Don't forget your sunnies!! We are kicking off our Summer Songwriter Series with a hot solo acoustic show from locally born, internationally renown - the one and only Eli Cook!
Saturday, June 8th 2024 - join us for a solo acoustic show with Eli Cook, one of the finest blues-rock guitarists of his generation, and he just so happened to grow up around here! His solo act displays his songwriting, robust baritone voice and a whirlwind of his busy hands and feet, playing his 12-string or resonator guitar plus tambourine and stompbox.
Saturday
June 8th, 2024
seating 7:30, show 8pm~ $11 cover in advance
at the door:
$10 cash / $12 card
Kids 14 & under or 80 & better get in free~
@ Rapunzel’s Coffee and Books
Eli comes from the crossroads of blues, the highways of rock and the backroads of country, and with his gritty voice, there ain’t nothing like it. His guitar prowess includes pickin’, slidin’, and strummin’ from a Fender to a National Resonator Tri-Cone; he amazes the traditionalists and scares the modern players.
Eli was born at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and with no TV growing up, he spent Saturday nights around the radio with local shows and Prairie Home Companion. He picked up the guitar at age 13 after watching his older brother play and began to teach himself. Within two years, he was playing solo acoustic guitar for gospel revivals and opening shows at Rapunzel’s Coffee and Books and other local “juke joints.”
“When I was a kid, I heard lots of music in the home I grew up in,” says Cook. “My parents played a lot of old vinyl, classic rock, blues, country and whatnot.”
The musician, who grew up on the Nelson County-Albemarle border, started to play guitar at the age of 13. It was around this time that Bob Taylor of Rapunzel’s Coffee and Books in Lovingston met him.
“I used to hang out and jam — they had an open jam before Rapunzel’s even started — it was in the same space with the owners and their friends,” Cook says.
Taylor remembers the meeting well. A young Cook, who, as Taylor explains, was “so shy he would hardly talk,” showed up with his mother, who asked if her son could play with them since he had only ever practiced in his bedroom.
“The first time I heard him play — he was playing acoustic finger-style — he was remarkable then, and he’s gotten better since then,” Taylor says. “Every time I see him, he’s gotten better.”
Cook too, remembers those exchanges fondly.
“I learned a lot about music from playing in the round, so to speak, where each person takes a turn and plays a song and everyone has to accompany them.”
He says these experiences were the closest thing to traditional music lessons that he ever had.
“[It] was basically jump in, sink or swim, play along with a huge range — everything from bluegrass to pop, country and classic rock. It really forced me to learn a lot of music quickly, and be able to learn it on the fly.”
Cook began to play local shows, especially at Rapunzel’s. Taylor says he has played close to 100 shows at the store over the years.
source: News & Advance “‘Primitive Son’ Blues musician Eli Cook keeps the genre alive” by Emma Schkloven (14 January 2015)
His first electric trio, The Red House Blues Band, was formed in 2002 while a junior at Monticello Highschool. Eli was called a ‘blues phenomenon’ by reviewers in near-by Charlottesville: “Featuring fast-fingered guitar and a powerful voice beyond his years, Cook doesn’t need any Robert-Johnson-style pact with the devil to take him to the top.” (Eli Cook’s Red House Blues Band, by Matthew Hirst, C’ville Review, 12/10/2003)
In 2004, internationally renowned blues bass player Steve Riggs joined Eli’s rhythm section, a veteran of the blues circuit who had played and recorded with Muddy Waters, Jimmy Vaughan, and many others, and under whose tutelage Eli recorded ‘Moonshine Mojo,’ his first full-length recording, which has become a collector’s item today.
The following year Eli returned his attention to classic acoustic blues. Influenced by the songs of R. L. Burnside, Bukka White, and Son House, he recorded ‘Miss Blues’es Child’ at The Sound of Music Studios in Richmond, Virginia in a single autumn day, playing a borrowed 12-string and his own old Gibson, accompanying himself with a kick-drum or a tambourine tied to his boot. Patrick McCrowel, a talented friend from Greene County, stopped by to sing harmony and pick banjo on a few cuts, spontaneous and unrehearsed. Eli called it “…blue, blue, blues;” reviewers called him “…a young gun with an old soul…storming through banged-up slide guitar romps, tackling the storied form with the mean streak of his generation’s metal men.” Independently released in 2005, ‘Miss Blues’es Child’ was released internationally by Valley Entertainment on the Sledgehammer Blues label in 2007.
Meanwhile, Eli was putting together a new power trio to play and record his original work: a young, wildly talented local drummer, Jordan Marchini, who was playing for the gothic metal band Bella Morte, and a hard-rock/progressive bassist, Eric Yates, who could execute and elaborate on the complex and difficult bass lines Eli’s music required. They began performing and recording in January of 2006, and released the finished album, ‘ElectricHolyFireWater,’ a year later in January 2007.
