Kofi Baker keeps dad Ginger's beat alive with The Music of Cream
Credit to Author: Stuart Derdeyn| Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2020 15:00:23 +0000
When: Friday, Feb. 28, 8 p.m.
Where: Rickshaw Theatre, 254 E. Hastings St.
Tickets and info: From $25 at eventbrite.ca
For a band that was together only slightly more than two years (1966 to 1968), Cream certainly left a legacy.
The trio of drummer Ginger Baker, bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce and guitarist/vocalist Eric Clapton were the ultimate late-’60s power trio, responsible for taking the blues rock of the day into amplified zones of proto-heavy metal and jam band excess. Along the way, the group became the first supergroup to come out of the British Invasion. Each of the three musicians had served time in other popular bands of the day such as the Graham Bond Organization (Baker, Bruce), the Yardbirds (Clapton) and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (Clapton, Bruce) before coming together to form the far more popular trio.
Over the course of four studio albums and one live disc, the band produced such classic rock radio fixtures as Sunshine of Your Love, I Feel Free and Badge. Clapton went on to become an AOR legend. Baker and Bruce never attained near the same level of success again.
That said, any music fan out there should check out Baker’s excellent Air Force albums as well as 1990’s Middle Passage. Ditto for Bruce’s post-Cream output such as 1993s Somethin’ Else or his work with NYC underground composer Kip Hanrahan (1985’s Vertical’s Currency; 1988’s Days and Nights of Blue Luck Inverted). Bruce died in 2014 at age 71, and Baker died last October at age 80.
Keeping the late player’s music alive is the reason behind The Music of Cream. Not only does the band include Eric Clapton’s nephew, Will Johns — the son of Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones sound engineer Andy Johns — on guitar and vocals, but its beat is held down by Kofi Baker, Ginger’s son. Musicians Sean McNabb and Chris Shutters round out the group, proving that it takes more than three musicians to recreate that distinctive Cream sound.
The group is touring in memoriam to Baker, who died Oct. 6, playing Cream’s landmark 1967 second album, Disraeli Gears, in its entirety. Considered by many critics to be the best thing the band ever recorded, the album includes songs such as Sunshine of Your Love, Strange Brew, Tales of Brave Ulysses and more. The Music of Cream performs the entire album and rounds out the set with a selection of other material, including “Clapton Classics” such as Cocaine, Layla and Wonderful Tonight.
Kofi Baker chatted to Postmedia prior to the tour starting from his home in Chicago. The drummer, who has worked with such luminaries as jazz bassist Jonas Hellborg, started The Music of Cream following the original band’s 2005 reunion show.
Postmedia: Obviously, you have a direct family connection to the music of Cream. But what made you decide that this project needed to happen at the time that you launched it?
Kofi Baker: I went to the Madison Square Garden show in 2006 when the band reformed and, at that time, I was doing mainly fusion jazz and hadn’t really considered playing Cream music. But after the gig, my dad was saying he’d never play with Jack again, had all the money he needed and that was that. So I decided to play it because people had always asked me to, it looked like a lot of fun and there was plenty of opportunity for improvisation and what I liked in music. Obviously, after my dad passed on, it took on a different feel as well.
Q: Your press suggests that this project has experienced something of a similar up and down ride as that of the original band did?
A: Oh yeah, every time things started to take hold, someone else came along with an idea that wrecked it and destroyed it and we had to regroup once again. One of the worst suggestions was having Malcolm (Bruce, Jack’s son) join the band and being billed as the “Sons of Cream.” Unfortunately, Malcolm doesn’t know any Cream songs, doesn’t like playing them and he’s not really a bass player. So that never worked and now he is out and we have much better musicians, a real bass player and it’s a much better project.
The band Cream in 1968, its psychedelic heyday: Drummer Ginger Baker, guitarist Eric Clapton and bassist Jack Bruce (left to right).
Q: So it takes four of you to do what the three of them did?
A: Not at all, we just like to have the option of the larger band for the Clapton classics such as Layla and to flesh out the songs by Blind Faith and so on. Even Eric never plays Cream songs as a trio anymore, as he says he likes the larger sound. I’m more of a full drummer than my dad, coming from the busier fusion side of things, so I tend to the more high-energy attack that Cream played with in the ’60s than that super clean, stripped-down style that they brought to the material in the reunion. It was great, but it was kind of laid back.
Q: You’ve played professionally since you were 17, starting off with Steve Marriott (Small Faces, Humble Pie) and in groups with everyone from the late guitar genius Shawn Lane to Megadeth spin-offs. What did your father think of your work?
A: Well, obviously he was there at the start teaching me things. But the last 10 years of his life, a man who was never that easy to deal with, had become someone we thought was so much worse. We were completely estranged. But when I went to see him in hospital, I came to realize that it was his wife who was really the reason that he wasn’t communicating with the rest of the family, making him write us out of his will and so on. None of us was even invited to the funeral until the last minute, so most of us couldn’t make it. But I knew that was all because of her, which makes it better.
Q: All the more reason to have this project take shape and keep the family legacy going. Are there any songs that you find really stand out for you?
A: It’s interesting, because I like pretty much all of it. White Room and Tales are kind of the same song, and Badge is pretty straight-ahead pop. But the rest is unique, falling somewhere in between jam bands, heavy metal and even aspects of fusion. To my hearing, no one seems to have done that since with both that level of musicianship as well as keeping it heavy.
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