Tommy Joe Ratliff is the lead guitarist for international pop sensation Adam Lambert, who after achieving second-place on American Idol in 2009, shot to international stardom with his incredible vocal range and stage presence. Lambert’s debut solo album, For Your Entertainment, reached number three on Billboard 200, and his second album, Trespassing, opened at the coveted number one spot on the Billboard 200 chart. Tommy Joe has become an acclaimed musician in his own rite, bringing his blues-soaked brand and the rare real guitar work to the world of pop, while remaining true to his own passions and forging his style.
With their stage theatrics that include heavy makeup, top-ten charting pop-electronic music, and a new style dubbed Glam Rock, any member of Adam Lambert’s band, at first glance, would seemingly an unlikely focus of the world’s most popular blues network. Yet as Tommy Joe effortlessly proves, the powerful effects of the blues still continue to greatly influence even the most popular music on the airwaves.
We sat down to speak with Tommy Joe about his biggest influences (hint, it’s the blues), becoming a part of Adam Lambert’s band, his exciting projects (hint, it’s the blues), what Adam Lambert listens to when he throws a party (hint, it’s the blues), and much more! Don’t let the guyliner fool you; Ratliff is on a new and exciting path. Call it Glam Blues or call it what it is; a unique overdriven, rip-roarin’ guitar style. Whatever you call it, Tommy Joe Ratliff is one talented musician who’s succeeding with a guitar in an industry rife with of auto-tuners.
American Blues Scene: How did you get started in guitar in the first place?
Tommy Joe Ratliff: Well, when I was a kid, I was always around my uncle, and he’s a really phenominal jazz player. He took lessons from Joe Pass, and he is just… he is insane. Him and my dad got me my first guitar. It was a really cheap little $25 acoustic and they weren’t sure that I wanted to stick with it. And they were trying to teach me, my uncle was trying to teach me theory and that stuff and I really wanted nothing to do with that at all. “I just want to learn how to play” and I was getting really mad. I didn’t see my uncle until a month or so later, and I’d already learned a bunch of songs by ear, and I just started picking things up… I’ve never had a lesson in my life. I just never really… cared. Now I actually kinda like guitar lessons, but when I was growing up it was like, “eh, not really giving a shit about lessons.”
So let’s talk about the blues for a second. Who did you do the Freddie King cover with? His name’s Brian London & he’s actually our music director. I play for Adam Lambert, and he directs for a lot of people like Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, Jason Derulo, a lot of big artists. He shares a lot of my enthusiasm for soul and blues and he’s turned me on to a lot of great singers and other artists. We get together on our time off from tours and everything and he starts… Well, we’ve been writing a lot of songs — writing a whole album together, and he’s gonna put it out and get that going. It’s awesome. It’s really cool, and it’s a lot of fun. We were just talking about it and we said, “Hey, we should do a Freddie King cover”, and we just threw that out there. We did it in the studio in a day and it was really cool and it was really quick. Drank a bunch of whiskey and got it done!
You scorched it. I mean really. Thanks, man, it was cool. That’s what I’m saying, I didn’t really do anything crazy. I don’t like it when I hear all these modern blues singers… I’m disappointed with a lot of new blues players because it’s almost like they’re schooled. They’re too schooled. There’s some out there… I can’t really think of any new ones that I love a lot, but they’ll do it, and they’re doing something really tasty, and at the end they have to throw in a super arpeggio, some really crazy shred, and that’s when people are saying, “Oh, that’s cool,” and I’m thinking, “No, no, no”
Who do you like, then, in the blues?
I love Freddie King. Of course I love Stevie Ray, and of course I love Hendrix. I love Hendrix. And Albert Collins, I’ve been listening to a lot of him lately. Albert King, Johnny Winter… Guys like that… that you can feel their pain while they’re playing, you can tell it’s real. It’s not technical, and it’s not about numbers and it’s not about… you know what I mean?
Blues is a feeling.
Exactly.
Let’s talk for a second about the Adam Lambert thing, because that’s just wild. I love this idea: Ya’ll do this guyliner thing, and he’s this big pop star. There’s you who’s this ridiculous blues lover who can just grunge the slide guitar. How do you bring some of that influence into mainstream pop music?
