Thursday, December 13, 2007 (SF Chronicle)
NIGHTLIFE/Mitch Woods Whether playing solo or with his bands, Bay Area
pianist rockets to New Orleans and back, then around the world
Derk Richardson


Mitch Woods is cruising. His boogie-woogie chops regularly propel
the Bay
Area pianist-singer to France, Switzerland and Spain. He gets suits
custom-fitted in Hong Kong at Sam's Tailor, whose clients have included
James Brown and Bill Clinton. And next month, after a bunch of hometown
gigs, Woods sets sail on the Legendary Blues Cruise through the eastern
Caribbean.
"That's my life," Woods said with a jet-lagged laugh the day after he
returned from a jaunt through Thailand. "I'm home a month, then gone a
month." The Legendary Blues Cruise, which also sails out of San Diego in
October, is especially fun for Woods; he hosts the after-hours Mitch
Woods Club 88 piano bar. "It's the late, late, late show," he said, and such
cruise stars as Taj Mahal, Hubert Sumlin and Charlie Musselwhite sit in on
the spontaneous till-dawn sessions.
Classically trained on piano growing up in Brooklyn, Woods started
navigating his course into roots music about 38 years ago, jamming in
clubs around the State University of New York at Buffalo. "I was just
naturally playing the blues, but people would comment that I sounded like
the old boogie-woogie guys," Wood recalled. "So I started asking around
about those guys, and I started buying up all the records I could find by
Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons and Champion Jack Dupree. I really fell
in love with it." When he migrated to California in 1971, people told Woods he
reminded them of Louis Jordan, of "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" fame. "So I
went out and got all the Louis Jordan albums I could find. He wrote great
lyrics, he was a great entertainer - he was a big inspiration."
As he widened his performing circle to shows and festivals outside the Bay
Area, Woods met and played with such giants as John Lee Hooker, James
Cotton, Johnnie Johnson, Earl King and Lee Allen (who all joined him on
his all-star 1996 CD, "Keeper of the Flame"). One of the biggest turning
points came in 1981, on Woods' first trip to New Orleans, when he got
to open for the storied pianist James Booker at the Maple Leaf. "After
that, forget it," Woods said. "For the last 25 years it's been like my second
home." In 2006, Woods released his "Big Easy Boogie" CD, featuring members
of rock 'n' roll pioneer Fats Domino's bands, including saxophonist Herb
Hardesty, drummer Earl Palmer and producer Dave Bartholomew. Now he
performs his trademark "rock-a-boogie" sound solo, with his Rocket 88s
and with his Big Easy Boogie band, always serving as a booster for Crescent
City culture. "Half the city is still destroyed, and a lot of musicians
have left," he acknowledged of post-Katrina New Orleans. "It's a
tragedy. But the clubs and restaurants are all open, and the people there are
determined to bring it back. I always tell people to go - you'll have a
great time." Woods knows that subject as well as anyone.

- Derk Richardson, 96Hours@sfchronicle.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2007 SF Chronicle