Alastair Greene
ALASTAIR GREENE Photo: Amanda Peacock
Alastair Greene’s musical journey has been anything but traditional. His combination of Blues, Southern Rock, and Jam Band sensibilities has been thrilling audiences for nearly two decades. With recent performances at the Chicago Blues Festival and the Big Blues Bender in Las Vegas as well as recent tours filling in on guitar with Starship featuring Mickey Thomas, and many guest appearances with such luminaries as Eric Burdon, Walter Trout, Coco Montoya, Savoy Brown, John Nemeth, and Debbie Davies, it’s crystal clear,….. Alastair Greene's star is on the rise.
Alastair recently plunged headfirst into a full-time solo career, stepping down after 7 years touring the world as the guitarist for Rock legend, Alan Parsons. Alastair is philosophical about his time playing with Parsons, saying, “I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity Alan gave me to handle guitar and vocal duties in his band. It was an honor to play the music created by the Alan Parsons Project to Alan’s fans around the world. After 8 years, the time has come for me to truly pursue my own musical dream.”
Hot on the heels of Alastair Greene’s critically acclaimed 2017 release Dream Train comes his powerful new album, Live From The 805. Recorded in front of a sold-out hometown crowd in Santa Barbara, California, this album celebrates 20 years of Greene's blues rock power trio with 20 tracks, including original songs drawn from all 5 of his studio records as well as a few choice covers. Alastair Greene has been hailed as one of the best blues rock guitarists of his generation with his band drawing comparisons to Gov’t Mule, ZZ Top, and Cream. Live From The 805 will appeal to fans of Rockin’ Blues, Southern Rock, Jam Bands, and more.
“Live From The 805 is a milestone live celebration of twenty years of rocking the blues for Alastair Greene and his cohorts. It's also another installment in his re-commitment to his own music after stepping down from seven years of adding a blues tinge to the Alan Parsons Live Project,continuing the story told in his most recent studio outing, Dream Train.
While Alastair and the band have strong, obvious and impressive roots in the rock world, the twenty songs here, mostly bluesified updates and reprises from Alastair's accumulated discography, reflect Alastair's love and affinity for the blues and its offshoots with equal vigor and authority.Shadows of Albert Collins, Albert King, Howlin' Wolf and many other blues icons run through the music.
Alastair's mastery of traditional blues tunings, slide, string bending and grooves are as much a part of the foundation as the hard driving, rocking energy. As numerous greats have shown, blues and rock don't always have to be "either/or." Blues has always reflected the other musics of its time. Happily for we listeners, Alastair is a master of rocking blues (or is it the other way around?), and it will be joyous finding out over the coming decades where the blend takes him -and us.” – Dick Shurman - Blues producer and historian