BCB: How many guitars do you own? 
Four. I have a 1972 Gibson SG, an Epiphone SG, a Fender Squire, and a Washburn electric/acoustic.

BCB: What is your favorite guitar, strings and amp? Why?
I love the SGs (both the Gibson and the Epiphone) for their sound and tone, and their easy thin necks. I use D’Addario nickel-wound 10/46 regular light gauge strings, because they are easy on the fingers. I play through a Fender Blues Junior amp. I use only a little reverb, and prefer to play without pedal effects. Nothing beats the sound of a Gibson going through a Fender amp—pure classic R ’n’ R Blues!

BCB: When did you first hear a blues guitarist? 
That would have been in 1963, and it was Jimmy Reed. I was 12 years old, and living in rural Remsenburg L.I. I heard Jimmy on the radio. I believe it was the song “Bright Lights, Big City,” but he had a string of hit songs on the pop AM radio, running from the late ‘50s through 1964—the pre-Beatle era. He was perennial popular, so his earlier songs continued to be played on the air. This sound blew me away so strongly that I rode my bicycle 5 miles to the furniture store that sold records in order to get a copy.

BCB: Who were your mentors/teachers? 
There was a guitarist/singer from Lamar, South Carolina by the name of Cab Lucky living in Queens, NY. I learned a lot from him early on. I was fortunate as well to have the opportunity to play bass with Hubert Sumlin, Jimmy Rogers, and Louis Myers. Besides absorbing what they were doing on the bandstand every night, each taught me valuable stuff. Hubert and Jimmy taught me the most. On the road I roomed with Hubert, and he and Jimmy would stay at my place between gigs. We talked guitar, and they both showed me how to play various things on guitar.

BCB: Guitar techniques? Strumming,  fingerpicking, slide?
My regular technique is that I downstroke with my thumb. When I strum I usually do what is called “flat-tire” rhythm, which attacks the high strings first, before you reach for the low strings. I don’t finger-pick per se, instead I use a rolling method, using my thumb and index finger. When I slide—which I do frequently—I use a glass slide, which is also called “bottleneck.”

BCB: How do you like to tune your guitar?
I tune to open E, and play everything in that tuning, regardless of the key of the song. On rare occasions I play open D, a similarly configured open tuning in a lower register. This style of tuning, by the way, is called Vestpapol, and so I named my band, The Vestapolitans after it.

BCB: Besides the guitar, do you play other instruments?
Yes, I play electric bass, and did so for many years, backing many artists.

BCB: When and where did you start playing in a band? Band names?

EARLY YEARS
The first band I joined was in Forest Hills, NY, in 1967. The Vandals was led by my friend, a vocalist called Ren. I was sixteen years old. We were sort of a garage band doing R ’n’ B Soul: songs by Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, and also obscure Bo Diddley songs, the hits of Gary “U.S.” Bonds, and classic Chuck Berry. 

In 1969, on Christmas week I was hired to play bass behind Chuck Berry, for one gig only, in a small local bar. After that, I went to all his shows, but was never hired again. I did get to know him very well, and we had many great conversations. In 1970, because I had played with Chuck, his agent hired me for a special one-time show to back up Lightnin’ Hopkins and Lightin’ Slim (Otis Hicks). The show was billed as “Lightin’ Strikes Twice.” It was very low-key and low volume, almost folk style. The drummer, whose name I don’t recall, played brushes in a whisper. 

In 1971 I formed a band, Rooster Stew, with my brother, Scott (lead guitar) and my friends Ken Staab (bass, guitar and harmonica), and John Tooker on drums. I also switched off on bass and guitar, and we sang in three-part harmony. We played in a variety of styles doing a lot of Jimmy Reed,  Chuck Berry, Charlie Pride,  George Jones, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, and Leadbelly. In 1974 I got married and dropped out of bands for a few years—though I continued to do solo guitar gigs now and then. 