By now, Eli’s musical reputation was spreading. His band, christened ElectricHolyFireWater, opened for legendary guitarist Johnny Winter, Room Full of Blues, and Shemekia Copeland. With African percussionist Darrell Rose, Cook performed on The Millennium Stage at The Kennedy Center, and he opened for B.B. King solo at The Paramount Theatre in February of 2007.
But already he was in the studio working on his next solo recording, a personal musical effort that would take three years to complete. During that time, his Double-Barrel Blues Show, an hour of acoustic vintage blues, followed by an electrifying night with his band, became a staple at Madam’s Organ, the most elite blues club in Washington, D.C. He opened solo repeatedly for Blues Master B.B.King on the east coast. His band and acoustic shows stunned the audiences at Floydfest, and he performed annual sold-out concerts of obscure Classic Hendrix Works.
Tinsley Ellis called him a "triple threat, obviously a great guitarist but also an emotive singer and an innovative songwriter. He’s in the vanguard of young, 21st-century blues rockers!"
In October of 2009 Cook released his fourth recording ‘Static in the Blood’ a lush, R&B studio recording with roots deep in gospel and blues and elegant guitar work of every hue and shade. The album is a paradise of contemporary styling all done the unmistakable Eli Cook way. Citing influences as diverse and as Kid Rock and Jay Z, Eli continues to introduce the Blues to the listener of the new century.
Through the years, Cook has performed and recorded both acoustic and electric blues, with ’Ace, Jack & King’ being released in 2011. Vintage Guitar Magazine said of the album's sound, "A throaty vocal matches the crunchy guitars that lean as much toward metal as they do blues.“ His next album ‘Primitive Son’ (2014), contained a slew of guest appearances such as Vinny Appice, Leslie West, Pat Travers and more. Steve Yourglivch from Blues Matters noted, "There is a high standard of songwriting and musicianship throughout. The guests never overshadow Eli and his core band but add subtleties and nuances."
Arnie Goodman’s words in Elmore Magazine immediately make sense when you consider Eli’s main influences—John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Soundgarden, and Rage Against the Machine—
“What Eli is doing is giving an authenticity to the blues, but giving it the energy a modern rock band would give it. That’s the key to it.”
As Eli himself says, “Everything I do is always deeply rooted in classic blues—meaning the feeling of it and the music theory aspect of it. It’s especially rooted in what they call pre-war blues, the more acoustic, rootsy stuff.” Joe McSpadden, writing in the roots music quarterly No Depression sums it up this way:
“On the seventh album of his career the phenom from Nelson County, Virginia reins in his inner guitar god and makes his most focused roots blues album yet. ‘High-Dollar Gospel’ finds Cook showcasing his acoustic mojo and the result is the most satisfying record of his career.”
That album—released to universally rave reviews in 2017—was a blend of Cook’s love of country pickers to blues rockers and included covers from Muddy Waters and Roosevelt Sykes that have been in his live shows for years, as well as an outstanding cover of Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight.” His guitar work and powerful vocals are moody but very dynamic in delivery that will cause a musical whiplash. ‘High-Dollar Gospel’ preaches a high voltage to your ears and shakes you loose. Eli Cook can rain down fire and brimstone in his singing, as well as express touching tenderness while pushing the musical envelope with these eight blues-fueled original tracks and two stunningly interpreted covers. He describes it as “…wanting to get something really representative of what I do now, as three-quarters of my shows are performed solo.”
Cook continues to evolve his musical presentations to accommodate various performance offers that come calling. “I loved to push my presentations in different directions, whether it be in workshops, and other venues, with other traditional American roots music elements to have more of an in-depth, cultural content to what I do. But without blues as the integral ingredient, music just ain’t worth listening to in my book.”
Fans welcomed Cook’s 2020 ep ‘All Night Thing’ with more praise -
“Good lord, this is hot blues! Cook’s three-track EP displays his full throttle voice, preternaturally whiske-aged along with SRV-approved guitar tones. The opener, “All Night Thing” is barroom blues with a fat groove and solos of raw emotion. “Sweet Jane Octane” is a shuffle with a bottleneck as big as Texas. Eli Cook is destined for the blues charts.”
-PP from Vintage Guitar, August 2020 issue
“Artists often talk about the blues as a living and growing thing and not just a style of music fit for museums. Cook puts that theory into practice and moves things forward.”- Slant Magazine
Website: www.elicook.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/EliCookOfficial
Instagram: www.instagram.com/EliCookOfficial
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@elicookofficial