Well the thing is, I do lots of different things. I play with different… For example, our old drummer Isaac Carpenter, we get together and write some White Stripes-sounding stuff. Try to make really cool modern-sounding bluesy stuff. The weird thing about Adam is that he’s a pop star but he’s still soulful and bluesy. He really really really loves blues, he loves Hendrix, he loves hearing that music.
I actually started out playing bass for him, and when I started playing guitar, he really liked the blues I brought to the music, and the funk, and everything, and that’s why he wanted to let me take the guitar position. It’s been so cool. That’s definitely my main priority, is working with Adam. I love his voice and his whole demeanor. It’s really what I like to do. Because you know, on top of the blues, I love glam rock and rock and roll, and Adam’s got a good balance. This is where I like to keep myself.
It’s like what I was saying earlier, blues is like a secret handshake. Some of the guys you’d never guess are serious blues lovers, and a lot of people wouldn’t expect Adam Lambert to be a guy that listens to a lot of blues… or his guitar player.
Oh yeah, he loves it. When we’re sitting there partying or barbecuing, he likes to put on Led Zeppelin’s blues stuff, old Hendrix, he’ll put on a blues album. He likes it because he can feel it. It’s sexy. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard him wail and go off, but he’s got this range and this voice that you can’t hardly describe… it’s really cool being a blues player and answering to that. As a guitar player you’re answering to his voice, and it just goes back and forth. I can’t explain the feeling. It’s great.
That’s awesome. That gives hope. A lot of the best rock came from the blues, and it’s cool to see that that is still happening to this day.
Yeah! A lot of guitar players that are out there now, they’re just like, “Oh, I want a gig,” and they’re just shredders, and they want to do fast metal stuff. But they could be great players, and I’m not dissing them in any way, but they don’t have that… There’s something about when you hear an old Freddie King record, and when he’s going off. Or like “Reconsider Baby“, when you hear him do that solo, it’s the simplest solo in the world — but it’s choking you up. You can’t help not to know he went through it.
So often, it’s what you don’t play.
Exactly. I’ve had that problem before. It’s really weird. It’s like playing with conviction but at the same time, I think it comes with age, too. When I was younger, I used to be really intimidated by those guys who could do all that stuff, and I just realized, I’m around a bunch of people who like what I do. I don’t know, I’m just gonna play how I want to play, and you listen to those guys, and you realize, shit, I’m way older now. I’m not a young kid trying to prove anything anymore.
Right, I’ll play the solo I damn well wanna play.
Yeah, exactly.What kind of mood you’re in at that time.
A lot of the time that’s a soulful mood, judging from what I’ve heard of you.
Yeah, like the guy Brian London I’ve been writing with, we’re doing an album and the solo comes up. It’s really weird the way he gets it, I mean, he says “make it cry, make it sing”. I dunno, it’s cool. It’s a good feeling to play with people who actually understand it! Most people are, “Oh, you can’t do that, that doesn’t fit in that scale.”
I’ve written with people before who say, “You can’t put that in that.” They’re dropping these music theory terms, and it’s like, they’ll ruin a perfectly good song because they’re paying attention to the rules so much. You talk to people who write songs, and they say, “This is a bad song.” How do you know it’s bad? Maybe the person who wrote the song loved the shit out of it. A lot of people don’t understand what blues and music is… it’s all for us.
Yeah! I’m down here in the Mississippi Delta where all the blues got started in the first place, and that’s one of those lessons you continually learn down here is; R.L. Burnside was playing one chord, And some of these guys were playing out of key, and they play the guitar like that, and they’d sing to that… and it didn’t matter.
Yeah, exactly, they’re just doing it, you know?
Right, and the whole foundation of popular music was built on them doing it wrong. And that’s cool. So I would call you the definition of a pretty successful musician, I would think. How’d you get to this point?
I’m not gonna lie, it was tough. In bands, struggling. I was in metal bands, different kinds of bands playing music I didn’t like, just trying to get money for t-shirts, trying to promote my band, and it just wasn’t working out. I just quit and focused on myself, and there was this guy who works in L.A., he kind of plays matchmaker for bands. His name is Barry Squire, and he called me on my birthday, and he was like, “Do you want to audition for Adam Lambert?” and the funny thing was, if anyone called me before and said “Oh, he’s from American Idol,” I would have been like, “No way.” But my cousin told me about him before and said I would love this guy because he sounds like Jeff Buckley. I looked him up and, holy shit, he’s so different.
