COCO MONTOYA with Ghalia Volt

COCO MONTOYA

Blues / Rock

Opener: Ghalia Volt

Doors 7pm / Show 8pm *See our bag policy*

Tickets: $20 - $25 (plus sales tax and service fee) *Reserved Seating & Advance tickets are available online only*

18+ Valid ID required for entry into venue / Under 18 permitted with parent (Accepted forms of ID: State Issued ID or Driver's License, Military ID, Passport.)

COCO MONTOYA:

"One of the most prodigious and gifted electric bluesmen on the planet...a deeply soulful singer and incendiary guitarist [with] a seemingly endless penchant for invention." –AllMusic 

"Smoking songs and heavy hitting guitar full of fire and passion...Montoya’s rough-edged voice is filled with feeling. Bluesy, powerful and unpredictable...[It]really gets the blood flowing." –Blues Music Magazine

"Montoya is a show-stopper...heartfelt singing and merciless guitar with a wicked icy burn. He is one of the truly gifted blues artists of his generation." –Living Blues

“’Just play what you feel, be real about it, and enjoy yourself.’ That’s what Albert Collins taught me,” says the award-winning guitar virtuoso and soul-deep singer Coco Montoya. The self-taught, left-handed Montoya mastered his craft under Collins’ tutelage. Incorporating lessons learned from his mentors, the iconic Collins (for whom he originally drummed), and UK legend John Mayall, Montoya puts his own stamp onto every song he performs. Since his first solo album in 1995 (which won him the Blues Music Award for Best New Artist), Montoya’s endlessly inventive guitar work and passionate, hard-hitting vocals have kept him at the top of the blues world. With his new Alligator Records album, Writing On The Wall (his sixth for the label), Montoya delivers what he is already calling one of the best records he’s ever made. For the very first time on Alligator, he decided to bring his road-tested band—noted keyboardist and songwriter Jeff Paris (Keb’ Mo’, Bill Withers), bassist Nathan Brown, and drummer Rena Beavers—into the studio with him. Between the camaraderie of the long-time bandmates and the sheer talent of all involved, the results have left Coco, in his words, “over the moon.” 

Produced by Grammy Award-winner Tony Braunagel (Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal) and co-produced by Jeff Paris, Writing On The Wall is a tour-de-force of memorable, hook-filled songs, sung with passion and fueled by equally memorable, top shelf musicianship. The 13 tracks include five written or co-written by Montoya. The set opens with a signature, career-defining performance of the soul-baring I Was Wrong, written for Coco by songwriter Dave Steen. From the blistering Save It For The Next Fool to the enjoy now/pay later philosophy of Jeff Paris’ (I’d Rather Feel) Bad About Doin’ It to the riveting reinvention of Lonnie Mack’s Stop, Montoya delivers each song with heart-pounding emotion. Special guest Lee Roy Parnell adds his well-seasoned slide guitar to the smoldering A Chip And A Chair. And Coco’s friend, guitarist Ronnie Baker Brooks (son of late Alligator star Lonnie Brooks), joins in for some good-natured fun on the droll Baby, You’re A Drag and adds his blistering playing to the searing cover of Bobby Bland’s You Got Me. 

“I am so proud of this one,” Montoya says of Writing On The Wall. “We recorded in Jeff Paris’ studio and everything just gelled together. And the band inspired me; they all gave extra effort at every turn. Jeff, Nathan and Rena played so great, they ended up making me play even harder. They made me sound better than I am!” 

Henry “Coco” Montoya was born in Santa Monica, California, on October 2, 1951, and raised in a working-class family. Growing up, Coco immersed himself in his parents’ record collection. He listened to big band jazz, salsa, doo-wop and rock ‘n’ roll. His first love was drums; he acquired a kit at age 11. He got a guitar two years later. “I’m sure the Beatles had something to do with this,” Montoya recalls. “I wanted to make notes as well as beats.” But guitar was his secondary instrument. Montoya turned his love of drumming into his profession, playing in a number of area rock bands while still in his teens and becoming an in-demand drummer. 

In 1969, Montoya saw Albert King opening a Creedence Clearwater Revival/Iron Butterfly concert at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. He was transformed. “After King got done playing,” says Montoya, “my life was changed. When he played, the music went right into my soul. It grabbed me so emotionally that I had tears welling up in my eyes. Nothing had ever affected me to this level. He showed me what music and playing the blues were all about. 

I knew that was what I wanted to do.” 

