Mick Kolassa

Double Standards is a celebration of the greatest blues songs, performed as duets with some of his musical friends. Mick’s love of many blues styles is well known, and this album brings the listener a wide range of blues, from down home to classic Chicago to jazzy to blues rock, Mick and his friends bring you the many faces of the blues. As with his previous albums, the proceeds from Double Standards will go to the Blues Foundation’s HART Fund and Generation Blues programs.

In life, some things are so ubiquitous that any attempt to imitate them or “change them up a bit” can be easily spotted. One of them is McDonald’s fries. Companies like OreIda put out frozen “Fast Food Fries” in order to satisfy a craving, but there’s nothing like the real deal. Another worldwide ubiquity is the Beatles: the band, the brand, the music, the merch. Who knows how many hundreds, probably thousands, of performers have covered their songs?

I am enthralled by You Can’t Do That! I’ve been a Beatles fan all my life and I can honestly say that I never imagined them this way. Bu oh, how well it works! Mick Kolassa and Mark Telesca are Beatles fans too, and at the 2016 International Blues Challenge in Memphis they started swapping their” bluesified” versions of Beatles songs. They sounded so good that way, they decided to make an album. Jeff Jensen joined the project to produce and add some of his remarkable guitar and they knew they had something. Then they gathered James Cunningham on drums and other percussion, Tommy Borroughs on fiddle and mandolin, Marc Franklin on trumpet and yes, flugelhorn and Eric Hughes on guitar and harmonica and with the help of all these friends, they did something nearly unbelievable.

Mick Kolassa is a veteran blues artist whose love of the blues spans more than 50 years. His style has been called "Free Range Blues" because his work encompasses all styles of blues, from Delta and Chicago blues to Hokum, Piedmont, and New Orleans style.

Mick Kolassa is a well regarded blues artist whose love of all types of blues has led him to call his style "Free Range Blues". Mick has released six previous albums of blues music, some acoustic and some electric - all of it fun!

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