Post Description

Born in Japan, Des Plaines guitarist becomes world ambassador of the blues
From a nondescript house in a quiet Des Plaines neighborhood, Shun Kikuta can be heard playing his guitar.
Walk down the sidewalk and you can hear the music float down the driveway. On a warm early fall afternoon, the front door to Kikuta's house is propped open, his two daughters are in school, his wife is at work, and he is home alone stealing valuable practice time. The blues may be perceived as simple music, but as anyone who supports a family by playing it knows, that's hardly the case.
Kikuta, the lead guitarist in Koko Taylor's Blues Machine, is the modern face of the blues.
The oldest paradigm came from black Southerners who migrated to Northern cities to escape the hardships of the rural South. The second paradigm came by way of white British guitarists who heard the music and interpreted it with volume, technique and flash.
Kikuta, 41, is representative of the third wave: As a teenager growing up in a Tokyo suburb, he became infatuated by the British Invasion and contemporary rock groups like Van Halen that played with a strong blues bent. He emigrated to Boston to learn how to play the music and then to Chicago to actually play it. Tokyo-Boston-Chicago: Now a typical trajectory for a style of music that has long since become global.
"He has a very complete blues knowledge. He really studied this music," said Bruce Iglauer, president and founder of Chicago's Alligator Records, the most famous contemporary blues label in the world. "Contrary to what people who don't know much about blues think, there are hugely different blues styles and not all blues sound the same. There are very distinct ways of playing that fit individual songs and individual cities … (Kikuta's) very knowledgeable of that and you can hear that in his playing."

01 - Mr. Air (For MJ)
02 - Woman Across The River
03 - Me And My Guitar
04 - Same Old Blues
05 - Cut You Loose
06 - Come On In This House (feat. Junior Wells)
07 - Watch Me Move (feat. Junior Wells)
08 - Little By Little (feat. Junior Wells)
09 - Take A Look Behind (feat. Otis Rush)
10 - Let Me Love You Baby
11 - I'll Take Care Of You
12 - I'll Play The Blues For You
13 - Memory Of Louis