JOE & VICKI PRICE
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JOE & VICKI PRICE
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Of course, the intersection/collision of Vicki’s life with that of incendiary, mercurial Iowa Blues Hall of Fame legend Joe Price more than 25 years ago accelerated the process, but—make no mistake here—the creative, musical impact of this most-fortuitous of romantic pairings was and remains a bustling two-way street in nearly every way imaginable, and the artistic achievements of both partners are irrevocably intertwined. The on-stage interplay between Joe and Vick (which is as natural and copacetic as it is off-stage) makes that connection clear, and the mutual admiration society is well-tended. “Vicki thinks that people should concentrate more on my singing,” Joe says with some (well-placed) pride, “because she really believes I’m a great singer. “But for my part,” he continues, “I think people should pay a lot more attention to her guitar playing, because she’s pickin’ the [heck] outta that thing…” True enough—Vicki Price’s intuitive, swinging blues style, accuracy and lyrical, light-fingered touch are unmistakable, yet she’s also keenly aware of fans’ pre-conceived notions of just who is ‘driving the bus.’ “A lot of times when I’m playing with Joe,” she admits, “I’ll be taking the [guitar] solo and I’ll look up and notice that people don’t even have a clue it’s coming from me.” Vicki’s mother (who recently retired after fifty years as the organist for her church) started Vicki and her sister Connie singing duets in nursing homes and for all imaginable church and community social occasions when the girls were just three and four years old. Their country church was too small to have a choir, so the girls spent a lot of time practicing, and if they did particularly well, their mother rewarded them with spirited renditions of “Roll Out the Barrel” or “Boogie Woogie Blues” on the piano. “The first song she taught us was ‘Give Me That Old Time Religion’,” Vicki recalls, “that was the first song we did in church, and she would teach us to do little hand movements, kind of like the old Motown thing [laughs]. “She loved to play boogie-woogie,” Price continues. “She liked—and still does—music that rocks. Even when she taught us gospel, it tended to be more from the black side than the white… “She used to play a lot at home, too. I still remember the day Patsy Cline died—I was very small when that happened—but she sat me and Connie up on the piano bench with her and she just played Patsy Cline songs over and over to us all night; she was just devastated by it.” For all of that youthful immersion in music both sacred and secular, though, it was a television performance by the legendary folk singer Odetta that positively galvanized the 12-year-old Vicki Ewing. “I saw Odetta and I just went nuts,” she enthuses, as though the image is still fresh in her mind. “Now I look back and laugh at how strange that must have seemed to my mother—who at the time was a typical 1960s white Midwestern housewife—to have me telling her ‘this is what I want to be: a black woman with an attitude and a guitar’!” But whether or not Mama Ewing was shocked, amused, appalled or whatever, to her credit she took her daughter’s dream seriously, and as soon as she could fill sufficient Green Stamps books to swing the deal, Vicki was the proud and eager recipient of a brand new acoustic guitar. Although just entering her teens, the young Vicki had very clear ideas about music, and if she remained open to influences from as-yet-unheard sources, there was one thing about music of which she was dead certain. “I never liked rock music,” she states defiantly. “I liked folk music. I liked John Prine, Doc Watson. My friends that played music listened to a LOT of Mississippi John Hurt. Those kind of fingerstyle guitarists—Leo Kottke, Leon Redbone—that’s what I was drawn to. I’ve always liked that kind of playing, and that’s what I wanted to do.” The prevailing musical styles in Northeast Iowa at the time were rock and country-rock and that—combined with the fact that Iowa didn’t sell beer on Sundays while Wisconsin did—sent Vicki and her circle of friends across the Mississippi to Prairie du Chien. “As luck would have it, I was walking down the street in Prairie du Chien one day when I was about 17 or 18,” says Price. “Whatever age I was, I was too young for the bars, but I heard flamenco guitar coming out a little hole-in-the-wall tavern, and I went in and there was this beatnik playing flamenco, and I just started hanging there.” Vicki met Joe Price when he performed at a Waukon pub where she worked in 1981; the pair made music together for the first time that very night, and the whole deal fell in line in very short order after that. The two moved to Lansing, playing gigs together often through the mid-’80s, but the area was, at first, resistant to Joe’s uncompromising brand of sizzling, old-school blues. “I know when Joe moved up here, everyone told him he’d have to learn country or country-rock or he wouldn’t survive,” Vicki remembers, “and people up here will admit now that Joe pretty much opened the area up to the blues. “He really stuck to his guns,” she says proudly, “but the first place I took him to was The Main Entrance in Prairie du Chien—the place with the flamenco guitar—and I introduced Joe to John Burlingame (the beatnik guitarist who also owned the joint) and John looked at Joe and asked him, ‘Do you play anything I’ve heard on the radio?’ and Joe said ‘No’ and John said, ‘Okay, you can work here’ and Joe’s been playing The Main Entrance ever since—twenty-some years and counting.” Vicki and Joe married in 1987, and the next year, Vicki began what would be a 17-year, full-time stint at the local button factory. She continued to keep her hand in on the music side of things, and recorded her solid debut disc, MISSISSIPPI SUMMER, for Trailer Records in 1999, but her day-to-day involvement was sharply curtailed. “When I was working, I’d go out with Joe when he played close to home,” says Price, “but I really couldn’t travel or leave for long. But in about 2002, Joe decided he wanted to get out and tour more, and I had developed a lot of computer skills at work, so I started getting on the Internet and tracking down likely places, and we would call them up and it just all kind of fell into place.” In 2005, Vicki (by then a remarkably efficient, self-taught manager/booking-agent) had elevated Joe’s profile considerably, so much so that she was able to leave her 9-to-5 job and rededicate herself to making music. Her long-overdue sophomore disc LOOKIN’ FOR LOVE (recorded with Joe and released on Trailer Records) exhibited clear improvement by Vicki as a writer, singer and guitarist, and the results of the renewed dedication and greatly expanded performance schedule since then continue to demonstrate palpable growth at such a stunning rate that it’s impossible to guess where Vicki’s skills will peak. The Prices are voracious readers with wide-ranging interests, but they’re constantly negotiating the chasm between songwriting and storytelling while still trying to find the elusive magic that’s at the core of both. “Joe and I read a lot of literature, from Mark Twain to Steinbeck to Gabriel Garcia Marquez,” Vicki asserts, “and we love that, but you can’t put it to music. You have to feed on language in order to write, but there are people out there who don’t get that you need to understand so much of what’s gone before. “I heard Garrison Keillor quote an Hispanic writer (whose name escapes me) that went something like: ‘If you don’t believe I love you, then cut open my heart and look inside, but be careful you don’t hurt yourself, because you are there’,” recites Vicki with a clear sense of admiration. “It’s not a song, but it’s exactly that sense of magic and mystery that Joe and I both strive for…” --Jim Musser, May 2007
VICKI PRICE NEWS
The woman is the primary songwriter on the Prices’ album, “Lookin’ for Love.” Vicki bares her soul as she sings from the perspective of wife, mother and sister. Joe’s signature vibrant guitar playing underpins her soulful voice. “Iowa’s Child” is a proud anthem that, yes, mentions “tall corn” but still manages not to get too corny. --KYLE MUNSON January 20, 2005 RATING Rating on a rising scale of no stars (broken down) to five stars (revved up).
Gone in this album is the wistful, virginal sweetness of memory and voice that wound Mississippi Summer into our hearts. The songs on Lookin' for Love, from howling to those boys to “Build That House,” to spitting out “My Man's Been Cheatin',” to whispering out family love in “Mama's Gift,” arrive in our ears clean, confident, and ripe with truth. She's going to get some help from her Iowa Blues Hall of Fame husband, Joe Price. On his Samick-LesPaul and electric National Resophonic Guitar, he's the one off center-stage this time around. His wife's put all the flowers in the vase; his is the masterful job of letting her color sing. -- Tanya O’Connor November 2004
A full schedule of entertainment kicks off at Oak Center General Store with an appearance by Joe and Vicki Price...... The couple's music is "foot-stompin' good time blues". Joe is a virtual one-man blues band, and when joined by wife, Vicki, a fine blues singer and guitarist in her own right, it is an awesome experience."
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For Bookings contact Joe Price 563-586-2654 or jpblues@acegroup.cc 1957 Doehler Drive Lansing, IA 52151 |
Vicki
Price Growing up in a remote rural setting easily could
turn out to be a severe disadvantage to a fledgling musician. But for Vicki
(Ewing) Price, the particular mix-and-match, peek-a-boo forays into country,
blues and R&B-influenced gospel afforded by her formative years in Waukon, Iowa
circumscribed a crucible that would forge a distinctive, blues-belting guitarist
who is as earthy, unique and seductive as a greenhouse orchid.