I mean, I wear makeup, I’m a straight guy, but I do the more androgynous glam rock kind of thing. It’s really weird. He said, “We’re looking for that kind of style. I think you would probably nail this,” so I went and we hit it off really well. It’s been about four years and my life has changed ever since. We became great friends after that, and it’s opened up a lot of cool doors for me. I’ve gotten to show whatever I have. I look at it as a beginning, because I can just show what I feel about the blues and everything. I hope to do a lot more with it, maybe put out a blues album with someone. I mean, I’m not a singer, so I definitely can’t do anything like that, but whatever I can add to something…
Again with the glam rock, you’re at the point where you ain’t got to prove anything to anybody. If you want to wear makeup and play some old school soul, cool. You wanna play some old grungy blues, cool.
I’ve always loved that kind of stuff, the theatrics of that stuff. With Adam, It’s odd, though, coming into a group where you’re with people who totally get where you’re coming from. It’s like a big family.
That’s awesome, I love that. So you started talking about stuff you’d like to do… What are your dream projects?
Like I said earlier, I’ve been writing with this guy that played with Isaac Carpenter, he’s a crazy drummer. And we’ve just been writing White Stripes-sounding music, just for fun, just to see where it goes. Maybe see if somebody wants a song? But with Brian London, we were actually just fucking around. We just hang out, smoke, drink, and next thing you know we have an album! He wants to put it out and it’s a great idea. They’re great songs and it’s fun! It’s soul stuff. It’s not super poppy. It’s really just like blues-rock. The covers we did, they’re all cohesive with what else we’re doing.
I can’t really think of a dream, man… I’m kind of all over the place. I have my iPod and I’ll be listening to Slipknot, and next second I’ll be listening to Depeche Mode, then I’ll be listening to Robert Johnson or something. You know what I mean? It kind of just jumps all over the place. So, it’s hard to say what my dream music project is, because I do like electronic music and I like stuff like Depeche Mode and I like [other bands/artists]. And I love the sound of the blues. That’s why ultimately, when I get older, I’d like to be known and respected as a blues player.
Cool, so that’s a goal of yours?
Definitely. A blues player, yeah. I’m not trying to be like a star, like a Kenny Wayne Shepherd kind of guy. Like one of those newer guys, I’m not trying to be that. I just want to be known for doing what I love and what I do, this and that.
So is there anybody contemporary in the blues that you like?
Now? To be honest, I can’t really point anyone out. I just, an artist that… My uncle turned me on to Robben Ford. I like some of his stuff. It’s really good. Mike Landau played the Baked Potato here in L.A. with my girlfriend’s dad. The funny thing, the rhythm guitar player turned me on more than the guy we went to go see. His name was Kirk Fletcher and he was a crazy blues player. He was just going off. And actually, we went up to him after the show and asked him for lessons and he kind of laughed. It was worth a shot!
Right, right. Ask him a couple times, bug him, maybe he’ll say yes. Or shout him out in an interview.
Totally. Yeah!
So, you’re around L.A., have you ever heard Vintage Trouble?
I love them!! They’re great! Their singer, Ty, is actually a really good friend of Adam’s. They’ve sung together before, and I pop their music in all the time. That is a really good band.
Oh my god, they’re scary good.
It’s really good shit, there. And it’s refreshing to know that people are appreciating it, because they have substance. Stuff like One Direction and these pop things, it’s just regurgitated bullshit. And it’s Horrible. And that’s what people like. It’s sickening.
But you know, knowing that a band like Vintage Trouble is just that pure and great and there’s no nonsense to their music, it’s really good. I respect them a lot. I haven’t personally gotten to meet them yet. Hopefully someday.
I love their music. It’s really great. So how often are you on the road?
Well, there’s always some time off in between albums and this and that, whenever Adam is starting up a new album. Whenever we start up, we go for months here and there, there’s a lot of time off to stay at home and do your own thing. With the first album, we did a really long world tour. It was a huge success and it was great! It was fun.
So you like the touring? You like being on the road?
