Published: May 02, 2008 12:14 pm            

Mulebone: Duo crafts career in blues music

TRAVERSE City, Mich. — Hugh Pool and John Ragusa had often joined forces on stage, but when they decided to get together in Pool's Tribeca living room for an informal recording in 2001, it was just for kicks.



"It was, 'We'll get a six-pack and a couple of mics,'" said Pool, who subsequently dubbed the New York City blues duo Mulebone.



Their low-budget CD, packaged in a brown box lined with hay from Pool's parents' barn and released on their own Red Tug label, wound up getting airplay all over the country. Even more surprisingly, it spent 15 weeks on the Album Network charts for non-commercial AAA radio, earning the pair "blues artist of the year" titles and live and television appearances from coast to coast.



"It ended up working and it didn't cost anything," said Pool, who now lives in Brooklyn. "It's so funny. Lots of times in creative pursuits you pull your hair out (over a project), throw lots of money at it, scheme to make it work. And often it's the things that are totally effortless that are the things that end up working, have a lot of traction."



Seven years later they are still going strong, playing clubs in New York City and entertaining at private parties thrown by David Rockefeller, Bruce Wasserstein and others on a Who's Who list of East Coast residents, when not pursuing individual projects. No matter where they are, they get together at midnight on the last Wednesday of each month to play a little club in SoHo.



"We've done that for 10 years," Pool said. "Wherever we are, we bust our butts to get there."



They'll visit northern Michigan this weekend for a pair of concerts. Just don't confuse them with a certain five-piece horn-powered band from New Orleans that goes by the same name.



After working his way up from busking subways and handling sound at a Greenwich Village folk club, Pool is widely regarded as one of New York's finest guitarists. He has performed on television programs like the "Emeril Lagasse Show" and "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" and shared the stage with Patti Smith, Gov't Mule, Leslie West, Johnny Winter, Dave Edmunds, John Mayall and The Fabulous Thunderbirds. His original songs have been used in network TV, movies, award-winning documentaries and an off-Broadway play.



When not writing or performing, he records and produces projects for other musicians, including Taj Mahal and Debbie Harry, at his Brooklyn studio, Excello Records.



Ragusa is a multi-instrumentalist with the Beth Nielson Chapman band and plays regularly in conjunction with Deepak Chopra's speaking engagements. He also fronts his own band and has recorded with contemporary jazz greats Joe Taylor, Jeremy Wall and world music icon Tom Ze.



Together the musicians draw from the canon of traditional blues to showcase their talents. Besides guitars, Pool plays harmonica and boot board and serves as lead singer. Ragusa plays conch shell, mouth harp, cornet, flutes and tin whistle, and chimes in on harmony vocals.



"John is like a fountain that never runs out of fresh ideas," said Pool. "Stylistically he can bury me because he can play baroque, fusion. He can get on stage with a Cuban band and play like he's been doing it since he was 5."



The duo is working on a new CD of material accumulated over the past three years. While no release date has been set, Pool is keeping his fingers crossed that the project will meet with the same approval as its predecessor.



"There's something about this little duo that John and I have that just works," he said.





Marta Helper Drahos writes for Traverse City (Mich.) Record-Eagle.

        

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