedicated himself to the passionate pursuit of creating legitimate blues music. It began in 1988 when, at age 16, he first heard the music of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and Sonny Boy Williamson (I and II) on LPs at the local library. He was inspired to buy his first harmonicas and, in his words, “started to mess around” with the blues.
“I was hooked on the sound of the blues harmonica and the blues genre,” Nande recalls. “I started out just wanting to play the harp, but as I got more knowledge, the blues grew on me. Suddenly I wanted to make songs and my own music, to be a singer and songwriter. It just sort of happened. The music and the ideas for songs were suddenly in my head and had to get out.”

Nande moved to Copenhagen in his early twenties and devoted himself to studying such blues masters as Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter and Howlin’ Wolf, as well as a younger generation of performers, including Harman, Charlie Musselwhite and William Clarke.

It took five years before Nande felt he was ready. In 1998 he founded Nande & the Big Difference, and for the next seven years served a working apprenticeship as a blues musician. In 2002, the band released a self-titled CD and began playing festivals in Europe, often backing the likes of Lazy Lester, Harman and others.

“I’m a go-getter,” Nande recalls. “I contacted the guys who I liked best in the blues business like James [Harman], R.J. Mischo and Gary Primich. I booked and went on tours with them, and asked lots of questions. I have been watching them, trying to learn. I’m still learning!”

California Dreamin’, Blues-Style
When his band, Nande & the Big Difference, disbanded in 2005, Nande turned his attention to fulfilling his dream of recording in the U.S. with American musicians he’d backed when those musicians toured Europe.

Thus began a year of planning and collaboration with Harman that culminated in May 2006 with Nande and ace guitarist Ronni Busack-Boysen flying to California to record. With Harman as producer, the project took shape in the laid-back Oceanside, Calif. home studio of Harman’s guitarist, Nathan James, who served as engineer and who also added guitar on three tracks. Guitarist Junior Watson contributed his wickedly inventive axe work to four tracks, and Harman co-wrote and sang a couple of tracks. Harman assembled a stellar rhythm section for the endeavor, with Carl Sonny Leyland adding tasteful piano, Buddy Clark on bass, Hal Smith on drums and James Michael “Bonedaddy” Tempo on percussion.

Big Boy Boogie: California Sessions Vol. I. features an abundance of danceable Nande-penned grooves. To name a few: Dig the swamp vibe of “I Need a Woman,” complete with bongos and heavily tremeloed guitar; the urgent Chicago shuffle of “Mover & Shaker,” the foot-stompin’ “Comin’ Home” (co-written with Busack-Boysen); the John Lee Hooker/Howlin’ Wolf-flavored dual harp showcase “She’s Mad Again,” and the carnivalesque two-beat feel of “King of Bad Excuses.” Sample the pure slow-dance sensibility of “Lucky Charm,” the mambo-driven “Confessions of a Workaholic,” and the pleasantly surprising ska feel of “Ol’ Sleepyhead” (co-written with Harman). The recording is a veritable litmus test in blues rhythms.

Farther On Up the Road…
As the CD title indicates, look for more releases in the future from the California sessions with Harman. Meanwhile, Nande performs as leader of the Peter Nande Band, and has earned a solid reputation throughout Denmark and Scandinavia. Nande plays locally in Copenhagen at such venues as the Mojo Blues Bar (a mojo in Denmark, after all!), and has his sights set on increasing his profile in Europe and perhaps even America.

His music has come a long way, but Nande still sees himself as a work in progress. “I’m in the process of finding my own thing, learning from some of the best blues musicians,” he says. “I love the Chicago/West Coast blues style, but I want to make a little more obscure stuff in the future… but still with an urban and rural blues base. I want to write my own songs, not be a copycat but take my blues in a new direction.”

Working with Harman, Junior Watson and the other members of his recording line-up has only encouraged Nande to strive to improve even more.

“It all makes me happy,” he says. “I’m a bluesman to the bone and I feel those 12 bars and a good song. It keeps me going in life!”