Bassist Thomas ‘TBone’ Hamilton caught up with 813area.com and talked with us about Skipper's Smokehouse, New Orleans’ and the second line in advance to his show on Saturday.
TBone Hamilton’s The Big Easy Revue will be playing Saturday, June 10th at Skippers Smokehouse at 8 p.m., tickets are $7 - $10.
“As a bass player, I am really in tune with drums,” Tbone describes. “In this music, the drum and the bass a have to be completely connected. That was one of the affinities I have for New Orleans’ music.”
Since the birth of Jazz, NOLA has continued to inspire and produce great music. Hamilton tells us a little bit how he came to love New Orleans.
“A young boy coming out of the suburbs of Connecticut to the gritty streets of New Orleans was quite a shift – certainly when you are 11 years old,” Hamilton reminisces. “We're talking back in the 70s. I was just a little boy back then, and I can remember. I was just walking down the streets of Canal and the smells, the funk was everywhere. I didn’t know what it was. I can look back now in retrospect...at that experience and know that this was the genesis of why I was compelled to that music and that vibe.”
He would grow up and begin playing the bass at age 12.
Later his sister’s significant other Steve Pitz, now his brother-in-law, tended bar at Tipitina’s, a well-known music venue in the Big Easy. Pitz sent Hamilton a recording from a fresh-on-the-scene Stevie Ray Vaughan who played there in ‘79. It was destiny.
In the ‘90s TBone would join the Deacon Fuller World Boogie Band where his bandmate at the time Alvon Griffin, now a WMNF DJ, taught him the about the second line.
In 2009, Hamilton decided to put together his own band loosely based on the Booker T. and MG’s model.
“The first person I hired for my band was the drummer. Because she could play the second line beat. The second line beat is kind of a Marching beat,” Hamilton illustrates. “Really, it is a clave, it comes from the islands and at some point, it got sucked into New Orleans. It is based off a three-two clave: one, two, three, one, two. It is just about the groove baby. “
THE VENUE
Skipper's Smokehouse continues to be one of the top live music spots in the Tampa Bay area and man, they serve a mean Grouper Ruben.
Hamilton shared, “I used to play in a band called Rock Bottom. Rock has since passed. But he was one of the first guys to play at Skippers back when Vince and Tom were the owners and just trying to get it off the ground. There was no roof or anything – it was kind of a shack.”
While Skipper’s maintains that dive bar feel, they are much more than a shack and are loved by musicians and music lovers for being the venue it has grown to be.
“Back in the day", remembers TBone, "I was playing in a blues band called the Polis Ramsey Band. We were opening up for Albert Collins – so it was really cool because we had played our set before him. Albert Collins’ band was warming up, with the big guys that is what they do. I don’t remember what he said to me, but I was there on the steps where you get on the stage, and I remember him just standing there talking to me.”
The open-air stage under an oak canopy is an intimate venue with a come as you are feeling at Skippers.
For advanced tickets visit: www.thomasjhamilton.com. Looking for more things to do this weekend in Tampa? See our complete guide to events in Tampa.
