‘Bloodkin,’ playing tonight at Society Garden, celebrate new album, honor lost bandmate

It’s legendary that blues musicians in Chicago in the old days would gather at a spot or two after finishing their shows and unwind and listen to the best among them jam.

Same in New York for jazz players. They’d migrate to late night/early morning clubs to hear their favorite cats.

Some maintain that sort of thing happened at Macon’s Grant’s Lounge in Capricorn Records’ 1970s heyday.

In a similar way, on Saturday in Asheville, North Carolina, a band called Bloodkin is playing the after-party gig following super popular jam band Widespread Panic’s arena show. More than a few call Bloodkin “your favorite band’s favorite band” and members of Widespread Panic, of the Drive-by Truckers and several business types, admit to it.

Capricorn founder Phil Walden reportedly called Bloodkin’s principal lyricist and co-founder, Daniel Hutchens, “the Mark Twain of rock and roll,” according to Chris Starrs writing for The Athens Banner-Herald/www.onlineathens.com.

But before Bloodkin hits Ashville Saturday, they’re here in Macon today at the Society Garden on Ingleside Avenue at 8 p.m.

Tickets are $15 and available at eventbrite.com with event and ticketing links at facebook.com/thesocietygarden and bloodkin.net.

But fellow co-founder Eric Carter said the occasion is bittersweet since it marks both the release of the band’s new 15-track double album, “Black Market Tango,” and one of the band’s first shows since the death of his long-time friend, Hutchens.

Hutchens died in May due to a stroke.

Carter and Hutchens, both in their late 50s, first met in second grade in Ripley, West Virginia. Their friendship grew over comics, baseball cards and rock and roll then through writing and playing music in their folks’ garages. In the 1980s, they traveled to a number of college towns where new music was booming and stuck for good in Athens.

“Danny is definitely the person closest to me that’s passed,” Carter said in a phone interview. “It hits in a different way. We’ve been through a lot, up and down, good times and bad, some self-inflicted, but we played a whole lot of music and loved it. Bloodkin has been my only band. A lot of people miss Danny – his family for sure - and I do, too.”

The official sentiment from Carter and the band speaks of Hutchens’ talent and impact: “Words cannot express our grief over the loss of Danny or the love we had for him. His influence in our lives, the lives of his fans and the greater music community will live far beyond his brief but beautiful time on this earth. As one of his generation’s most prolific and soulful songwriters, his words will resonate as a rock ‘n’ roll poet for generations to come.”

Carter said he’s handling the band’s future day by day and the current, sparse tour will tell a lot about the future. He said the name won’t change because he’s too old to deal with a new one and he admitted an earlier stroke Hutchens suffered but recovered from in 2016 caused Bloodkin to experience working without him and his lead vocals.

Then and now, friends in the Bloodkin community sit in to help round things out, people like Betsy Franck, Tori Pater and Eric Martinez.

“I can sing and I do sing but if I gave everything to singing I’d have to give up things on guitar,” Carter said. He said the line always blurred but the tendency in Bloodkin was that he typically was the music-guy/guitar player and Hutchens was the word-guy/singer who played guitar.

But the songs were always the main thing.

“We weren’t kids anymore staying up until 5 a.m. writing songs together,” Carter said. “But it was like, he’d come over with guitar chords and words and ask if I had music for them or guitar parts to add. Then sometimes I’d come up with a few lyrics and lines here and there and ask if he could finish them.”

Carter said the answer each way was always, “Sure.”

It’s obvious songs and songwriting were he and Hutchens’ first love and what they and Bloodkin were known for. In one form or another, they came up with more than 500 original songs. Good, usable songs.

Maybe if their name didn’t sound so heavy metal-ish or if they had been more clearly definable as a southern rock outfit or jam band or some other clear genre they might have hit it bigger and become better known. But as it is, their music, fundamentally lyric and guitar-driven, covers a lot of territory well.

Other bands and musicians know that, especially in Athens. A half-dozen or so of Widespread Panic’s most popular songs are Hutchens’ and Bloodkin’s and Panic’s closest call to a hit was Hutchens’ “Can’t Get High.”

Google the band and Hutchens to see all the good things famous and not famous people have to say about him and about Bloodkin and the songs.

If you like good, wide-ranging rock and roll music, listen for yourself through the band’s 2013 box set, “One Long Hustle,” or to the new album and songs like “Trashy,” “Kids are Cool,” “Speed Freak Highway,” and the oddly epic “God’s Bar” for examples.

And tell me, what plain and simple southern rock band would have written a tune titled “John Coltrane in Nagasaki?”

Then consider it for the album’s single?

There are plenty who will vouch these are good songs, unimaginable lyrics and that Carter “plays a guitar just like a-ringing a bell” throughout.

Or if you’re inclined to be out and about, go hear for yourself what Bloodkin has come up with from their early West Virginia garage days, to their early Athens band house out off College Avenue days to today.

Also, don’t forget tonight is First Friday downtown with all the good old and new things to do, hear and see, including a new Bright City illuminated photo display on Second Street Lane. Look for August First Friday in Facebook events or get the link from NewTown Macon at www.facebook.com/ntmacon.

Contact writer Michael W. Pannell at mwpannell@gmail.com.