Greg Sherrod Lets Out The Pandemic Blues

A cowbell counts off the beat at the beginning of ​“Rockstar,” from Greg Sherrod’s new album Do You Feel It? A sleazy guitar line falls in. Sherrod lets out a ​“huh!’ like the great soul singers of yore, and the band creates a big, thick groove. Sherrod’s voice, rich and gritty, describes a woman playing guitar while nodding to music heroes of the past. ​“She’s got Jimi’s fire, and Miles’s blue,” Sherrod sings. ​“And when she plays guitar, she’s too cool for school / But I feel like a rock star when I’m with you.” It’s a song designed to start a party, and it does.

Elsewhere on Do You Feel It?, the band settles into an easy swing, precise and full of life, the guitar drenched in the blues. ​“Baby, whenever I see your face,” Sherrod sings, ​“it feels like mercy shining down on me.” It’s another song intended to fill a dance floor, with the kind of beat you’d spin a partner to.

“Rockstar” and ​“Mercy” are united by Sherrod’s voice and songwriting. They feel like two different bands — because they are.

Sherrod, the Connecticut-based musician who cut his teeth singing in New Haven’s clubs in the 1980s and 1990s and now performs around the state and sometimes much farther afield, has released an album that he described as the culmination of his career as a working singer and songwriter. But in another sense, it’s a snapshot of where he is right now.

Last year, Sherrod, who currently lives in Stonington, found himself fronting not one, but two bands.

“I was playing with these really aggressive cats from Providence, and we put together this band called the Get Down, and we’ve been marching all over Providence. That band is a mission.” Sherrod said. At the same time, he said, he was manning the mic with the Black Sheep, a band named after the place in Niantic ​“where they we born.”

“That band is a little more classy,” Sherrod said. ​“If I were going to play a high-society party, I would take that band. If I were going to play a biker party with strippers,” Sherrod added with a laugh, he would take the Get Down. ​“In Providence, people really dig that, so we give it to them.”

Among the differences between the two bands are the approaches of their respective lead guitarists. ​“The Get Down has a guitar player by the name of Mark Gentile,” Sherrod said. ​“We call him Superboy,” he added, because of his speed and dexterity. The Black Sheep, meanwhile, has Chris Daniels. ​“He’s an old blues guy from the blues circuit and his leads are like molasses,” Sherrod said with appreciation. ​“The two of them are completely different sounds.”

Sherrod worked both bands hard for months, playing with the Get Down every Wednesday in Providence and the Black Sheep every Thursday in Niantic. In the course of playing gigs, he’d sometimes assemble bands that were different combinations of the members of both bands. ​“So everybody knows each other, everybody likes each other. There’s no drama,” Sherrod said. ​“But the two bands are so different.” When he subs one musician for another, he said, ​“it’s not the same band.” Though perhaps they had one thing in common, he added: ​“I’m the least talented guy of everyone,” he said.

In deciding how to record Do You Feel It?, Sherrod divided up his originals between the two full bands. ​“The Get Down got the old songs, which are more rock,” Sherrod said. ​“The Black Sheep got the new songs.” Sherrod decided which songs would make the cut for the album by trying them out in front of audiences. ​“We tested everything live. The songs we got the best response on, we recorded those,” Sherrod said.

The gigs were a way for Sherrod to ensure that he could pay his band members to learn his songs. It was also a way for the band members to learn the songs cold. ​“You have to learn your parts and come to the stage and play. It keeps everybody’s chops up. Nobody wants to be the one to drop the ball. And it really works! We’re doing things that other people aren’t doing and they’re enjoying it,” Sherrod said.

The album thus alternates between The Get Down and the Black Sheep, song for song. ​“So there’s something for everybody,” Sherrod said.

From State Street To Dixwell

The 57-year-old Sherrod credits his deep musical experience in New Haven with shaping his attitude to music making and learning how to express himself while also connecting with a variety of audiences. He grew up in Milford as ​“one of the only black kids in town,” he said. His talent as a singer was evident early. ​“I first starting singing when I was nine years old in school. By the time I was 12 or 13, I had all the solos,” he said. He was in the Milford-based Sound Of Freedom Youth Choir. ​“We used to practice in City Hall. It was a totally Milford thing,” Sherrod said. ​“We had polyester pants and shirts with turltenecks and we played in malls.”

Teachers encouraged him to explore classical music. For a time he considered maybe trying to be an opera singer. He tried out musicals, appearing in youth productions of Jesus Christ Superstar and Nunsense. But as a late teenager, he said, he felt ​“I had to make a decision.” He’d started writing songs at 16. ​“If I got into a Broadway track” as a singer, he felt, ​“I wouldn’t be able to write songs anymore…. So I went the rock ​‘n’ roll track. Little did I know I’d still be doing it at 57.”

