Coming into 2020, singer/songwriter/guitarist Michael Juan Nunez had his musical plans laid out, his course mapped. As the year opened, he had just finished the sessions for a new record, with festival gigs and tours on the West Coast and Europe primed and ready to go. “We finished it (the new album), and we rushed it through mastering,” Nunez said, leaning forward on the overstuffed sofa in the living room of his house in Erath, Louisiana. “I got the artwork together. The week we were going to press, we got a call from Baton Rouge Blues Fest. Then (New Orleans) Jazz Fest. We had the West Coast tour cancelled. Then the European tour.” Nunez’s new record and tours had fallen victim to the pandemic — a sign of the time not only for him, but also other musicians.
The yet untitled new record is one Nunez poured himself into. He had touted it as his first shot at a blues record, a marked change for a guitarist who had previously dodged the label. “It’s hard to sit on it,” he said. “I’m proud of it. We spent a couple of days at Dockside (Studio, in Maurice, La.) recording it, but I really spent all year writing and tweaking. Some of those songs were recorded four or five times before they got into the studio.”
The latest effort comes after a year in which Nunez lost a huge mentor and friend in Paul “Li’l Buck” Sinegal, the longtime blues and zydeco guitarist who died in June 2019. It was Sinegal who, in his last months, had pushed Nunez to take up the mantle of bluesman.
Nunez brought that spirit into the studio. With a band that featured guitarist Roddie Romero and keyboard whiz Eric Adcock of Roddie Romero & the Hub City All-Stars, bass legend Lee Allen Zeno, longtime collaborator Clint Redwing on drums, and an appearance from Muscle Shoals Horns co-founder Ronnie Eades, the session flew by. The working tracks for the record were captured in just two days. “It’s such a great band, it was like being on autopilot,” Nunez said. “Everybody brought their best. It’s not a record for guitar players, not a record for drummers. It’s about the songs. It’s a band record. Like the old Chess Brothers, even Excello. You got to make people groove.”
One of the biggest personal setbacks for Nunez was the cancellation of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival gig, which would have been his first headlining appearance there. “I was going to see if Ronnie (Eades) could sit in, maybe get some of the other Horns with him,” Nunez said, obviously excited at the prospect. “Can you imagine leading that band, with Roddie, the Muscle Shoal Horns behind you?”
Hopefully, a post-pandemic world will allow such a thing happen — and for the document of the Dockside sessions to hit the streets. “We put so much effort into this disc, I didn’t want to just release it and not be able to promote it, not be able to get it out there and have it just go unnoticed,” Nunez said. “So we’re sitting on it, hoping for better times to come.”