Dover Weinberg Profile, August 2005

Dover Weinberg

In Search of the Constant Groove

Dover Weinberg

Ask a top-call Blues pianist/organist about his early inspirations, and you might expect him to name Otis Spann, Pinetop Perkins, Jimmy Smith or Jack McDuff. It wouldn’t surprise you to hear him mention songs like “Tipitina” or maybe “Back At The Chicken Shack.” But an obscure guitar instrumental by a 50s Rockabillly/Boogie band? Not quite what you’d expect would’ve drawn Dover Weinberg to the Blues at about the age of eight. Still, that’s how it happened.

“My cousin had this record, ‘Guitar Boogie Shuffle,’ by the Virtues,” Weinberg says. “And I realize now, this is the first real Blues progression that just grabbed me and knocked me out. I remembered it and went back home, and I went to the piano and I picked it out by ear and just started noodling with it. So I realized years later that Blues affected me at an early age.

“Years later when I played with Jim Mesi here, we used to do a lot of songs with a similar feel to ‘Guitar Boogie Shuffle,’” Weinberg remembers. “And we were playing one time and I was kind of stealing the solo off it, which was a guitar solo, right? And Mesi’s looking at me like, ‘Where’d you learn that from?’”

Dover Weinberg is a remarkably talented keyboardist who has proven his mettle by playing with a long list of Blues notables – not only local luminaries like Duffy Bishop, Paul deLay, Ellen Whyte, Jim Mesi and Lloyd Jones, but also all-time greats like Robert Cray, Albert Collins, Otis Rush, Big Walter Horton, Charlie Musselwhite, Sonny Rhodes and Phillip Walker. “Some people say, ‘You can’t hold a job!’” Weinberg jokes. “They call me the Blues Slut because I’ve played with everybody.”

Far from indicating some lack of stability, however, Weinberg’s wide-ranging list of collaborators simply identifies him as a member of that rare breed: a tasteful, compatible musician with the gift of complementing the people he plays with, ultimately allowing them to play better. As Weinberg himself puts it, “I like soloing a lot, and I think I’m an okay soloist, but I really almost get off more comping behind the other soloists and working with them, building the solo. So that when that soloist is done, and they get a round of applause, I feel it’s partially for us, for what we did underneath it, that we made it cook enough to inspire him or her to do great things. I feel we’re in this together to make it groove. That’s very important, and I don’t think a lot of people do that.”

Weinberg felt the seductive pull of music early on, growing up in a San Francisco household that had a fascinating musical pedigree. “When I was a kid we lived with my mom’s sister’s family,” Weinberg recalls. “She and my mother and their other sister, my Aunt Penny, were music hounds – they used to sneak into clubs in the Bay Area when they were underage. And my Aunt Penny was a professional singer, and knew Count Basie and Duke Ellington; I met Count Basie as a kid through her. Benny Carter, one of the greatest sax players of all time, used to come over to our house and hang out.

“The reason they were all good friends was that my mom’s mother, my grandmother, used to put up these musicians in San Francisco at her house, because black musicians couldn’t stay in nice hotels – they had to stay in flophouses. So my granny would put ’em up, and they all were dear friends. And when my mom and her sisters would go out and see these musicians, they’d keep them under their wing, keep them at a table and watch out for them.”

Like many keyboard players, Weinberg’s musical career began with lessons during childhood. “I started out as a guitar player,” he says, “but by that I mean just the week before starting piano I took one guitar lesson. I had never done anything with music yet, other than noodle around on the piano and watch my cousin play guitar. The very first lesson was throwing all this theory and stuff at me, but I didn’t even know what a note was or anything. That and being a kid with small hands and trying to play the guitar…I was so frustrated that I came home and I stormed in the house and went, ‘I’m not playing guitar!’ And they said, ‘All right, next week you start piano lessons.’”

Weinberg and his family stayed in San Francisco until he was in 6th grade, when they moved to Portland and got a house nearly next door to the one his Aunt Penny and her family had moved into four years earlier. Aside from “Guitar Boogie Shuffle,” Weinberg didn’t make a point of listening to Blues music as he grew up. He heard some Jazz and Blues through his mother’s Count Basie records and those of other artists, but it wasn’t until he was in high school, playing in rock bands with local bassist David Kahl, that he encountered the Blues again through the British Invasion. “We ran across Blues like Eric Clapton and Cream, and all these different English bands that were teaching us again about our own music,” says Weinberg.