When he moved to New Haven as a young man, ​“I got treated really differently. It’s like somebody cut my shackles, cut my chains, and let me go to the big house,” Sherrod said. He was singing with the Clarke Brothers, and they played every stage in town. In the 1990s, Sherrod pointed out, that meant more stages. ​“You could go up and down State Street” and play in a few different places, he said. State Street was different from playing downtown, which was different from playing in clubs on Dixwell. In the Clarke Brothers, ​“our bit was, we used to play on Dixwell Avenue in the black clubs, and we played in Cafe Nine, or we’d play with the jam bands in Bridgeport.” The band changed up its sound to suit the audience. And at the same time, he found himself mingling with musicians of all stripes. ​“I was one of the old, hardcore Cafe Niners,” Sherrod said. ​“The vibe there was totally inclusive. I hung out with the punk guys, and the jazz guys, and the blues guys, and they all hung out together.”

As vibrant as New Haven’s music scene is now, Sherrod noted a decline in the sizes of live audiences from that time. ​“I don’t know what happened to New Haven,” he said. When he was younger, he felt college students were the core audience for several clubs. Maybe due to the drinking age rising from 18 to 21, and maybe due to shifting tastes in music, that changed. ​“Somewhere, somehow, college kids stopped listening to live music, and it’s a shame,” he said.

Sherrod’s music nods to the past, but is not beholden to it. ​“I call the kind of music that I do ​“bluesnsoulnrocknroll,’” he said, a name that came about partially because he needed to be able to give audience members after a show ​“a quick answer while moving the equipment,” he said with a laugh. As a musician, he sees the connections among different styles of music more than he sees the differences. As a live performer, he plays a healthy mix of originals and covers. He likes to give his audiences something familiar, the comfort food. He’s a commanding blues singer, and cites his sources. ​“I announce the original artist’s name in the song,” Sherrod said. When he begins a particular song, he might say ​“B.B. King said; Buddy Guy said it just like this; Freddie King asked this question.”

“We try to stay true to melodies,” he added, ​“but the groove can change. I’m a heavy groove man, and that’s what we live on.”

More broadly, he said, ​“I don’t look at music as genre — I look at music as music and engage each song individually. It doesn’t matter if we’re playing jump blues or funk. We try to put our own take on it.” This is in keeping with history. Much American music, after all, came from the same Southern ingredients. In the South, he noted, musicians are more apt to blend genres than Northern musicians might. ​“If you go to New Orleans, and you see a punk band, you’re going to hear the blues. If you hear a blues band in Atlanta, it’s gonna be funky. They’ve baked it into the cake,” he said.

And for Sherrod, it’s as important for everyone to put their own stamp on the music, just like their predecessors did. Otherwise, ​“they’re not progressing, they’re not evolving,” he said. In addition to performing, Sherrod makes money teaching voice lessons. ​“What’s your sound?” he asks his students. ​“Who are you? What are you bringing to this music?”

Head Above Water

Like every working musician, Sherrod saw his steady performing gigs vanish with the pandemic, which for him was a ​“big loss of income.” He still gives lessons remotely. ​“That’s how I’m keeping myself alive,” he said, but ​“everything is really close — I’m just making my bills, and I’m still not collecting unemployment.” He noted that some of his students had to give up lessons for the time being because they themselves had lost income. ​“Others are sticking with me,” he said.

Another source of income has come from presales of Do You Feel It? Sherrod is grateful for this, as he was ​“right at the point of mixing” the album ​“when the shutdown happened.”

“I had to make a decision as to whether I was going to make this record or not,” he said. ​“It was quite a chunk of money, but I went ahead and did it.” So far, he said, ​“making the CD seems to have been the smarter business decision,” which he hopes it will continue to be. ​“The presale is doing OK. It’s how I’m feeding myself,” Sherrod said. He’s currently waiting for the CDs to arrive; as soon as they do, he’ll ship out the discs to fans who bought it early, then put the album up on Bandcamp.

As Sherrod looks ahead to the end of the pandemic, he does it with the same energy he has always had. ​“We’re still experimenting,” he said. ​“I really look at it as progressive blues. It’s not looking at what B.B. King did. Somebody’s got to make new music. We can’t keep doing what’s already been done. We have to stop reading off of our neighbor’s paper.”

“My whole life is music and it’s the best thing ever,” he added. ​“Even if I never made a dime at this, it would be the best thing.”

Sherrod is handling presales of Do You Feel It? through IndieGoGo.