The next chapter of Montoya’s story was kick-started by a chance meeting in the mid-1970s with legendary bluesman Albert Collins. Montoya says, “Albert was coming through Los Angeles and needed to borrow my drum set, which I left at the club where he was going to be playing. I went down to see his show that night and it just tore my head off. The thing that I had seen and felt with Albert King came pouring back on me when I saw Albert Collins.” 

A short time later, Collins hired Montoya as his band’s drummer. With Albert mentoring Coco on the guitar during the band’s downtime, Coco soon became Collins’ second guitarist. “We’d sit in hotel rooms for hours and play guitar,” remembers Montoya. “He’d play that beautiful rhythm of his and just have me play along. He was always saying, ‘Don’t think about it, just feel it.’ He was like a father to me,” says Coco, who often slept at Collins’ home. When Collins declared Montoya his “son,” it was the highest praise and affection he could offer. In return, Montoya learned everything he could from the legendary Master of the Telecaster. 

Needing a more regular paycheck, Montoya left Collins’ band after two years and took a job tending bar, jamming on weekends at Los Angeles clubs. One day, legendary British musician John Mayall heard Coco playing Otis Rush’s All Your Love (I Miss Loving) onstage. Soon after, Mayall called on Montoya to join his famous Bluesbreakers. Filling the shoes of previous Bluesbreaker guitarists Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor would not be easy, but Montoya knew he could not pass up the opportunity to play with another legend. For the next ten years he toured the world and recorded with Mayall on seven albums, soaking up the experience of life on the road and in the recording studio. 

Montoya’s recorded debut as a bandleader came with 1995’s Gotta Mind To Travel (originally on Silvertone Records in England and later issued in the USA on Blind Pig Records). The album became an instant fan favorite. Blues enthusiasts, radio programmers and critics sent praise from all corners. The album immediately made it clear that Montoya ranked among the best players on the contemporary scene. Two more Blind Pig albums followed, and Coco was well on his way. 

In 2000, Montoya’s Alligator debut, Suspicion, quickly became the best-selling album of his career, earning regular radio airplay on over 120 stations nationwide. Montoya’s fan base exploded. After two more highly successful and massively popular Alligator releases—2002’s Can’t Look Back and 2007’s Dirty Deal—Montoya signed with Ruf Records, cutting both a live and a studio album. Returning to Alligator with 2017’s Hard Truth and 2019’s Coming In Hot, the guitar master continued to blaze his trail. “Montoya unleashes one career-topping performance after another,” declared the UK’s Blues Matters.

Still an indefatigable road warrior, Montoya continues to tour virtually nonstop, bringing audiences to their feet from New York to New Orleans to Chicago to San Francisco. Across the globe, he’s performed in countries including Australia, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, England, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Mexico, Ecuador, Italy, Poland, Russia, the Czech Republic and Canada. 

Now, with the dynamic Writing On The Wall and a tour calendar busting at the seams, Coco Montoya is as excited as he’s ever been to perform the new songs live with his burning-hot band. Montoya’s well-earned reputation as an eye-popping live performer precedes him. Vintage Guitar states, “Coco keeps getting better and better. He plays with fire and passion rarely seen in this day and age.” Billboard declares, “In a world of blues guitar pretenders, Coco Montoya is the real McCoy. He exudes power and authenticity. Be prepared to get scorched by the real thing.”  

Bio written by Marc Lipkin

GHALIA VOLT:

Ghalia Volt is a Belgian blues rock singer, guitarist, drummer and songwriter. 

Joshua Tree, California. A place where rock ‘n’ roll mythology is made, for better and worse. It was under these same burnished skies that Gram Parsons’ stolen body was set ablaze. Where U2 announced their bid for global infamy. And as Ghalia Volt reminds us, exactly thirty years ago, it was here that near-mythical producer and Queens Of The Stone Age conspirator David Catching founded the fabled Rancho De La Luna studio that would bring a stream of dust-blown musicians to his door like moths to a candle.

“Going to the desert to record Shout Sister Shout! with David Catching was something unique,” says the acclaimed Belgian singer-songwriter of her latest album that adds its own thumbprint to the Rancho De La Luna legend. “I have so many memories. Being on top of the hills facing the Joshua Tree Park. The stars, the moon, the coyote howls, the old vintage car that sat in front of the studio. And then, the history of Rancho De La Luna and all the rock ‘n’ roll neighbours. You just never know who’s gonna push the door…”

Driving deep into the desert put a few more miles on the clock of a young nomad who has made the world her home. Six years have passed since Volt quit the busking circuit of her native Brussels for the heady throb of New Orleans, where she made her first ripples as the livewire frontwoman of local heroes Mama’s Boys.