Following high school, Weinberg attended Mt. Hood Community College, home to a renowned music program that was particularly strong in Jazz. “And that served me very well,” Weinberg says, “for teaching, and just learning more about music and theory and stuff. Also, the great experience there was playing in the big band. They had just a top-notch college stage band, with Gary Hobbs on drums, who lives one block from my house, and Larry McVey was the director. We were playing Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra material; it was really modern, very Blues-based, killer stuff.”

After finishing college, Weinberg spent some time playing in Top 40 bands to pay his musical dues…and the rent. But as often happens, a somewhat flukey combination of circumstances brought him his next gig. Weinberg had some friends who played in a Eugene band called Iguana Outside. “It was kind of Blues, Jazz…really great players.” On a road trip to Eugene to hear his friends play down there, Weinberg got to sit in on keyboards at the end of the night. Richard Cousins, who was playing bass with Robert Cray at the time, heard Weinberg’s playing that night and asked him if he wanted a job. Weinberg said yes on the spot, and started playing with Cray’s band immediately. “No rehearsal, just…go!”

Dover Weinberg was the first keyboard player in the Robert Cray Band. Meanwhile, also in Eugene, D.K. Stewart and Curtis Salgado were playing in the Nighthawks, a sort of sibling band to Cray’s. The Robert Cray Band and the Nighthawks would often play double gigs at Eugene’s Murphy & Me Tavern: each band would play a set, and then the two bands would play a final, combined set at the end of the evening. “D.K. was schlepping around a grand piano at the time,” Weinberg says, “and I was schlepping my Hammond organ, and we’d all play together. It was a blast – they were a great, great band.”

Weinberg thoroughly enjoyed himself during his time with Cray. About Cray, he says, “He’s the baddest of anybody. He is the man; I’m still thoroughly convinced. A lot of people do not have a clue to the depth and breadth of his playing. Robert is a super-accomplished player. And there’s a lot of people you hear now who are imitators of him. There’s just nobody better.”

Weinberg still recalls a particularly dramatic demonstration of Cray’s versatility and flawless musical ear. Once the band was rehearsing at an acquaintance’s house in Seattle, and during a break the homeowner started playing some music on the stereo – a hard-edged Humble Pie song. “The solo comes on, and Robert takes his guitar, comes over to his amp, tweaks the EQ to get this overdriven sound – it’s the exact sound of the solo on the record, and he’s playing the solo note for note, just crushin’ this hard rock solo.”

Soon everyone in the room was staring at Cray with their mouths agape, stunned by the Memorex-perfect sounds emanating from the acclaimed Bluesman’s guitar. And then, Weinberg remembers, “He says to me, ‘S—t, I used to play that stuff.’ ‘Cause he grew up like most of us, playing in Rock bands. And the story with him is that Albert Collins came to his high school to play the prom. Robert sees Albert and says: ‘This is my calling.’ That’s what really made him go for it. And that’s what’s so great, is years later we’re playing along with Albert Collins.”

The Robert Cray Band did indeed play about a year-long stint on the road with Albert Collins, and it’s a treasured memory for Weinberg. “He was a hoot and great to play with; very sweet, just a real character.” When Collins toured, he would usually hire a pickup band in each location that he played; it was cheaper than paying and transporting a touring band around the country, but he got uneven results from his constantly changing roster of players. In Seattle there was a band he often hired for his appearances there, but he wasn’t totally satisfied with the way they played his music. “They didn’t have a clue about Albert’s music; they played kinda Rock Blues, three chords, but they didn’t really know how to play his songs,” Weinberg says.

Collins got to know Weinberg when he hired him to sit in on keyboards with the Seattle band, and that led to Collins hiring the Cray band when he came through Portland. The first time he played with them backing him up, he was bowled over by the difference between the two bands. “We were playing his tunes like his records, and he was in heaven!” Weinberg recalls. Collins also enjoyed the Cray band’s repertoire, and upon hearing them play certain songs in their solo set he would recall them as old favorites and add them to his own set. “He really dug playing with us…and we of course loved playing with him!” Weinberg says.