In 1979 I met the late, great harmonica player/Danny Russo, Little Mike (Markowitz) (piano/harmonica), and Eddie Lee Isaacs (guitar) in Cab Lucky’s (guitar/lead vocals) band in Kew Gardens, NY. I joined their band as bass player, gigging in the New York City area and beyond. Cab’s band was a sort of revue where we all did songs and then brought him out as the star. Cab Lucky was one of Victoria Spivey’s recording artists (as was Danny Russo). His material was a rich blend of roots blues and folk music including early Fats Domino and songs like Cottonfields and Good Night, Irene.

MIDDLE PERIOD
In 1984 Little Mike had the opportunity to back up Pinetop Perkins in New York City. It was the start of Mike and I forming the band ‘The Tornadoes.”

We had a steady gig at The Bitter End in NYC, and Paul Butterfield would often sit in with us. Pinetop introduced us to Hubert Sumlin, Jimmy Rogers, and Louis Myers. We also did a series of dates with Rosco Gordon, a few of whose recordings Mike had appeared on. From 1984-1990 We (literally) toured the world playing in clubs and festivals, and had the opportunity to back another founding father, Bo Diddley. We recorded on the Blind Pig label. Special guests on The Tornadoes’ records included Paul Butterfield, Big Daddy Kinsey, and Hubert Sumlin. We were also the backing band on albums for Hubert Sumlin with James Cotton; and one for Pinetop Perkins. 

In 1990 I left The Tornadoes to take care of my father who was gravely ill. 

In 1991 I toured and played nationally with blues guitarist Tony O’s band featuring Willie “Big Eyes” Smith and Zora Young.

In 1992 I formed a band with Gary Gray, “Gray/Vickers Blue Roots,” which lasted a few years. During that same period I was hired to play bass on several tours with rockabilly great Sleepy LaBeef. 

In 1997 I joined Mark Carpentieri’s band Somethin’ Blue as a bass player/vocalist. We backed up great folk matriarch Odetta, with whom we also recorded.  

[I can't believe that I omitted mentioning an important involvement that I had playing and recording with the Floyd Lee band from 2002 throught 2008. As his is “lesser known”, Here is his Wikipedia overview: “Floyd Lee, also known as Theodore Williams was an Americah Blues musician born in Lamar, Mississippi in 1933. He was known for his passionate blues performances in and aaround New York City subway staions for nearly 30 years, starting in the early 1970s. He eventually recorded four albums on the Amogla Records label and toured both solo and with his band. His song “Meaan Blues” became one of his most popular Floyd Lee passed away on June 7, 2020 in Columbus, Ohio, at the age of 86,” Amogla Records was the brainchild of Canadian guitarist and songwriter, Joel Poluck. Joel befriended Floyd and wrote the songs for Floyd's albums—and I was pleased to play on all of them. We did many shows, and several festivals both in the US and abroad. Ultimately we played in Lucern, Switzerland in a band that included great drummer Sam Carr. I was also privileged to be part of a film project “Full Moon LIghting” (and its accompanying album) by film maker John Gardner. It recounted Floyd's return to Mississippi to revisit his roots. I regret that I omitted this important episode for the Big City Blues interview.]

From 1997 - 2008 I freelanced on bass with a number of New York area artists, including Paul Oscher’s band, Dean Shot’s band, and a residency at NYC’s Terra Blues with Steve Guyger (harmonica) & Bobby Radcliff (guitar), and drummers Barry Harrison or Don Castagno—a gig that continued until the start of Covid.

In 2008 on guitar and vocals, I formed a band, “The Vestapolitans,” with Margey Peters (bass/vocals), Bill Rankin (drums), and the late, great sax player, Jim Davis. Jim was a very important collaborator, helping to create our signature sound, and composing memorable riffs on tenor sax and clarinet. In addition we recorded seven albums, tapping such talented guest personnel as Charlie Burnham (violin), Matt Cowan (bari/tenor sax), Dave Gross (guitar). Arne Englund (guitar), Barry Harrison (drums), Dave Keyes (piano), Mikey Junior (harmonica), and my friend, guitarist extraordinaire Bobby Radcliff.  Dave Gross produced the first five CDs, with VD King lending a hand; VD produced our two most recent.

