Alejandro Martinez, guitarist for The Young Revelators, listens to old Mississippi Delta blues. He appreciates “the weird ways of arranging vocals—the way they sometimes made songs with no choruses.” As for how the barely 20-something discovered this music, he has a good story about his dad, who grew up on Chicago’s South Side and saw Buddy Guy playing in clubs. “I was helping him throw a boat into the lake and he showed me this tape of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Child.’ ‘What’s this sound!’ I said. I still remember that day—I knew I wanted to do this!”
The Young Revelators debuted less than two years ago when Martinez, his brother Frankie (drums) and their high school buddy from Slinger, Wis., Benjamin Michalski (bass), played their first show at Frank’s Power Plant. Their name is way beyond retro cool—the Revelators could have been a wandering band of bluesmen from the 1920s—and some of their music comes from what happened when the blues started to rock in the ’60s. “We’re blues heavy, but our music is all over the place,” Martinez says. “I like Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles for songwriting and more modern people like Jack White and The Black Keys. Nirvana is a super big influence on us—a power trio with loud guitar, loud drums, loud vocals.”
The band recently released a superb five-song, self-titled album, remixed and mastered by veteran Milwaukee producer Gary Tanin. “These guys are so infused with a psychedelic ’70s sound without trying to go there,” Tanin says. Among the unintended analogues to the past identified by the producer is a vibrato guitar sound reminiscent of Quicksilver Messenger Service, a ’60s psychedelic band The Young Revelators never heard of.
Martinez, the band’s songwriter, writes the music first. “That’s where the inspiration for the lyrics comes from,” he explains. “I try to write whatever the music makes me feel.” Armed with new songs, The Young Revelators plan to return to Tanin’s studio this spring to work with the producer and engineer Rick Probst on a full-length album. “It will be bigger and more diverse. I want to play electric slide guitar and some acoustic stuff,” Martinez says. “We’re looking forward to recording the whole thing in a good studio with nice microphones. Gary has the know-how to bring to life the sounds I hear in my head.”
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The Young Revelators will perform at 9 p.m. on Saturday, April 25 at Linneman’s Riverwest Inn.