As a result, Collins made the Robert Cray Band his steady backing band for a tour that ran from Santa Cruz, Calif. all the way into Canada. Weinberg remembers a tense moment from their foray into the Great White North: “We were all in the office after the gig, and the club owner was trying to pay us in Canadian money, which is like taking 15-20 percent off the top. And Albert’s going, ‘No no, man, it’s supposed to be in U.S. money.’ And the guy’s going, ‘You know, we don’t even have it in U.S. funds.’ At that point Albert reaches into his briefcase, and pulls out a piece! Suddenly, miraculously, the money turned up in American dollars. See, Albert had been around the block a little bit.”

Dover Weinberg plays alongside high school bandmate Dave Kahl in Garry Meziere's band.

Aside from the occasional unexpected firearm, Weinberg has nothing but fond memories of playing with Albert Collins. “He was a character. He had this look like a little kid, but at the same time he could get this mean look, you know. He was a sweetheart of a guy, but you wouldn’t want to make him mad. He could just look like, ‘Whoa, Satan! Aaah!’”

The tour with Collins also took the band through San Francisco, Weinberg’s childhood home. During their gig there, the late bassist Vernon Alley (Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and many more) came to hear Dover play – he’d been a friend of the family in the old days. “He had tears in his eyes because he’d never seen me playing professionally,” Weinberg remembers. “He knew me as a kid noodling around on the piano.”

Another memento of Weinberg’s days with the Robert Cray Band is his nickname, “Whitecliffs,” after the famous British landmark. “From day one I was ‘Whitecliffs,’” Weinberg recalls. “We’re playing and it’s time for me to solo – Robert goes, ‘Whitecliffs.’ In fact, most people during that time, wherever we went, they always thought that was my last name. They didn’t get the joke – you know, the White Cliffs of Dover. Or they’d call me ‘Cliffs’ or ‘Cliffie.’ From day one, no one ever heard my real last name.”

Once the Cray band opened a string of shows for Bonnie Raitt, including two dates in Portland. “She was very cool; she’d come down to our dressing room. She loved Curtis [Salgado, who had joined the band by this time] and Robert. She saw this talent. This is before anyone knew who Robert was, still. She’d come down and hang out with us, and then at the end of the show she had Curtis come out with her.”

Eventually, Weinberg’s mother became ill and he was compelled to leave the Robert Cray Band to return to Portland and care for her. (Incidentally, D.K. Stewart took his place with Cray.) But Weinberg wasn’t idle for long. Soon he’d been invited to join Paul deLay’s band, and he jumped into the fray once again, with essentially no rehearsal. Jim Mesi was Paul deLay’s guitarist at the time, so it’s no great surprise that when Weinberg left deLay’s band after three years, he quickly wound up playing keyboards with Mesi.

Over the five years that he was playing with Jim Mesi, Weinberg supplemented that gig by putting in time with various Top 40 bands. He counts himself lucky, however, that this was during the ’80s, when Blues music was enjoying a resurgence of popularity thanks to Stevie Ray Vaughan and even Robert Cray. As a result, he and his bandmates managed to spice up the mundane Top 40 material with a bit of Blues here and there. He found that it saved his sanity in the midst of playing “Madonna and all that dreck.” Still, the monotony of the repertoire and the look-alike venues took their toll. “We played the Red Lion, the Black Angus…we’d be in different towns, but they all looked exactly alike. You’d sometimes be saying late at night, ‘What set is this? What night is this? What town is this?’ You’d really lose it!”

Eventually Weinberg was able to move away from the Top 40 bands and concentrate on his first love, the Blues. A major factor in this transition was joining the Duffy Bishop Band, which he calls “my main band right now.” Weinberg has been playing and recording with the band for several years, and it’s clear that he enjoys it. As he puts it, “I really love playing with them. Duffy and Chris are great. You can tell at the gigs – little kids come running out, Duffy runs over with ’em, singing and dancing. Everyone loves her; she’s just a sweetheart.”

