Foghat is paying tribute to their original guitarist Rod Price with a new single, “Black Days & Blue Nights.” You can watch a video for the song below.
The song comes off of 2023’s Sonic Mojo, which gave the band their first No. 1 album when It debuted on Billboard’s Blues Albums chart in November of last year. In addition to featuring several previously unreleased songs co-written with the late Kim Simmonds of Savoy Brown, the group also wanted to offer a musical reflection on Price, their beloved bandmate, who passed away in 2005. Even after nearly 20 years, his presence remains strong in their collective memory — and those memories gave way to “Black Days & Blue Nights.”
As drummer Roger Earl remembers, the late guitarist found the extensive road work that the British blues-rock legends were doing at their peak to be quite challenging. “It got to a point, I think in the late ‘70s, he was having a hard time being on the road. Myself and ‘Lonesome Dave’ [Peverett] ate it up [when it came to touring],” he tells UCR. “That’s where we were really comfortable, on stage and being on the road. It was all about that hour and a half each night. But Rod really had a hard time dealing with it. It was hard on him.”
Current Foghat guitarist Bryan Bassett was both inspired and in awe of Price’s abilities as a player. The two first met at the beginning of the ’90s when Peverett invited Price to join his version of the band for a European tour, a few years prior to the eventual reunion of the group’s classic lineup. “I had a blast traveling around the continent with Rod, studying his playing style up close and personal, as well as becoming friends,” he recalled separately. “We often roomed together and talked about so many things outside of music….most knew him only from his powerful stage presence. I cherish the memories and the time I spent with him.”
Watch Foghat’s ‘Black Days & Blue Nights’ Video
“He was unique as a guitar player,” Earl details. “Rod was a great slide player. He could be ferocious, but also played really delicate fingerpicking things with his fingers on the slide and regular guitar. I remember really well, the first time that I met him when he auditioned. We had two nights in a room just off a pub in Islington, in Northwest London. There were some really good guitar players that came along. But Rod stood out. He was the only one who played slide. Dave and I both looked at each other and said, ‘He’s the one.'”
There’s one poignant memory in particular that sticks with the drummer. “We were working on the first album. If I had days off, I’d go fishing down by the River Thames, where we lived in Wallingford and catch pike and eat them,” he remembers. “I used to say to Rob, ‘Hey, why don’t you come down and go fishing with me.’ He wasn’t a fisherman, but one day, I was down there. He came down and brought his guitar and played a song for me. It was great. It was ‘What a Shame,’ which was supposed to on the first album, but it went on the second one.”
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It’s a song which eventually revealed another layer when it came to the depth of Price’s creative talents. “I didn’t know at the time that he wrote the lyrics for ‘What a Shame’ and wrote everything about it,” he says. “I didn’t pay attention to that stuff back then. Someone would come along with a basic idea, some lyrics or a riff and then the whole band would be involved in it. That was a terrific song, I thought. The way we played it and the way Rob played it as well. He was something else. He was really special.”
Foghat Put Their Own Unique Spin on the ‘Blues’ Genre
The Billboard chart recognition for Foghat’s blues chops is long overdue. Earl feels that Price would have appreciated the band’s latest milestone. “He was a big blues fan, of course, as we all were. He loved the early blues records, folk-blues, like Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, all of that,” he explains, going on to share a key difference. “Myself and Dave were real rockers as well. Rod actually talked to me a couple of times about the fact that he really loved Buddy Holly. But we were a rock and roll blues band. It wasn’t a question of playing blues as we grew up doing in the clubs around London, it was a little bit louder. [Laughs] We played the blues….we just turned it up.”
Fans will hear further music from Price in the future, the band’s manager, Linda Earl, told UCR. After the guitarist’s departure from Foghat, she continued to manage him and he started a new band called Nightwatch. The fledgling group recorded six songs at Bearsville Studios at the beginning of the ’80s, but struggled to find a singer. Former Journey vocalist Robert Fleischman was briefly in the mix, with Lloyd Landesman later joining the ranks for a period. Unfortunately, Landesman developed a health issue and couldn’t continue. “Over a couple of years, things fell apart,” she says. “We were having a good time [with Nightwatch] and after 40 years, people should hear this material.”
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Gallery Credit: UCR Staff
