Charlie Musselwhite & GA-20
Bio
BLUES NOW! The title says it all. Blues in all caps – honest, emphatic, and raw. This collaborative album unites GA-20, one of today’s most celebrated young Blues trios, and Charlie Musselwhite, a legendary statesman of the genre. Musselwhite’s name is synonymous with the Blues, a harmonica virtuoso and esteemed vocalist with a 60-plus year career forged in authenticity and excellence. GA-20 burst onto the scene in 2018, garnering a quick reputation for dynamic live performance, built on a deep respect for the originators and an enduring commitment to carrying the torch forward. Together with BLUES NOW (New West Records), the Grammy award winning Musselwhite and Billboard chart-topping GA-20 shine with a chemistry that blends the spirit of the Blues pioneers with an electrifying modern energy.
Somewhere deep into the album’s ten formidable tracks, an exalted “WHOOO!” can be heard. “That’s me,” laughs GA-20 founder and guitarist Matthew Stubbs. “I got caught up in everything and just yelled it out. As soon as I did, I thought, ‘Oh, I hope that sounded okay! Because we can’t get rid of it.’” That “WHOOO!” is the sound of an exclamation point - the excitement of these seasoned musicians finding something exhilarating in the moment. “I love how those old blues records were made,” says Stubbs. “They were just performing, and they got what they got. There were mistakes in the songs, but they had to leave them in. Sometimes those moments are my favorite parts. That’s how we approached it, with all the instruments playing in a room together. We’re not making a pop record. This is Blues. It’s supposed to be raw and expressive.”
BLUES NOW is rooted in the same Chicago Blues Musselwhite helped pioneer back in the ‘60s, but the injection of GA-20’s visceral style and unique instrumentation, make room for wider interpretations, including old-school R&B (“Can’t Hold Out”), Heavy Blues (“Crazy Love”), even spiritual Jazz (“Cristo Redentor”). “I’m always open for keeping things interesting,” adds Musselwhite. It’s a new way to have some fun with the Blues.” “We’re high energy and loud, so people think it’s just rock and roll,” says Stubbs. “That’s fine by me. It doesn’t have to be a history lesson every second, but so many other genres have had revivals—soul, bluegrass, country. We’re doing our best to help start that revival.” In other words, this is not retro Blues. It’s just Blues. Full stop.
The roots of BLUES NOW stretch back to 2008, when Musselwhite hired Stubbs to play guitar in his touring band. “I was in my early twenties,” says Stubbs, “and it was so exciting to get a phone call from Charlie, who’s one of my heroes. That first year playing in his band was truly nerve-wracking, but he had all these great stories about legendary artists who were gone before I even started listening to their music. It was an amazing way to connect with those generations of Blues players.” They played together for more than a decade, but in 2019 Musselwhite launched a tour with Ben Harper behind their album No Mercy In This Land, leaving his own touring band on hiatus for
a year. “I was living in Boston, which is super expensive,” Stubbs recalls. “I don’t have any other skills besides playing guitar, so I really didn’t want to get a regular job. My idea just to float rent was to start a little trio and gig around locally. There were no grand plans to get a record deal or tour or do any of that.”
Stubbs called this Blues combo GA-20, a dexterous trio now featuring guitarist/vocalist Cody Nilsen and drummer Josh Kiggans, and named after one of his favorite Gibson amps. They very quickly earned a reputation for their raucous live shows and a fresh take on electric Blues. Under the Karma Chief imprint of Colemine Records, the band released four studio full-lengths and three live releases, all of which debuted at either number 1 or number 2 on the Billboard Blues charts. But even as the band proved itself on the road and in the studio, Stubbs always relished the idea of recording and producing a full record with Musselwhite - not as his backing band, but as a crew of equals, with Musselwhite easing into GA-20 and everybody toggling between lead roles and support. Here Nilsen and Musselwhite take turns on lead vocal throughout, with one prodigious duet on “Big Stars Falling,” a stand-out among many.
In early 2025 they booked six days at Rare Signals studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and started gathering some of their favorite Blues songs. “We tried to find songs that Charlie had a connection to or artists that he knew personally from Chicago, but also just songs that we liked and thought we could do justice,” says Stubbs. Altogether it took six days - a relatively luxurious amount of time for everyone involved. “Most of our records were done in two days, so this was relaxed and fun.” Musselwhite can top that: “My first album took three hours! If you went over three hours, you had to pay double scale and Vanguard wasn’t going to do that. So we had to knock out one tune after another.”
The album he’s talking about is Stand Back!, his lauded 1968 debut, which became the figurative and inspirational template for BLUES NOW. Says Stubbs, “The GA-20 sound historically has been in that ballpark of raw Chicago Blues from the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, but we didn’t want to simply re-create Stand Back!, we just wanted to be influenced by it. We wanted to capture the spirit of that record.” And BLUES NOW lives up to its name, letting the music speak as strongly in 2026 as it did in 1968. Even with
so much rare time on their hands, the group recorded live and worked quickly. They wanted the energy and humanity of living, breathing musicians playing together, but they also wanted the imperfections of the moment. Musselwhite adds with a glint in his eye, “We’re so good we have to make mistakes on purpose. Everything went smoothly. Making this album was as easy as falling off a log.”
Two notable songs appear on both Stand Back! and BLUES NOW: Musselwhite’s lowdown original “Strange Land,” which chronicled his first forays into 1960s
Chicago and its flourishing Blues scene, and the graceful instrumental “Cristo Redentor,” a piece by Jazz pianist Duke Pearson, now considered Musselwhite’s signature song. “All of these Blues clubs I was hanging out in in the ‘50s and ‘60s, they all had jukeboxes that would play in between sets,” recalls Musselwhite. “They had Blues, of course, but they had a lot of Jazz, too. I heard ‘Cristo Redentor’ on the jukebox. Other people were playing it, but nobody was playing it on harmonica. When I heard that melody, I just had to play it, and I’ve been playing it ever since.” It’s the final song on Stand Back! and such a staple of his live shows that fans get angry if he cuts it from his setlist. This new version, featuring lap steel by Nilsen, doesn’t simply re-create the vibe of the original, but rather builds upon it - it is the sound of age and experience, of looking back rather than forward, but always in wonder and gratitude. “The song never gets old,” says Musselwhite. “It always seems somehow fresh, alive in its own way. You just summon this spirit and it plays itself.”
In many ways this record has been a long time coming, and at the heart of it, most inherently, is the shared love of Blues. With BLUES NOW, the collaboration between GA-20 and Charlie Musselwhite embodies a living musical conversation that spans generations. It is an ongoing dialogue and testament to the enduring spirit of Blues music. It reaffirms its timeless appeal and reminds us that the Blues is a living, breathing art form. It’s also a hell of a good time. “I’ve always thought there was more to the Blues than it just being another kind of music,” says Musselwhite. “Sometimes people don’t even know what the term really means, but properly introduced to real Blues with real feeling, they can’t deny it. They hear it and something resonates inside.”