BCB: Who is in your band today? How often do you practice together?
Today my band musicians are Bill Rankin on drums; the versatile VD King on guitar, sax, and piano; Margey Peters on bass and vocals; and myself on guitar and vocals. We work frequently enough that we practice as a band only when we are getting ready to record or when we introduce new material—though Margey and I rehearse informally prior to each gig.

BCB: Where do you like to play the blues - venues/festivals, both? 
I have played blues on sidewalks, in bowling alleys, in hay fields, on beaches, on the back of trucks, in wineries, breweries, in Mississippi juke joints, churches, house parties, bars, restaurants, concert halls, and on big arena stages. In other words, I find anywhere is a good place to play the blues.

 BCB: Many years from now what would you play, sing or say to get St. Peter to open the gates? 
I prefer to focus on the here and now. My favorite material remains the same that I loved at the outset of my blues journey.

BLUES BLAST magazine 
interview by Henry Carrigan:
Brad Vickers began his professional career by learning how not to walk!

Although he and his brother had been playing guitar together for several years, his first opportunity to play for a living legend—though Vickers didn’t know it when he took the gig—came one night when he was 18.

“A friend of mine who was playing there called up my mom—I still wasn’t old enough to play in clubs—to ask her if she would let me sub for him; he asked her not to tell me who I’d be playing with because he knew I was such a huge fan of this guy and he knew I might be too nervous to do it if I knew beforehand,” says Vickers. Always supportive of her children’s musical lives, his mother sent her son off.

When he walked into the club to set up, he saw “a Latino drummer and a Latino piano player” and was a little worried about being able to keep up since it wasn’t his usual style of music. Pretty soon, though, he found out what kind of music he’d be playing when Chuck Berry walked out onto the stage.

“Now I knew why my friend didn’t tell my mom,” he laughs. In the moments before Berry launched into his signature opening riffs, the guitarist walked over to each musician to tell him how he wanted him to play. When he came to Vickers, Berry said, “bass player: no walking.” “Well,” said Vickers, “I didn’t know what walking was, or I’d never called the way I sometimes played by that name, but I just nodded in agreement.”

When Berry launched into his first song, Vickers started walking up and down the bass, playing the groove he knew to play with the song. Berry stopped the song in after a few bars, saying something wasn’t right; they launched into another song, with Vickers playing the way he knew to play, and Berry stopping the song again. Finally, Berry launched into “Maybelline,” with Vickers playing the same lines. “Chuck did his little duck walk over on my part of the stage, and he was smiling at the audience on one side of his face, and scowling at me with the other.

He growled at me, ‘didn’t I say no walking, bass player?'” Vickers replied, “But Mr. Berry, I’m not walking; I’m just standing still.” He started laughing, and Vickers started a career playing with bluesmen from Pinetop Perkins and Hubert Sumlin to Bo Diddley and Jimmy Rogers, among many others.

Vickers was attracted to the blues early. He’s grateful that his parents gave him the opportunity to hear so many different kinds of music; his dad as into country and his mom listened to jazz.

“When I was 9 or 10,” he says, “I started to hear a certain cut of music that I was attracted to: blues, country blues, jazz.” Then, one Christmas, Vickers’ mother bought him a record that changed his life and sent him down the blues road. “She bought me Jimmy Reed Plays 12-String Guitar, which was all instrumental, and I heard the way he used the guitar as his vocal track; I was so into that sound that I started going to record stores looking for more Jimmy Reed albums; then I found out he sang, too,” Vickers laughs. Jimmy Reed led to Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley; “I was attracted to music with a groove,” he says.

