[Harp-L] Sonny Jr. & Carlos Colina

[MCT366@xxxxxxx]

I made the trip from New Britain, CT  to Elmsford,  NY to see Sonny Jr. play 
at Pete's Saloon, and to check out his 410 amps. This  was definitely a real 
nice club with some great food and nice staff working  there. The show started 
out with Sonny's good friend Carlos Colina and his  Straight up Blues Band. 
This is a solid blues band and Carlos was laying down  some great harp. He 
played a bunch of William Clarke tunes that were spot  on the money along with 
others, and some of his own originals that were just as  good. After playing maybe 
10 songs or so he brought up a guy from NY. I  didn't get his whole name but 
it think was something  ________  ? Carter. This guy did a couple blues tunes 
and really turned the  crowd on with his John Lee Hooker tune Boom Boom Boom 
Boom. This dude was  cooking and then he pulled out his Chromatic and did a 
tune that blew me  away. Oh by the way there was a thread on here about switching 
harps. Well  this guy switched harps several times and was playing different 
positions on  them in the same song and was sounding great. Carlos came back 
up and then  he brought Sonny Jr. up. The two them played together for bit 
taking turns at  laying down some licks with Carlos doing the vocals.   Sonny Jr.  
played a wide range of tunes from blues to funk, and acoustic. He started out 
 with a James Cotton tune played some more blues then he got into this funky  
groove on a tune that was spin off of Slipping into darkness by War, very  
funky. By this time Sonny Jr. was jamming on his own with Carlos band. They  
played a few more tunes and Sonny demonstrated a wide range of control on  his 
harp working the high end and the low end. At this point the band had  already 
played about 2 hours and now its time for a break. Carlos introduces  Sonny Jr. 
long relationship with Sonny Terry and Sonny Jr. begins his  tribute acoustic 
set of Sonny Terry songs with the hoops and hollers. I got tell  you this not 
the kind of stuff that turns on the younger crowds but if  you're a harp 
player or wanna be you gotta see him play this Sonny Terry stuff  man its just 
like he was right there and what he does could only come from years  practice and 
study. No one else playing just Sonny by himself holding it  down. 
 
  Now I want to talk about the amp. When Sonny first came in I  was 
introduced to him by my son in law Troy T. of Troy T. Blues Band. He knows  Sonny 
because he is also a gear fanatic and he runs in Sonny from time to time  at one of 
their gear shops. Sonny was quite willing to show me  his amp and pointed out 
some of the features. It has real nice lacquer finish on  it point to point 
wiring and a mix of speakers. You should check out his web  site for specific 
info on the amp. The amp was setup with two mics one in each  channel. The amp 
has a nice thick fat tone with a nice break up. I noticed that  all of the 
harp players had a different sound coming out the amp as a  matter of their own 
technique but it was a very solid sounding amp. The long  drive was well worth 
making to hear some quality harp playing coming out of some  quality gear. 
 
Tom Burke,   CT