Oh yeah, I love it. I love being on a bus and [something something something]. At that time, I was playing bass, I wasn’t playing guitar.
Have you toured since you start playing guitar with him?
Oh, yeah, definitely. We did a lot of international touring. We did a lot of promotional stuff. A whole acoustic run and everything!
You did an acoustic run? How badass!
Yeah! It was for radio stations promoting a single. The cool thing is, the last album was a lot more electro-dance and funk, and it was really cool but this time he’s ready to… he wants it to be a lot more organic, and raw and rock. That’ll be a lot of fun.
That’s exciting. When are you going to start it up?
I don’t know? He’s in the middle of writing right now. He’s gonna be on the new season of Glee, so that’s going to take some time for him to finish that. Whenever he’s ready to go, I’ll be ready to jump back in there and do it. But for now, I’m kind of taking time for myself. Just writing and trying to [do something], if that’s what you want to call it.
Well, cool, man, so when do we get to hear a new album from Tommy Joe?
Uh, well actually the closest thing to it would be the Brian London album. He’s going to be putting it out pretty soon. So yeah, it’s kind of Hendrix-y, Lenny Kravitz. I play all the guitar and bass. It’s pretty cool. We tried to experiment, too. I tried to do one of the solos like Are You Experienced, try to do the reverse delay and make it really trippy sounding. It’s definitely organic. Very on the fly and not really thought out. We didn’t sit there and try to worry about technical things like that. We just, drank, smoked, and made music. We called the album, “Rhythm & Booze.”
Ha, that’s funny. You know Buddy Guy just came out with an album called “Rhythm & Blues” like a week ago! I saw the Buddy Guy album, haven’t listened to it yet. You know which one I love which just kind of flew into the radar is Sweet Tea.
Sweet Tea, yes!
Oh god, Sweet Tea is so good. That album is like, perfect. It’s just so raunchy and raw and good, it’s great.
I’m endorsed by Fender, and they’ll invite me whenever they have a party. I have a great relationship with them. They’re amazing people. I was opening for their showroom in Corona, so I went down there and I had no idea… they’re all busy like, “Oh, Buddy Guy’s going to be on in a couple minutes.”
And I said, “You’re kidding me.” I got to watch him play, it was amazing and I just stood there like a little girl waiting for The Beatles. I was waiting for him to come out, and he came walking out and I was like, “Hey, man”, and he just kind of walked by. I wanted to take a picture with him or shake his hand, but I didn’t get to. Would’ve been cool, but I understand.
Maybe there’ll be another opportunity?
Hopefully, yeah. He is really cool. There’s this video, I see it on Youtube, and it’s a really, really, really old Buddy Guy performance. And Jimi Hendrix was watching him!! Have you seen that?
Yes!
Oh, isn’t it cool? Something about that just kind of chokes you up.
He breaks the string on his guitar and he’s on his knees and… Wow. It’s incredible. He broke a string, his guitar is probably going out of tune, and he’s still killing it. And then Jimi Hendrix is just sitting there on the center stage just loving every second of it. It’s so cool.
It’s like shivers up your spine when you see that.
Oh, yeah, totally. It’s crazy.
It’s scary good. What’s your favorite track off of Sweet Tea? That’s totally a loaded question.
I don’t know! Hard to say. I kind of just let that one play and just keep it going. My god. I might not know the track name. I own the album and I just kind of let it play. I can hear it in my head, I just can’t hear the name.
Well, that’s one of those ones, you can just kill that whole album easy and just turn it right back on again.
Yeah, it’s really cool. When my friend came through, pushing younger kids playing blues, I don’t even know his name. He’s really little. He’s probably like 12 or 13.
Yeah, the kid that works so much with Buddy? It’s Quinn Sullivan.
Oh, okay, yeah! He’s a really young little kid. He’s good. That little kid’s really good. He can sing, too. I liked his voice a lot. He’s gonna be something when he gets big. Buddy Guy is really helping him out.
Well see, there you go. A contemporary blues guy you like! A little young, but hey, whatever works!
Another really good album that stuck out to me is From The Cradle to the Grave, by Eric Clapton. That was a great one. That one kind of shot into the radar, I thought.
Yeah, that’s an interesting choice. I wouldn’t have thought that through.