Vickers and his brother used to sing and play guitar around the house growing up. Tired of playing on a beat up guitar, he asked his father one Christmas for a better guitar; instead, he got a bass. “I found out later that my grandfather had told my father to get me a bass instead of a guitar, that I would get more work that way since guitar players were a dime a dozen. He turned out to be right, of course, but I remember that I was really disappointed that Christmas,” Vickers laughs. “I wish I had started guitar earlier,” Vickers reflects, “because even though being a sideman has helped my career a lot, I feel like I’d have been a lot farther along by now if I’d started guitar sooner.”

 After his gig with Berry, though, Vickers has never lacked any work. Early on he once got a gig playing bass with Lightnin’ Hopkins. “Lightnin’ prayed to God that I could play his music,” Vickers laughs, “and I had to show him and tell him that I’d been playing his music all my life.”

Vickers played with a Chicago Blues band in the mid-1980s, Little Mike and the Tornadoes; they were a little like The Nighthawks, according to Vickers, whom Mike had backed on the East Coast. Vickers left Mike in the mid-’90s with the idea of doing his own thing, and he met up with Margey Peters, who became his musical partner, and with whom he sometimes writes songs. Eventually he formed the Vestapolitans—”Margey suggested the name”—which is named after the open chord tuning—Vestapol—that Vickers uses and “it also starts with the same letter as my last name,” laughs Vickers.

Along the way to forming his own band and crafting his own eclectic brand of blues that he refers to as “American Roots and Roll,” Vickers traveled with, backed, and learned some valuable lessons from great bluesmen like Hubert Sumlin, Pinetop Perkins, and Bo Diddley.

Vickers was playing with Pinetop Perkins on the East Coast at the time, and Perkins said he had a friend he’d like to get into these clubs. Perkins’ friend, of course, turned out to be Sumlin, and Vickers recalls what a humbling experience it was working with Sumlin. “He was a great human being,” says Vickers.

According to Vickers, playing with Sumlin is itself a one-of-a-kind experience: “When one plays with Hubert, it’s almost like a spiritual experience. When he took a solo on a song, he’d just turn the room around; a lot of people can do that with loud vocals, but Hubert had this way of expressing himself on guitar that was very organic and could take you to another plane with his music.” It’s no wonder, Vickers emphasizes, that guitarists from Clapton to Santana to Jeff Beck and others would come to pay homage to Hubert; “it was fun to watch that happen.”

Sumlin wasn’t just a musical mentor to Vickers, though. “He taught me a lot of stuff about life,” recalls Vickers. “I learned how to live on the road from him: how to sleep sitting up, how to roll up my clothes so they wouldn’t get wrinkled, the little tricks and trades of life,” laughs Vickers.

If Sumlin was Vickers’ uncle and best friend, Pinetop Perkins was Vickers’ self-proclaimed godfather.

“That’s what he called himself,” says Vickers. A lot of other entertainers questioned it when he called himself my godfather, recalls Vickers, but he was like my grandfather.”

Albert King took Vickers under his wing because Vickers was Perkins’ godson, and in the South being asked to play the role of godfather means that the child’s family is especially close to the person on whom it bestows that title. Perkins was the elder statesman, remembers Vickers. “Muddy Waters always treated Pinetop as an equal. Pinetop could do anything on stage, and Muddy wouldn’t say anything.” Perkins always put on a good show and was full of fun, according to Vickers, and he was an inspiration to a lot of people. “He also showed me some tricks of life,” laughs Vickers; “he taught me to eat hard boiled eggs and cheese before I drank to keep from getting drunk.”

Vickers also spent some time with Bo Diddley, though not as much as he would have liked; Vickers says he wished he could have spent more time with Diddley. “As a musician, Bo Diddley was underappreciated for many years; he’s a great songwriter, and many people don’t recognize that about him. But, like Chuck Berry and Jimmy Reed, his music has such a groove—it has the rhythm but then it takes that rhythm one step further—that it acts like a bridge to all this music and makes it easy for you to get into it right away.”

