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New York's Michael Hill's Blues Mob are one of the best purveyors of today's modern urban blues. Unlike more traditional bluesmen, Hill doesn't come to his blues from the Mississippi Delta or the South Side of Chicago, but from his native New York City. Born in the South Bronx in 1952, Hill was raised by a close-knit family with roots in North Carolina and Georgia. His music, a mix of traditional blues with rock, reggae, funk and R&B, vividly reflects his upbringing. Always a music fan, Hill didn't start playing guitar until 1970, a year after he first heard Jimi Hendrix. "There was no mistaking what Hendrix brought to the table for me," Hill recalls. "He was the reason I started playing electric guitar." After seeing his hero five times, including a stage door meeting outside the Fillmore East, Hill's fate was sealed. With Hendrix as a blasting off point, Hill next turned to bluesmen like Albert King, B.B. King, Albert Collins, and others to build his sound. His discovery of Bob Marley and Curtis Mayfield, as well as authors James Baldwin, among many others, inspired him to write songs that speak about socially relevant subjects as well as more traditional blues topics. By the mid-1970s Hill was working as a sideman or session player with artists as diverse as Little Richard, Carla Thomas, Archie Bell and B.B. King. Hill's biggest break came in 1994, the year Michael Hill's Blues Mob emerged on the national blues scene with their Alligator Records debut, Bloodlines. Living Blues Magazine handed them their Critic's Award for Best Debut Album of the Year. With two more Alligator releases the band has been tearing up the road. From the Chicago Blues Festival to clubs all over the United States, Australia, Brazil, Scandinavia and Europe, Michael Hill's Blues Mob never ceases to amaze their ever growing legion of fans. Hill and his Blues Mob are laying the groundwork for the future of the blues.
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