Learn­ing to ‘play the song’
The Chris O’Leary Band per­forms Fri­day at The Liv­ery in Ben­ton Harbor.

Post­ed: Thurs­day, July 4, 2013 6:00 am
By TOM CONWAY -
BENTON HARBOR — After sev­en years as an infantry squad leader in the U.S. Marine Corps dur­ing the Gulf War, Chris O’Leary attend­ed col­lege in upstate New York. He also start­ed play­ing gui­tar and har­mon­i­ca in the blues scene that was hap­pen­ing in the Hud­son Val­ley area.
“I was going to col­lege and start­ed going out and play­ing a lit­tle bit,” O’Leary says by tele­phone from the back­yard of his home in Sarato­ga, N.Y. “I met up with some guys, and col­lege took a back seat at that point. Music took over.”
That was the begin­ning of The Chris O’Leary Band, which plays Fri­day at The Livery.
Chica­go and Mis­sis­sip­pi come to mind when think­ing about blues music, but O’Leary says the Hud­son Val­ley also has a rich blues music scene.
“From right around that area, you have Lit­tle Sam­my Davis, Murali Coryell and Slam Allen,” he says. “There has been a good amount of acts that have come out of there that have either hooked up with nation­al bands or went on to nation­al recognition.”
O’Leary got a big step up into the music busi­ness from one of Wood­stock, N.Y.‘s most famous res­i­dents. He met Lev­on Helm — the late drum­mer and singer for The Band who died from can­cer last year — through a mutu­al friend, George Lem­be­sis, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er for The Band.
“I was always a huge Band fan,” O’Leary says. “As a mat­ter of fact, the first con­cert I ever saw, my dad brought me to see The Band. I was 11 or so. He brought me to the Albany Palace. It was that tour before Richard (Manuel) died and after Rob­bie (Robert­son) had left.”
O’Leary had made demos to shop around to record labels, and Lem­be­sis offered to give them to Helm.
“He brought it over and the next thing you know, Lev­on is in the stu­dio with us,” O’Leary says. “It was just short­ly after he went through radi­a­tion and chemo. We start­ed play­ing with him, going to ‘The Barn,’ jam­ming and stuff.”
“The Barn” was Helm’s famed home and stu­dio in Wood­stock that would host the Mid­night Ram­ble, a series of con­certs fea­tur­ing Helm and a vari­ety of musi­cal guests.
O’Leary and his band were asked to be the house band at Lev­on Helm’s Clas­sic Amer­i­can Café on Decatur Street in New Orleans.
“We all dropped every­thing and moved to New Orleans,” O’Leary says. “We spent the bet­ter part of a year there play­ing with Lee every night. Lee was play­ing drums. He was­n’t singing at all yet. His voice was pret­ty rav­aged by the radi­a­tion and the chemo at that point. We would play every night either behind tour­ing acts com­ing in or doing our own thing. After about a year, he took us out on the road and we were his band, along with Amy, his daugh­ter. We were the Barnburners.”
O’Leary was singer, har­mon­i­ca play­er and front­man for Helm’s Barn­burn­ers for six years, and he says he learned so much from Helm that he has applied to his own band.
“He is respon­si­ble for every­thing, real­ly, my whole way of look­ing at things, espe­cial­ly musi­cal­ly.” O’Leary says. “His big thing was ‘play the song.’ Every song has its own life or its own mes­sage. Up until I met Lev­on, it real­ly was­n’t about that. It was an exer­cise in self-indul­gence. I would try to play as much and as fast as pos­si­ble. Mas­ter this tech­nique or that. It was a real eye-opener.”
Tour­ing with the Barn­burn­ers also opened O’Leary’s eyes to musi­cal influ­ences that he brings to his singing, play­ing and song­writ­ing today with his own band.
“I had been around the world with the Marine Corps, but I had nev­er been to New Orleans,” he says. “I had nev­er been to Chica­go. I got to see a whole side of the coun­try and peo­ple that I nev­er knew existed.”
The Chris O’Leary Band, a six-piece with gui­tar, bass, drums and two sax­o­phones, plays most­ly blues-based roots music, as can be heard on the 2010 debut album “Mr. Used to Be” — win­ner of Best New Artist Debut CD at the 2011 Blues Blast Music Awards and nom­i­nat­ed for the esteemed Blues Music Awards — and last year’s “Wait­ing for the Phone to Ring.”
“It is eclec­tic,” O’Leary says. “Our records are all orig­i­nals. I write all of my songs. The live show, we throw some cov­ers in there, but right in the same vein. We pull from every­where — from New Orleans, from Chica­go, from the West Coast, maybe a lit­tle bit from Detroit and Motown, and of course, Stax.”
— WHAT: The Chris O’Leary Band
— WHEN: 9 p.m. Friday
— WHERE: The Liv­ery, 190 Fifth St., Ben­ton Harbor
— HOW MUCH: $10 advance, $15 day of show
— CONTACT: 925‑8760 or www.liverybrew.com
— ARTIST INFO: www.thechrisolearyband.com