Bobby G Band returns to the stage
Putting a guitar or a pair of drumsticks into Bobby Ginsberg’s hands is like giving rattles to a baby.
He also geeks out over an amplifier’s impedance, gushes over the compression in a Don Henley song and explains why he uses a separate power amp with his home stereo setup.
“Without the extra juice, the other components are too weak for those speakers,” which are recording studio monitors, he explains, pulling up a photo on his phone of Rush bass player Geddy Lee sitting at a mixing board. He holds the image to eye level: “How cool is that?”
As the owner of an elaborate Philipstown studio, The Loft, filled with screens, consoles, a drum set and a wall of dangling guitars, he would find the photo amusing.
After the pandemic derailed the Bobby G Blues Band, his chief musical outlet, the Brooklyn-born blues boy is reuniting its members to perform a set at the Howland Cultural Center on Oct. 25. Ginsberg sings and plays guitar.
A city boy who loves fishing, Ginsberg came to the Hudson Valley after 9/11 to hang with a friend and liked it so much that he began splitting his time between Forest Hills and Philipstown.
Ginsberg, 62, worked as an engineer for General Electric and now makes fudge at his Cold Spring Candy Co. at 11 Main St. “Someone whose word I trust told me that a candy shop in Cold Spring would be a good addition, and she was right,” he says. “I taught myself how to make fudge and chocolate.”
He’s known for schmoozing with customers and feeling out if they play guitar because upstairs, in a third-floor nook with a great view of the village gazebo, sit four dozen amplifiers and guitars awaiting buyers at his Vintage Guitars of Cold Spring.
“I’ve sold a guitar, amp or pedal to just about every player in the area,” Ginsberg says. Visiting an event with longstanding scene-makers at the Howland Center a few weeks back, he hugged and mugged, working the room like the mayor of Music Town.
The blues lovers began jamming in the early 2010s at Joe’s Irish Pub in Beacon (now Momo Valley, although there’s still a shamrock in the sidewalk). The cast rotates, but the mainstays include Andy Rutcofsky on saxophone and bass player Kenny Kaufman.
Ginsberg and his coterie have recorded a dozen studio and live CDs at the Towne Crier and Dennings Point Distillery in Beacon, The Falcon in Marlboro and other venues. One is named Beacon Blues, a riff on the Steely Dan song “Deacon Blues.”
A civic-minded guy, Ginsberg donated a mixer to the Howland Center, where he co-hosted its long-running open mic with Thom Joyce for many years. He also loaned a Digital Audio Tape (DAT) machine to the Putnam History Museum to help it access data captured in the antiquated format.
Like many guitarists drawn to classic and progressive rock, Ginsberg discovered the electric guitar-driven blues of the 1940s and ’50s (Chicago Blues), although he also appreciates the acoustic pickers from the 1920s and ’30s (Mississippi Delta Blues).
Beyond their feeling and technique, lead guitar players seek to develop a signature tone, which starts with the strings, guitar and perhaps a pick, of course, but timbre is also shaped with effect pedals and the amplifier. To dial in a warmer sound, Ginsberg always uses an amp with vacuum tubes rather than a solid-state circuit.
The band’s repertoire includes a handful of originals (“Nine O’Clock Blues” and “The Infant Child”), but he mostly mixes up classic rock covers like “Whole Lotta Love,” by Led Zeppelin, and “After Midnight,” by J. J. Cale, with blues staples “Stormy Monday” and “The Thrill is Gone.”
A photo included with one of his discs shows him as a child grinning while holding a guitar. He became proficient in drums but decided to go with an electric guitar after hearing “Purple Haze,” by Jimi Hendrix.
“I knew that day I had to learn to play lead guitar,” he says. “Hendrix started playing rhythm and blues in the 1950s and, at heart, he’s a blues guitar player. I mean, ‘Red House’? Come on.”
The genre is appealing because it’s expressive and, ironically, gives Bobby G positive vibes. “The blues is so emotional, you just feel it in your gut,” he says. “I started playing rock ’n’ roll, but my soul settled with the blues.”
The Howland Cultural Center is located at 477 Main St. in Beacon. The Bobby G Blues Band will perform at 7 p.m. on Oct. 25, followed by an open mic.
