Duffy Kane
Washington, D.C., Washington, D.C., United States | Established. Jan 01, 1983 | SELF
Music
Press
"Duffy Kane made me sit up and actually listen - his music is not something that you can just have playing in the background. He draws you into a world created by a sound that comes from experience. The roots of his music are obviously deep yet he takes the listener to new ground - familiar and at the same time uncontaminated by cliche." -
Duffy is the real deal. Love the music ! Great voice and guitar chops as well...whole lotta soul !!" - .
"If Duffy Kane is in the room then the sound of guitar notes are filling the air. The man is a player, first and foremost. On his latest release, Citizen Kane, Duffy’s guitar presence is a constant. Though there is barely a moment when notes don’t flicker, there is never a feeling of guitar filler just to use the space up. Duffy Kane has a natural form with his playing........" - The Alternate Root Magazine
"Duffy Kane looks like one tough hombre in his publicity shot and that may be true but if you listen to his music you know straight away that one picture does not define a man. It is the music of Kane that makes him. The sounds of Blues, Americana and Rock will come pouring out your speakers like a raging river, just hang on and hope you can stay afloat! Diversity rules the roost with the music of Mr. Kane and that is what got him his place on our site. He does it all very well."
- MuzikReviews.com, Keith Hannaleck
“Duffy Kane and Black Manhattan might be the hottest blues trio anywhere.” - Annapolis Outlook
“Duffy caught me totally by surprise. He's a showman that puts on a really exciting show.” - DC Blues Society
“Hottest Texas blues player on the east coast today.” - Full Moon Saloon, Fells Point, MD
“....inspired by the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan, BB King, Jimi Hendrix...its infectious and the energy it produces is equal to an atomic blast.” - Cumberland Times
“....one thing was clear: these cats were professional. Careening across the stage, pausing only to dig in harder on the neck of his stratocaster...If and when Duffy Kane and Black Manhattan visits Tidewater, I want to reserve a front row seat!” - Natchel Blues Network
“Kane plays from the ground up with every part of his body engrossed in the music...the band set feet to moving with originals, jazzy BB King interpretations, and Stevie Ray Vaughan covers (like Texas Flood) that were so faithful to the originals it was almost eerie.” - The Herald Mail, Hagerstown, MD
“This man can be downright dangerous.” - The Wine Cellar, Ogden, UT
“The best unsigned blues artist I've seen to date. You definitely don't want to follow him on stage. Hard act to follow.” - EMR Productions, Salt Lake City, UT
“For my two cents I'll go on record as saying he is without a doubt of international caliber and probably the best Texas blues player since Stevie Ray Vaughan.” - Music Monthly, Pulp Radio, Graffiti Mag
“Kane represents a man who has found his way, with a very accomplished style that is not formulaic or derivative. There is no need for him to copy anyone. He is an American original.” - Queen City Performing Arts Development, Inc, Windsor Hall
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
Photos
Bio
VIEW OUR MOST CURRENT EPK AT WWW.MYPPK.COM/GET/DUFFYKANE
The new cd, "Dead Man Walkin'" is climbing the AMA Chart. getting airplay all over the US and Europe!
Beyond his encyclopedic capacities as a player, Duffy makes his own
guitars by hand from scratch (he calls `em “Telebastards”) and is heavily
involved with the engineering and production of both his guitar sound and
albums overall. This all-hands-on-deck approach makes his music surge forth
from your speakers like a cheetah finding the cage door ajar.
Duffy
Kane came by his musical excellence natural via a father who was a concert
pianist and a mother who at one time was a promising folk guitarist (she
studied under Park Hill and Joe Negri). “I can’t say Mom was directly inspiring
to me but she was exceptionally good,” Duffy confesses. “My father was an
excellent pianist so I had classical music of the highest order drilled into my
head from a man who played it from the day I was born.” Duffy
was first seduced by the guitar at age 4 while watching “The Beverly
Hillbillies.” “There was a scene where Mr. Drysdale was pulling up to the bank
in his blue convertible Lincoln Continental. The underscore was jazz guitar
(played by Hollywood studio legend Perry Botkin, Sr.). The second that cool
guitar floated out of the TV speakers, it spun my lil’ head around sittin’ on
the floor playing with my matchbox cars.”
Out
of high school, Duffy pursued sex, kegs, reefer and rock but focused just
enough to earn a college degree in Economics, putting himself through the
second half of his schooling playing in Baltimore Top 40 groups. When he finally
turned his attention to leading his own band, that focus also shifted to
country and blues. “Country guitarists are, without a doubt, some of the most
unmercifully gifted players on the planet,” Duffy schools. “Some of them are even
whippin’ the Jazz players’ asses! Plus, 9 times out of 10 when you’re talkin’ Rock
`n Roll lyrics, you’re talkin’ degeneracy and bullshit. So I came back to
Country and Blues: way cool, quintessentially American music.”
In
1996, Duffy cut his first blues trio CD, Let
Your Insides Do The Talking (PMC Records), in Nashville at 16th Avenue
Sound, produced by Grammy-nominee Brian Hardin
(Jerry Lee Lewis & Charlie Daniels). Keeping a grueling 250 nights-a-year touring
schedule, Duffy played festivals and on stages with blues greats such as Johnny
Winter, Big Jack Johnson, Tino Gonzales, Debbie Davies, and The Nighthawks – all
while cranking out a succession independent releases: Live (1994), Promised Land (2009), Holy
Ghost (2010) and Citizen Kane
(2012).
Dead Man Walking is the sharpest
cross-pollination of Duffy Kane to date. His sense of humor shines through on
larks like the closer “Truck Driving Man” and the opener “Roadhouse Boogie Woogie.”
“I made up the words to that about a 24-year old girl hittin’ on my 64-year-old
bass player Ted,” he chuckles! “The music is a cross between Delbert McClinton
and Bill Haley & The Comets from `57 with some Stevie Ray punch.” But the
raw essence of Duffy is bottled in the sobering “Eyes of the World.” “That’s
about how we’ve all got to wake up and realize that the bull being hurled at us
through the media is just agitating dissension, keeping people separate across
political, racial and sexual orientations…even husbands against wives. As long
as they can keep us all going at each other, they can keep running their number
behind our backs. Then you listen to what passes for music on the radio - what ideas are being pumped out there? Not
much... That ain’t the America I grew up in, brother, so my music has to say
something about that. I pull out my hollow body Telecaster with twin reverb,
pop two center mike SM-57s on my `66 Bassman amp,
and let my mouth and my guitar do the talkin’.”
“I don’t consider myself an artist,” Duffy concludes. “I’m a craftsman. I want
people to see me as a man who’s spent a lot of time looking into matters of the
world and speaks the truth about what he sees.”
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