Crack open the gatefold sleeve to Angela Strehli’s brand-new Ace of Blues, and her genre’s ancient book of spells spills forth. Hot off our scarce world supply of record presses, the royal-blue-colored vinyl honks and stings and testifies the singer’s first studio full-length in 17 years. Boutique packaging and a photo album insert disgorge an Austin-and-beyond visual history of true blues.
Immediately inside, a black-and-white snapshot of the Lubbock-born beauty in three-quarter profile captures a resolved, inscrutable, fair-haired twentysomething from modern rock’s first great age, 1968. Alongside it, Muddy Waters and a cowboy-hatted Junior Wells serenade the Texan at Antone’s nightclub seven years later. Flying V bomber Albert King, baby-faced gunslinger Stevie Ray Vaughan, and sanguine Fabulous Thunderbird Keith Ferguson reanimate all around her in a clutch of pupil-widening images.
Jimmy Reed, Otis Rush, Eddie Taylor, and more decorate the wax wrapper inside, but the 10-page picture book bursts sound and vision: Strehli and Waters dancing; Albert Collins and Buddy Guy sandwiching Strehli; gal pals Etta James, Bonnie Raitt, and Sue Foley getting cozy; Denny Freeman, Flaco Jiménez, and B.B. King interlocking as literal hermanos in arms. Ace of Blues iconizes its soundtrack.
“Susan Antone‘s photographs and the club’s archives were instrumental in the new package,” affirms Strehli over FaceTime from her longtime Marin County homestead in Northern California. “They back up everything I sang and all the music I chose. Those photos of me interacting with all those people, what a treasure. I’m completely indebted to Susan, who’s like a sister to me.”
“Some of those blues musicians would come to Antone’s and they would try to remember my name with those three syllables. I’d say, ‘You can just call me Ace. I answer to that.’” – Angela Strehli
Covering Strehli’s core inspirations, the set list begins with a whirl through Bobby “Blue” Bland’s dance floor magnet, “Two Steps From the Blues,” horn-smearing her stately vocal with a speakeasy ambience that touches off an intimate, after-hours electricity. Willie Dixon’s “I Love the Life I Live” beams Waters’ Buddha-esque sovereignty, while Strehli lends Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell” an indelible snap. Otis Rush’s lowdown “Gambler’s Blues” and kerosene-licked howler “Howlin’ for My Darling” bristle ‘n’ burn.
“At Antone’s down in Texas, my friends call me the queen,” ad-libs the cracking title track. “Cliff, Sue, Lou – Stevie and Jimmie, too/ But when Muddy, Otis, and Milton came down there to play/ It seemed that calling me ‘Ace’ was easier to say.”
“I was so happy to do that song, ’cause it has that edge to it, kind of a bravado,” offers Strehli. “I wrote that verse about when some of those blues musicians would come to Antone’s and they would try to remember my name with those three syllables. I’d say, ‘You can just call me Ace. I answer to that.'”
Seventy-seven this November 22, the University of Texas graduate, in fact, founded Austin’s world famous Home of the Blues with Clifford Antone (1949-2006) and others, and later started Antone’s Records. Following the patriarch’s death, the offshoot label declared bankruptcy and changed hands in a complex legal saga, finally ending in acquisition by New West Records in 2010. Contemporary roots preservationists since 1998, New West not only puts out Ace of Blues on November 18, but also boasts more than 550 titles. The Nashville and Athens, Ga.-based imprint plans to re-press Lazy Lester’s Blues Stop Knockin’ and Doug Sahm’s The Last Real Texas Blues Band from Antone’s archival discography.
“From my start at New West, beyond reissuing catalog, I was looking for the right project at the right time to revive Antone’s Records,” emails label President John Allen. “Angela’s album hit at the heart of Antone’s, and I loved her new music. There seems to be a resurgence happening in real blues with newer artists like Marcus King, Christone Kingfish Ingram, and others. It felt like a good time, and we all dig Angela.”
About New West’s catalog commitment, Strehli titters, “That is the most fortunate, unexpected, unplanned thing, and it just tickles me. That is so full circle for me to have my records back on the Antone’s label, which I founded all those years ago. Those people at New West, that’s not just a business. Those people love music. That’s why they’re doing it. That doesn’t always happen in this business. I feel very fortunate.”
Documenter and figurehead of the since-relocated nightclub launched in 1975, Susan Antone remembers Strehli as essential to early operations: “Angela was great at running the label, just like the club she started with my brother Clifford. Angela has this wonderful rhythm about her, a special rhythm that’s so soulful. That stood out to me and obviously a lot of people. And how kind she was, and lots and lots of fun.”
Antone’s standard Sue Foley released 1992 debut Young Girl Blues on the imprint and tells the Chronicle, “Angela is a really important person to me.
“She was the one who told Clifford Antone about me after she saw me play in Canada. That became the impetus for me moving to Austin and signing my first record deal with Antone’s Records. But besides that, I’d never heard a white woman sing the blues like Angela: so deep, so unaffected, so natural. I was immediately struck by her powerful voice and her depth as an artist. She’s one of a kind.”
Strehli can’t say for sure whether she considers Ace of Blues her swan song, a point of order album instigator/producer/husband Bob Brown hints at in his LP essay. The couple owns and operates a restaurant/bar near their home called Rancho Nicasio, where she performs regularly with harmony quartet the Blues Broads, a parallel coupling to her ATX super trio with Marcia Ball and Lou Ann Barton.
“I had kinda said what I needed to say about my life,” reflects Strehli. “Because as you know, life experiences are heavy. I didn’t want to go there again. I wanted something different pushing me to record, and I found it in Ace of Blues.”
Angela Strehli celebrates Ace of Blues on back-to-back nights at Antone’s Nightclub, Nov. 15-16. Marcia Ball, Lou Ann Barton, and Strehli warm up Tuesday alongside the Eve Monsees Duo. Jimmie Vaughan and Sue Foley open Wednesday.
This article appears in November 11 • 2022.