Vickers draws on all of these influences, and more, in his music. On their newest album, That’s What They Say (ManHatTone) Brad Vickers and His Vestapolitans (Dave Gross, Margey Peters, Bill Rankin; joined by friends Matt Cowan, Jim Davis, Charles Burnham, Mikey Junior, Christine Santelli, Gina Sicilia) celebrate the eclectic sounds of the music that is at once the roots and the branches of blues: folk, swing, jazz, gospel, gypsy, ragtime.The album opens with a rousing version of Tampa Red’s “Seminole Blues,” and moves into the folk blues of “Don’t You Love Your Daddy No More?” which Vickers learned from Leadbelly. Vickers confidently leads his band through old-time Appalachian music on “Mountain Sparrow,” gospel-inflected blues on “Fightin’,” and rag-mama-rag good-time music on “Twenty-First Century Rag.” Although the album features two covers—and Vickers tries to put at least one song by Tampa Red on his albums—the remainder of the songs on the album are originals, written either by Vickers or Peters, or co-written by them. “Songwriting is a process,” he says; “it usually starts with an idea of what I want to convey; sometimes I pick up a guitar and a passage or chord changes or a lick comes to me.” Vickers also writes poetry which helps with his songwriting. “I deal with emotions in my songs—in-and-out-of-love—but Margey writes great stories with social commentary in them.” “Blues,” he laughs, “is about the mistreatment you’ve felt; either the bad times when you’re going through it or the good times you want to have.” Vickers concludes that great songs “make you aware of your surroundings and provide some kind of understanding of life. They help you enjoy life and share that joy with others.”

According to Vickers, the blues are in good shape these days.

“I think it’s in a renaissance, and it’s very healthy,” he says. Blues encompass a lot of genres, Vickers believes, and people are discovering just how integral blues is to many different kinds of music and that it can’t really be isolated from other genres.

“I know I’ve grown,” he says, “from having a narrow mind to having an open mind. I’ve started to appreciate everything; I grew up playing Chicago blues but I have grew to embrace and appreciate the similarities that blues has with pop and country.” Vickers’ embrace of the broad spectrum of the roots and branches of the blues comes across loud and clear not only on That’s What They Say but also on his previous album, Great Day in the Morning (ManHatTone 2013). Vickers adds fiddle and banjo to the tunes on these albums as he captures some of the earliest sounds of acoustic folk blues. On Great Day in the Morning, he and his Vestapolitans cover a Tampa Red song, “Anna Lee Blues,” featuring the bottleneck guitar sound that Tampa Red started in 1925, as well as Memphis Minnie’s “Frisco Town,” and adds some Hammond B3 organ to one number (“Together for Good”) for that gospel feel. “I want people to hear the soul of the blues and see the persona I’m creating with my music,”

Vickers definitely has a vision of the blues that sets him apart and gives him access to come circles that other blues musicians might not always have. Although he feels like he’s just at the start of getting his name out there, Vickers music cuts across many genres and broadens its appeal to listeners now hearing the similarities in the country blues and bluegrass-fueled rock rhythms of Chris Stapleton, or the blues shouts of roots musicians Alabama Shakes, or the gospel and blues driven tunes of Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams.

“I know people are looking for the next Stevie Ray Vaughan,” Vickers observes, “but there are a lot of talented people out there playing blues in this Americana tradition that recognizes the ways that genres weave into each other.” Vickers says that he’s come full circle himself starting out in folk blues and now returning to it.

With his and Peters’ fun and insightful lyrics and his romps through the fields of jazz, ragtime, folk blues, country blues, rock, and gospel, Vickers demonstrates he know just when to lay down the right lick on the right instrument and create and deliver the tasty mix he so fondly calls “American roots and roll.”

“I’m just trying to carry on tradition,” he says; “I want to make people aware that there was a cut of blues that was there all along.”