The Return of Tab Benoit

AFTER MORE THAN A DECADE COMMITTED TO THE ROAD, THE LOUISIANA BLUES ARTIST IS BACK WITH A NEW 10-SONG COLLECTION, I HEAR THUNDER

- Jim Beaugez

BETWEEN THE TIME bluesman Tab Benoit released his first solo album, Nice and Warm, in 1992, until Medicine dropped in 2011, he kept his foot on the accelerator, putting out new collections of original music nearly every year.

But after nabbing a trio of Blues Music Awards for Medicine, he didn’t darken a studio door for years, instead concentrating on creating music live on stage. Now, after 13 years of studio silence, Benoit is revealing what happened — and it’s a classic tale of a good-natured artist signing a bad business deal.

“I was stuck in a record deal for my entire career that I never could get out of, and when I finally got out of it, I just didn’t wanna give away any more music,” he says.

Albums, to him, are simply a license to create. “I never looked at it like, ‘This is an album that’s gonna go out to the world and they’re gonna make a bunch of money on it.’” So, instead of hiring a lawyer to read through the contract he signed 30-something years ago, in his naivete, he considered the long-term deal as job security and a way to make music the center of his life.

At the conclusion of the deal, with no more obligations hanging over him, Benoit pushed ahead as a live performer. “I’ve always considered myself a live artist more than a recording artist, anyway, so I just kept playing shows,” he says. “That communication between me and the audience is open and free, so I stuck to that. It’s one thing that nobody could mess with.”