In Conversation: GA-20’s Matthew Stubbs

Photo by Fancey Pansen.

Since 2018, Boston-based outfit GA-20 have been on a mission to introduce the blues to a new generation of listeners. Formed over a mutual love of the art form, the raw energy Pat Faherty and Matthew Stubbs bring to the genre has an infectious earnestness that emanates from a shared passion and knowledge evident in every gnarly groove and snare shuffle. While on a nationwide tour with J.D. Simo, guitarist Matthew Stubbs sat down to talk with The Eisenberg Review about their industrious pandemic, new covers record Try It… You Might Like It: GA-20 Does Hound Dog Taylor and some of his favorite albums.

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It’s good to see you, Matt. It’s been a couple of years since we’ve last talked, and boy, have those past couple years been quite something.

It’s been really busy and not busy at the same time for sure.

That’s what I’ve heard. I was talking with Terry [Cole] out mutual friend at Colemine and Karma Chief Records and he had said back in April that you had gotten four albums worth of recording done during the pandemic. Is that true?

There was one done that we were going to release before, but we’re holding off on releasing that. We got three other ones done, so there was four ready.

Holy crap. That certainly sounds like an industrious pandemic.

We figured out how to make it work, recording anyway.

And how did that work? I know you guys typically, especially for your new record Try It… You Might Like It—your tribute to Hound Dog Taylor, which we’ll talk about in a moment—I know you’re typically in the room live, just doing a couple of takes, not really doing a lot of overdubs and stuff like that. How were you able to make that work in a pandemic setting?

I built a small studio at my house during this time and we all did get together. Leading up to it for rehearsing and stuff we got together out on my screened in porch, distanced and everything. It was before the vaccine when we recorded this. When it came time to do the actual recording, it was the band—three of us—and then one of our good friends, Matt Girard was the engineer. Everybody locked down for two weeks on their own and got a few tests before they came over and we just stayed at my house for three days. One day was for set up and two days to record. We were all in the same room, but we played it safe just in our own little bubble. It was fun.

That sounds incredibly cool and I want to get a little bit more into the story of this new record. Certainly, 2021 is the 50th anniversary of Alligator Records. My experience with Alligator Records was actually from my dad, who had the 25th anniversary box set double CD…

Oh yeah, I had that too.

There we go! On this new record, you’re covering some of the tunes that I heard for the first time on that comp. Tell me the story of how this record came together. How did the partnership with Alligator Records unfold and why Hound Dog Taylor?

A year ago July—so, right in the middle of the pandemic—I got an email from Bruce [Iglauer] over at Alligator. He had since the band the last time we went through Chicago and really liked it. He seemed to be unaware that we were with Colemine, but anyway, he wanted to work with us. I let him know we were already under contract with Colemine, but right away had the idea [because] we love Hound Dog and get compared to Hound Dog because the instrumentation is two guitars, drums, no bass. We’ve been big fans, so I just kinda came up with this idea. I first talked to Terry [Cole] and then called Bruce to get the two labels to kind of team up and co-release it. My thoughts was we can reach more people, because Alligator has been around so long in the blues community and Colemine is—I’m sure there’s some overlap, but a different fan base—very vinyl forward, and we’re into that, and I knew that it was the 50th anniversary, so it seemed like a really good time if we could get it out in time and record. So, that was the concept. Terry loved the idea, Bruce really liked the idea, and it took just a couple Zoom meetings to figure out logistics of how it was going to work and be worth it for everybody.

That’s awesome. I definitely think you guys capture some of your rawest, most visceral performances on this record. I dig it and it’s great to me because Try It…You Might Like It feels like not just a mission statement for the record, but for GA-20 as a whole. It seems like you guys are really working to bring the blues forward.

That’s exactly why we picked that title.

That begs the question then, what do you feel the blues has to offer music fans in this current music landscape.

Well, I think lots of other classic styles have had revivals, right? Especially country music right now, and I’m not talking pop country, but traditional country music, soul music, garage rock even, psych rock—all these styles of music that I really like have come back in one way or another in almost the mainstream. They’re reaching a bigger audience than traditional blues or even blues rock is reaching these days. I don’t know of any bands that are recording in that way and then trying to put that out there in the blues space. So that’s what we’re trying to do. I want people to hear us that might not like blues because they think blues sounds a different way than what traditional Chicago blues sounds like. I think we’re having some success with that. We’re one week into this tour and I’m surprised that the age of the gigs is a lot younger than in the past or when I’ve played with other blues artists. I think it’s probably a lot to do with Colemine getting out there and we have a really good publicity team with Alligator and we have our own publicist as well. I’d like to see more blues bands coming up doing this type of blues, not just blues rock guitar shred music, you know?

I’m glad you brought up the tour. I’m sure it’s been great to be back and out again. What’s been the best thing? What were you most looking forward to? What’s it been like so far?

We missed performing. That’s my favorite part of being a musician, playing live. We’re out with this guy J.D. Simo, so it’s a good bang for your buck if you come because you get to see two full shows. It’s been great.

I don’t want to be too presumptuous, having already talked about the three records worth of material, but what’s next for GA-20 after the tour? Is there another record brewing for 2022?

We’re releasing a single October 15 that’s going to be followed by three more singles. We actually went out to Loveland, [Ohio] right after we recorded this record and we did a live performance at their studio—Terry’s studio—and we videoed it for release on this platform for Amazon called Coda. It’s all concerts, more legacy stuff like Hendrix and all different genres. They’re going to air this live performance, but we’re going to release some singles. It’s Hound Dog tunes, but we played them live and there’s video to go along with it. Our next studio album, which is all original material, that’s coming out in May 2022, so eight months.

Dope. Something to look forward to! In closing, I’m going to ask always our final question: what are three records you’d recommend to the audience and why?

One of my favorite records of all time is Revolver by the Beatles. Not a blues record, but I love that one.

I like that Jim James record that came out a few years ago, I think it’s called Eternally Even.

Next, let’s do a blues one. I’m going to say B.B. King’s Live A The Regal. That was one of my favorite blues records growing up.

And now I’ve already thought of other ones, like Junior Wells Hoodoo Man Blues, that’s a really food one, so there, I’ll give you four.