That hook-up led to Volt’s acclaimed debut album Let The Demons Out (declared “an irresistible force” by Classic Rock) and to Volt’s next stepping stone, to the hill country of Coldwater, Mississippi, for sessions with the Southern state’s Cody Dickinson, Watermelon Slim and Cedric Burnside on 2019’s Mississippi Blend. That album saw Volt dubbed “a natural-born star” by Henry Yates (NME, Classic Rock, The Guardian) and broke into the Billboard Blues Chart Top 3 on three separate occasions.

Even Covid couldn’t clip her wings, with the fierce multi-instrumentalist writing songs for her project on a month-long Amtrak train journey that carved across America, before loading up her van for solo shows. “I surfed the waves,” she reflects. “If it was bad in Europe, I’d tour in the States. If it was bad in the South, I’d go to the northern Midwest. One Woman Band opened lots of doors, let me play the biggest stages yet. But Shout Sister Shout! is my best material so far.”

This album simply wouldn’t have sounded the same without the desert seeping into her bones and Rancho De La Luna casting its strange spell. Perhaps most famous for hosting Josh Homme’s collaborative Desert Sessions, (since 1993) this studio has added its bewitching vibe to recordings by the likes of Iggy Pop, Arctic Monkeys, Foo Fighters, and PJ Harvey, all of them greeted by Catching with a glass of home-made mezcal and invited to fall into the laid-back rhythm.

“There is something about this studio,” considers the snow-bearded producer. “Everyone that’s been here and recorded here feels it, so there is something to it. Maybe it’s just all the love that’s here from over the years.”

Love and chemistry were evident as Volt locked in with the local A-list musicians who would be her studio band for the sessions, including former Dr John keys man Ben Alleman and Lou Reed’s long-serving drummer Danny Frankel. As touring guitarist for Eagles of Death Metal amongst others, Catching also lent his six-string skills. “David himself will grab the guitar every now and then,” recalls Volt, “and rip some solos and mean grooves. There were endless vintage guitars and amps to choose from.”

The desert backdrop reflected Volt’s evolution as a songwriter. “My previous albums were more based on hill country blues and traditional Delta blues,” she considers. “But here I’m bringing a kinda psychedelic, almost ’70s rock vibe to the picture. And recording it in a studio that prizes the ’90s… which as we know is a revival of the ’70s! My goal was to get this album to sound more modern, with more hooks, catchy licks, more singalongs.”

For the next few days, the walls of Rancho De La Luna shook with Volt’s best songs. “Every Cloud” kicks off like a road movie soundtrack, its jutting lick and battle cry vocal interrupted by a woozy organ freakout worthy of The Doors’ Ray Manzarek. “Can’t Afford To Die” pairs its propulsive rockabilly rattle with a sobering lyric. “That one talks about the hard financial situation of a musician during his life and after his death,” says Volt. “You can’t afford your rent and you most likely won’t afford your grave plot. Dying is expensive.”

“Insomnia” is a trip, its slow-burn psychedelia swirling from the speakers. The seething “Hell Is Not Gonna Deal With You” finds Volt spitting venom onto the mic and Frankel practically battering holes in his kit, while “Po’ Boy John” is a cathouse rave-up, Volt imagining the backstory of an old guitar. “What if a vintage guitar could talk?” she muses. “It’s been there way before you, and most likely will be here way after you.”

With its addictive beat and ghostly alt-gospel vocals, title track “Shout Sister Shout!” demands to be heard. “It’s a song encouraging women to speak loud for what they deserve,” says Volt. “Fight back, stare back, scream back. It takes courage, but it’s rewarding and we need this for future generations. Right now the world is going backward.”

As for Volt, her unstoppable motion is palpable on brittle roots reboot “Hop On A Ride,” a song co-written with fellow Ruf star Eddie 9V, which subtly namechecks all the US music cities and record labels that have touched her musical journey. “I guess it’s really my story of young adulthood,” she says, “as it’s exactly what I did when I came from Belgium. I visited all those cities, dug all those vinyls from those labels – and definitely hopped on a lot of trains.”

Some artists get lost in the desert. Others find themselves. After the smash-hit One Woman Band, Ghalia Volt has returned from the wilderness with the album of her career and the songs that will ignite venues across the globe. “Maybe I’ll come back to solo shows later in my career,” she considers, “but right now, I’m ready to jump back into a band, play these new songs live and run all around the stage…”