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DULUTH NEWS TRIBUNE
You’re forgiven, longtime Minnesota blues fans, if you didn’t recognize the name PK Mayo on this year’s Bayfront Blues Festival schedule.
Guarantee you know him, though. He’s the artist formerly known as Paul Mayasich, an Iron Range-raised musician who has been in the business for 30-ish years, usually as part of a band fronted by someone else like Big John Dickerson or Big Walter Smith.
Friday’s set in the acoustic tent at Bayfront Festival Park was among the first under the new-to-you name. Buddies in the blues biz have been shortening Mayasich to Mayo for decades, he said.
“It’s easier to remember,” he said. “I’m in a business where people have to remember your name.”
The line of autograph seekers and merchandise purchasers went deep after the midday show, and he was greeted with a mix of favorable critiques.
“That was the most exciting show ever,” a woman told him.
“You made me cry,” a man told him.
“You should’ve been on the main stage,” another fan suggested.
Vintage Guitar Magazine
The latest from guitarist Paul Mayasich and his band of buddies is an eclectic mix of American music. You get blues of all kinds, country, folk, and lots more – all of it laced with Mayasich’s biting electric guitar and acoustic slide.
If big crunchy guitar is your idea of a good time, “High Time” is a fine place to start. It’s a slow, bluesy boogie that features his lowdown slide soloing. “Insane” is a fun up-tempo tune mixing organ and guitar to craft a memorable lick that sticks like a good meal. The last two minutes of the song is basically a free-for-all amongst the entire band.
DULUTH NEWS TRIBUNE
It was really just a matter of time till he put himself front and center. With the release of his brand-new disc “Solitary Soul,” his debut solo project, the results show it’s been worth waiting for. It contains all the ingredients I’ve admired through the years but with more of everything.
The great Fred “I Do Not Play No Rock ‘n’ Roll” McDowell’s “Jesus Is on the Mainline” features a repetitive (almost hypnotic) vocal over solid chunked-out rhythm. It builds tension leading to a blitzkrieg of compressed-sounding slide with some of the hottest, most exciting electric bottleneck lines this side of Sonny Landreth.
RED HOUSE RECORDS
With the release of THREADS, Paul Mayasich delivers the most realized and satisfying album of his long career. The ferocity of his fretboard styling is equally matched by Mayasich’s voice . . .
Combined with his accomplished original songwriting, Paul Mayasich is the complete package. His music is an aural quilt built of what is today called the Americana genre: country, rock & roll, blues and folk, shaken and stirred into a satisfying musical brew.