Weinberg points to the most recent Duffy Bishop Band CD, Ooh Wee!, as a favorite among his many recording credits. “I’ve done probably a dozen or more CD projects, and I’m so proud of this one,” he says. “We did some wild stuff. For a couple tunes they wanted this weird, nerdy, different organ sound, kind of distorted. But it worked out really cool, and it inspired me on the solo – I played it kind of differently. And then for piano, we have a ballad on there, ‘Ain’t No Use.’ Some might argue that it’s ‘cocktaily,’ but it’s not – it’s really a poignant thing, and playing that kind of piano right there is the perfect foil to the singer, to answer and give it this potency. I think it all came off pretty well, and I’m real happy about it. It was a great project, and it makes me smile just thinking about it. People should check it out.”

The Ooh Wee! CD is also notable for Weinberg because it was the last project he worked on with the late bassist Phil Haxton. “He was a great bass player – lots of talent,” Weinberg remembers. “And he could easily overplay and do all this stuff that’ll dazzle you, but he wouldn’t do it. He would play what was supposed to be played. It was so much fun playing with him, and knowing him – he was a great guy, a real great guy. It’s just an unbelievable shame that he had to leave us so soon.”

While his primary allegiance is with the Duffy Bishop Band, Weinberg still finds time to work on other projects, and with other musicians that inspire him. “I really like this freelance thing,” he says. “I like playing with different people. And I know the material well enough from my experiences that I hardly ever have to rehearse.”

One of those side projects is an organ trio with Lloyd Jones, consisting of a drummer, Weinberg on organ but also “kicking bass,” and Jones on guitar and vocals. “Lloyd is great to play with,” says Weinberg. “With his band, in any context, he is about my favorite guy. ‘Cause he is so groove-oriented. No one else around except D.K. – D.K.’s band and Lloyd’s band are the baddest groove boys around.”

Weinberg is also supporting guitarist Garry Meziere (formerly with Ellen Whyte), who is playing locally and in Salem in support of a new CD. “Garry has been doing his own thing; he has a brand new CD that’s just come out,” Weinberg says. “We did a CD release party at the Trail’s End – that was a blast. Garry has gotten some gigs for us down in Salem too, and so we’re playing here and there whenever we can.”

Meziere is an unabashed fan of Weinberg’s keyboard skills, and happily explains why he chose him for his band: “I have played with Dover off and on for nearly 10 years. He is always a joy to work with; he has such a great facility and command of the keyboards. He is simply one of the very best I’ve worked with. He comes to the gig ready to play and always with a great attitude. He is very articulate at many styles and brings a wealth of experience with him.”

Weinberg has his own musical heroes, of course, and many of them are the usual suspects on the Hammond B-3 organ: Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Jack McDuff, Richard “Groove” Holmes and Joey DeFrancesco. But Weinberg is a voracious and eclectic listener, and seeks out the B-3 in its many manifestations; consequently he reels off the names of several great players who are a little further off the beaten path: Don Patterson, Larry Goldings, Will Boulware and many others.

“I’m into the B-3,” Weinberg admits. “Louis Pain and I, we call ourselves B-3 nerds. ‘Cause we’re into it. He’s deep, deep into it. But I am too. I love it.” Weinberg is definitely a knowledgeable devotee of this complex instrument’s sounds and capabilities; it’s evident in any of his recorded work and very apparent whenever he plays live.

“The Hammond organ, there’s no other organ like that,” Weinberg enthuses. “The story of that organ is amazing – that it even became an instrument. From the Hammond Clock Company, [Laurens Hammond] wanted another product for his synchronous motor. He was not a musician, but he created the best organ of all time. Plus it’s built like a rock. I’ve heard all kinds of stories of them going end-over-end down stairs, and still running. None of those other organs, I don’t think, could go on the road and last like a Hammond. I mean, they can have problems from time to time, but they’re fairly bulletproof and there isn’t much that you can’t fix. They’re just amazing.”

Weinberg once had the indelible thrill of sitting in with one of his heroes, the great Jimmy McGriff. It was an experience he will clearly never forget. “I showed up at his gig with his latest record and his first hit record, ‘I Got A Woman,’” Weinberg recalls. “And he goes, ‘You an organ player, man?’ And I go, ‘Yeah!’ He says, ‘You wanna sit in?’ And I said, ‘No! I don’t wanna sit in!’” Understandably, Weinberg felt too intimidated at first by McGriff’s presence to accept his invitation.