I thought it was really good. I remember I bought it when I was like 14 and I thought it was really cool, and then I just kind of let it sit. I listened to it later when I was in my 20s and thought it was really cool. It’s kind of weird, it kind of crept up on me. I put it back in and thought, “this is really good!” Now I play it all the time.
Sometimes those take a little time to slow burn, you know.
Yeah, no, and one a lot of people never really listened to. Aerosmith put that Honkin’ On Bobo album out. Did you ever hear that?
Oh yeah, I’ve got that!
That’s like their first album in ’73 was like, “Mama Kin”, and “Walkin’ the Dog”, and stuff like that. Those are great blues songs.
People didn’t really notice it was blues. It was the weirdest thing.
Yeah, people think, ‘oh, just because it’s rock and it’s popular at one point…’ and rregard them as these big rock gods — No, they’re a blues band. People look at The Doors and think, oh no, they’re just old pop rock. No way, there’s L.A. Woman is just one of the best albums to me because it’s a straight up blues album! It’s so good!
Good point, and that Honkin’ was an album full of blues covers by Aerosmith.
Oh god no, Metallica, another one of my favorite bands, I guess it was an April Fool’s joke, but they put online that they were going to put out an album called Ride the Smokestack Lightning or something like that. It was gonna be a blues album. I was so excited. I honestly believed it. Then they put out the next statement that said, oh that’s an April Fool’s joke. I was so pissed because I know Hetfield and Hammet are both great blues players. I was excited… but it’s not happening.
I got bad news for you, man. I’m the one who came up with that. So sorry.
That was your April Fool’s joke? Are you kidding me!?
Yeah, it’s really ironic, what you just said, because we sat around the office and said, “Who’s really talented blues fans that you would never imagine would put out a blues album — but wouldn’t be surprised if they put one out,” and I was like, “I’ve got it man.”
Oh my god, that was you!
That was me.
That was the funniest thing! I took a screenshot of that humorous texting. And my diehard Metallica friends and I was just like, “Can you believe this shit!?” I’m the only one who really loves the blues a lot. I just think Metallica is so good, so to hear them put out a blues album, I would have loved that. Oh, god, I hope this gets to them someday.
That’s what I’m saying, too!
How amazing would that be? But yeah, my buddy Dinesh [Lekraj], my only other friend who is an actual blues fan — he’s an amazing player. He’s a year or two older than me. He is just really really good. I’ll send you a link to it whenever I get the chance. He’s phenomenal.
Cool, very cool.
Yeah, every time I go watch him play at the little bar by my house, I’m just like, “damn it”. I always think I’m doing the right thing and then I see someone like him play and I’m like “oh man. look at you.”
Oh yeah, I feel like that sometimes. You think you’re really good, and you see someone who’s way better than you than you’ll ever be, and it’s like, my god. But that’s cool. I feel like that inspires you to be better sometimes.
Oh, it always does.
That was me. You hit the nail on the head. It was really kind of in the dire hopes, like you know these guys could make an incredible blues album if they wanted to. Metallica?
Yeah, Metallica.
If they did kind of what Aerosmith did, like old covers, oh my god. That would be so good. With James Hetfield’s voice?! That would be perfect.
It absolutely would. That was our goofy tongue in cheek hope was that they would see this and think, “hmm, maybe we should do that.”
Nah, I think they should. They’re too worried about their fans thinking they’re not being heavy and fast enough. I loved the albums Load and Reload, I have a tattoo of that. I love those albums. Because people were honestly like, when this came out, all their fans didn’t like it and they said, “we don’t care.” We’re doing what we want to do. It was so cool. Anyway, the funny thing is that’s when they came out and they were wearing makeup and they were doing their kind of thing. You listen to songs like “2 x 4″ it sounds like a blues song! They were so good. And that’s what was cool. Heavy, blues, cool, with a rock vibe to it. I couldn’t have come up with an idea for anything more perfect for that band.
Oh, I know. Well, don’t feel bad. You’re not the only one that fell for it. That thing got picked up for news sources across the whole world.
I thought Metallica started the rumor as a joke.
Radio stations were reporting it because of our fake press release that day.
Yeah, I sent it to some people, and they were like, dude, that’s just an April Fool’s joke. I was like, no!
I know, I know! I’m sorry, it was us!
