Straight from San Francisco via Chester, MT – Philip Aaberg with Perry & The Pumpers

Put on your dancin’ shoes! The new blues release from Philip Aaberg is here.  This CD is chock full of great tunes and lots of history – a driving, thumping good-time blend of pure American Roots music.  This is the first band Phil played with when he headed to San Francisco after college – Perry & The Pumpers, the house band at Wumper’s Old Man in the lively North Beach section of San Francisco.   The players – Phil, Perry Welsh, Steve Ehrmann stayed in touch through the years as their music careers took them in different directions, intersecting every once in a while at a gig or on tour.  Several years ago, Phil’s high school classmate Glee Murray was in Chester to visit her Mom and was musing over entertainment needed for her bi-annual conference in Monterey, CA.  “Phil, can you put a band together that will make people dance?” “Well, Glee, indeed I can”.  And so began the long-thought-of reunion of Perry & The Pumpers.  Phil gathered the guys, added a few new players and headed to the gorgeous Asilomar Conference Center in Monterey.  They rehearsed in the afternoon, had a roomful of dancing fools by 9 that night.  Phil plays piano & accordion, Phil’s son Michael plays the Hammond Organ on the title track, Nancy Wright adds sax and Elvin Bishop sits in for a couple of solos.  All tracks were recorded at Studio Trilogy in San Francisco, edited and mixed at Sweetgrass Music’s studio The Bin in Chester.

“Perry Welsh has a very cool vocal style. He's one of the best Blues singers I know. Good harp player too.”  -- Tommy Castro

"the tunes just knocked me out - this is the kind if record I play over and over cuz I enjoy it so much.”

--Charlie Musselwhite

Order Now:  Movin' at Midnight

MONTANA-UGANDA Improvisations

Cinematic and emotional, ranging from soothing and hypnotic to dramatic and fast-paced, Aaberg & Kinobe’s improvisational skills allow the music to expand and change in unexpected ways.

Kinobe arrived from Uganda in the middle of a Montana winter. We loaded his homemade flight cases full of homemade instruments into the truck and drove 100 miles through snowy plains to The Bin. Traditional Ugandan huts are shaped like my studio, and it was clear from the first that we are musical brothers. Improvised, with only a few overdubs, these pieces formed themselves like a river gathering rain as it falls from forest leaves. Kinobe is a remarkable musician who has studied African music most of his life, yet he has the uncanny empathy of a consummate improviser with the virtuosic skill to go where the river leads. These sessions were among the most joyous of my musical life. I hope you enjoy them as we did.

– Philip Aaberg

Order now: Tuli Wamu