Consider the power of social media as it intersects with network television. Nicki Bluhm, for one, is happy to witness that convergence.
She and her band, The Gramblers, were recently featured as the Saturday “Second Cup of Coffee” music segment of CBS This Morning, thanks to videos the San Francisco-based band made while on the road.
And “on the road” is an apt description, as a phone’s camera, mounted on the band van’s rear view mirror, captured the six musicians singing some of their old favorites in what came to be known as “Van Sessions” videos.
“We began doing them to combat boredom,” Bluhm says in an interview from - where else? - the road. “The first one we did was ‘Tonight You Belong to Me,’ which we knew from when it was used in the Steve Martin movie, The Jerk, where Steve and Bernadette Peters sang it. But it was in March 2012 when we did our version of Hall & Oates’ ‘I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do),’ that we really started to get noticed. More than 2 million have watched that video!
“Then we heard from John Oates, and that’s when it really got crazy, as he started to share it and it got re-Tweeted and stuff. But when we did an old Steve Miller Band song, ‘Take the Money and Run,’ we got a call from Steve’s people, and he asked us to open a show for his band June 22 at a Lake Tahoe arena. We were super excited to get such an honor.”
Some of the other songs that have been performed in vans and filmed include Paul McCartney & Wings’ “Band on the Run,” Madonna’s “Material Girl,” George Michael’s “Faith,” The Allman Brothers Band’s “Ramblin’ Man” and a Stealers Wheel hit, “Stuck in the Middle With You.”
Bluhm got her performing start as a fan of the music of Tim Bluhm, whom she later married. He was a member of a San Francisco rock band, the Mother Hips, and is now in his wife’s band,along with another of his side projects, The Skinny Singers, along with folk rocker Jackie Greene. He convinced his new wife that she should also be singing.
“I had always loved to sing, but not in front of people. I was singing in the confines of my own space. I had gotten a guitar when I was 17, and I started writing my own songs,” Bluhm says. “Tim helped me get on a stage and it became a kind of magical experience. He produced a couple of solo albums I put out, Toby’s Song in 2008 and Driftwood in 2011, when he and I also made a duet album together that we cleverly named Duets.”
Once she started singing in public, Bluhm has been well nigh unstoppable. She has also been a guest vocalist with Grace Potter, The Avett Brothers, Warren Haynes, Galactic and Bob Weir and Phil Lesh of The Grateful Dead.
Bluhm reports that the 25th “Van Sessions” just got made, and she corrected a reporter who assumed that the six musicians all sing.
“There are usually one or two crew members also involved,” she says with a laugh. “But we really are all about our original songs. We have a self-titled CD coming out Aug. 27, and we’ve made a couple of singles, ‘Little Too Late’ and ‘Ravenous,’ and those will be on the new album.”
The Gramblers include Tim Bluhm on keyboards and guitar, Deren Ney on lead guitar, Steve Adams on bass, Dave Mulligan on rhythm guitar and Mike Curry on drums. All but Curry also sing.
Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers
9 p.m. Saturday, Stickyz, 107 River Market Ave., Little Rock
Admission: $8 advance, $10 day of show
(501) 372-7707
stickyz.com
Weekend, Pages 35 on 06/13/2013