“But later on during a break,” Weinberg says, “His guitar player convinced me – he said, ‘Man, you should seize the opportunity. Jimmy asks you to sit in, you should do it!’ So Jimmy asked me again, and I said, ‘All right, if you don’t mind hearing your own licks played back at you.’ So I did ‘Jumpin’ The Blues’ that I’d lifted off his record, and he was amused. He’s a very cool guy.”

Weinberg also fondly recalls being asked by Chicago Bluesman Otis Rush to play keyboards for him during his set back in the ’70s. Weinberg had just played an opening set with the Crayhawks, a “splinter band” made up of members from the Robert Cray Band and the Nighthawks; Rush heard them and buttonholed Weinberg to sit in when he played. Rush had originally requested a stripped-down backup band – only bass, drums and rhythm guitar – so his invitation was a major feather in Weinberg’s cap.

Weinberg doesn’t look only to the national landscape for his musical heroes, mind you – there are a good number of local artists who can count him as an ardent fan. He’s remarkably generous with his praise, and he emphatically urges BluesNotes readers to get out and hear these artists, and support the venues where they play:

Suburban Slim and Marco Savo: “They’re there [at Duff’s Garage] every Wednesday at 9:30. They kick ass – I mean, serious ass! They’re as good as anyone around anywhere – not just around here. These guys are, like, world-class guitar players, he and Marco. And Phil sings his ass off! He is a consummate singer, period, aside from his guitar playing. Marco doesn’t sing, but Marco’s a killer guitar player. And a great bass player! When he plays bass with them, he’s tasty and right there – nothing overdone. And that’s how a bass should be in Blues.”

Johnnie Ward: “Here’s an old, seasoned master who plays sax too, but that’s how he plays harmonica – with a musical idea. Not just suck-blow, you know, riffs that anybody could do. He’s just very musical with it.”

Curtis Salgado: “He’s got a gift – a really great-sounding voice. But he worked hard to sound how he does. He is totally official. He is also without peer; he is as good as anybody on the planet. Also his harmonica playing – I remember watching him work on it. He didn’t really have formal training, and he was just sitting with records, matching note for note, very basic at first. Worked his ass off! And it paid off.”

Louis Pain, formerly with Paul deLay, now fronting King Louis & Baby James: “Kicks great bass, and is a total B-3 nerd. He has the most wonderful, authentic B-3 feel in all his playing. People should also dig Louis Pain with Mel Brown every Thursday at Jimmy Mak’s. Greasy, dirty, Bluesy, funky Jazz! And once they start, they do not stop. It’s song after song, segueing constantly until the break. It’s like the old days…it’s happenin’. People need to go see it.”

Lloyd Jones: “Catch this guy in anything he does. Every Monday night at the Stein Haus there’s scads of people coming to sit in with him, and he’s at the Tillicum every Thursday with the Struggle.”

Glenn Holstrom of the Lloyd Jones Struggle: “There’s another unsung keyboard god, one of my heroes. Aside from his great playing, he does the horn arrangements for Lloyd, which are fabulous. He is an unbelievable, deep musician that people don’t even notice.”

D.K. Stewart and band: “D.K. Stewart’s band with Peter Dammann, Carlton Jackson and Don Campbell, Monday nights at the Candlelight, no cover. Peter has a great, compelling style and sound. But he’s just a quiet, unassuming guy; nobody seems to notice. Go see him with D.K. down there – they’re crushin’!”

In a way, the preceding list of enthusiastic recommendations sums up what Dover Weinberg is all about: while he’s undeniably a top-drawer player worthy of everyone’s attention, he’s also a passionate, appreciative absorber of the music being played around him. Whether he’s playing his keyboard rig onstage or seated in the audience grooving to one of his favorite bands, Weinberg supports his fellow musicians and wants everyone to enjoy the music as much as he does. Years ago, the motto of the Robert Cray Band was “A Constant Groove.” To this day, Weinberg continues to strive toward that Constant Groove, and the Portland Blues scene is undeniably richer for it.

– Pat McDougall