It is 2018 It is special for Mississippi, as the band is going through the anniversary year number 30, With all that that means. A year where memories emerge, the successes are remembered, the troubles, but above all, the people who were always (and in some cases it is) at the bottom of the barrel to facilitate the proper functioning of this blues machine.

With a new theme to celebrate ("Special reserve") and photographic exhibition held in La Trastienda; now the group made up of Ricardo Tapia, Gustavo Ginoi, Claudio Cannavò, Juan Carlos Tordó and Gastón Picazo are heading for the great celebration: the first Luna Park stadium.

In that context, Ricardo Tapia received in his house The sidewalk, where he reviewed moments of the career of the band that was born in Florencio Varela and then catapulted to become an authentic reference within blues and black music in our country.

How would you define the band?

The Mississippi is a family form. Having it makes 30 years is a parallel family form, where even sometimes it lasts longer than a constituted family. I think it is a group of friends - which is also a form of family- and it is also an Argentine black music band, with all that that has: rock, blues and everything we knew and learned from a young age.

The fact of having fulfilled 30 years on stage means that the group had to go through different stages. Far from denying any one in particular, the singer, guitarist and harmonica player emphasizes that “all the stages have been good in the sense that we never stop playing. Maintaining that in a country that in situations has been destroyed or fallen is much more complicated than it seems and we always maintained a line of work and never abandoned it ". In that sense, for the musician the key has been that the group knew how to look for "strategies to work every year and they always worked".

What things do you remember from the first date you had together?

As a band we started in 1988 and the first date was at the Teatro Arlequines in 1989, 20 June or July. It was a very interesting date because we had been rehearsing for about a year and we had made some pamphlets that at that time we distributed on the street with Luisito Robinson, who participated in the first album.

Luis met Bobby Flores at that time and told him that he was going to play The Mississippi Blues Band. (name that we later cut) and he liked the idea and I remember that he gave it a handle on Rock and Pop and that's how we began to promote ourselves through the radio. It was actually him, because day by day I was saying ‘it’s two weeks before I touch the Mississippi’ and so on, in a radio more than important.

On that first date they were 600 people. Crazy. It's more, I don't know if there was any band that had that many people on the first date in their history.

When I went on stage it was crazy, yes to the second show there was 100 (laughs). It was all surprising and it also established us, because the name stayed with the people and we started playing at the Iberio Mate Bar, a basement on Paraná street where jazz was played, blues and folklore and there we played for several years.

What are the things you enjoy the most when going on stage?

Actually, when one does something for so many years, what he enjoys the most is the way you live. There is no other way. So, There is the shape of my house and the one on the stage. At some point they get together because if you unbalance those things a lot it is like it seems to you that the world of the stage is one thing and the world of your life is another and that is dangerous for your life.

Everything has to be on the same plane. So many things from my house are transferred to the stage and vice versa and thus it ends up being one more space where I go, I share and I come back. But it's not a space where you get nervous, a place where you think you are in a special place ... because if you see it that way it is like you are separating yourself from your own reality, of your life. We see it as a place where we share with people, but that does not give you a specific category, but as the place from where you give something to people artistically.

What song did you click on and felt that it was serious?

I think the first album was quite essential because we had been playing quite a few blues classics. The Mississippi at first were two projects: one who did songs by B.B. King, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and all those classic songs. Then we started making our songs and when we started them we went very little by little, because when one composes ... that is to say, you play “Thrill is gone” and then you play a song of yours, and if it is badly done, the show is down. By this I mean that you have to compose to measure or match the songs you are playing and not believe that the first thing you compose is going to be fantastic, because it's never going to be and you're not going to get to do a B-level song.. king of move, so you have to be very self-critical.

It took us a long time to find our songs –the first was “Buenos Aires blues”- and then we started putting them in little by little ... "Boogie de la Ruta 2", all classic themes.

The first album gave me the idea, when it came out and it became a Gold Record (at that time they were 35 thousand albums sold), that we had established a sound.

What definition does the public of the blues fit in our country?

It is an audience that really exists and grows. If not, we would play for 50 people and we always play for more people, there is a stable audience. yes, the public of blues and classical black music must know how to summon it, because in reality it is not an audience that is going to do pogo. They are people who like to go to a theater, or to a nice place, to listen, because black music isn't all 'bang up', It has many nuances and to appreciate it you have to be comfortable.

Did the path traveled make you a reference?

I think we remain as historical references of a way of thinking and composing blues and black music. There are new generations and new very good musicians who have been doing other things on much smaller scales but more solo artists who travel and make their experience abroad and what they achieve is good.. I believe that, of that generation of big bands, yes we are the last or the one that is distinguished.

The fact of the deaths of Pappo or Adrián (Otero) destroyed all that front, because a single band is not the same as three. We traveled a lot of time together and we had a friendship relationship and passed all the data to each other..

In fact, when we did Pappo-Memphis-Mississippi at Center Freeway, date that we produce, it was a concert for 6 thousand people per night. There were two dates that showed that there was a huge audience for that. You simply had to know how to summon it and produce it, for that and in that sense, I think there is a lack of producers who know how to think. We have made 85 dates in La Trastienda.

How do you remember those people who are not?

Seeing what one has done and what happened, gives a feeling that is not sadness, but that tells you "what a pity that certain artists could not continue with all this and find us all at this moment in our lives". Even to meet in the street even if it is, see old Norberto, I don't know ... it seems to me ... in that sense I value the human more and then the musical.

In Adrián's case, he was a very particular guy, affectionate and remembered a lot. I remember spending fortunes on the phone to talk to him. We spent hours and we always agreed to go eat, because we saw each other very from time to time. When I moved in I told him to come home and I spoke to him just the night before he died. In that sense, there is still the sadness of not being able to share these 30 years with them, who were such friends of ours and we shared so many routes. But life is so, each one has his destiny.

We are guys who like to work a lot and we take care of ourselves too much, in every sense and we reach a point in life where we take great care of what we do and we enjoy playing and being with our families too much, then we try to enjoy all that is the main thing in music.

What do you highlight of each of the companions?

I think that Mississippi is actually a very particular chemistry. At the same time I play with a trio, that also has my son Iván and Fede López on the harmonica, called Los López Tapia ... I call it a Wednesday trio, because we travel precisely on those days or on Thursdays to play in small places around the country and do folk, international blues ... it's a fun I have with my oldest son and a friend, and it is a totally different chemistry than the one I have with my colleagues from La Mississippi.

With them I have a way of playing and when we go on stage it is an unrepeatable feeling. At an electrical level, I can't play with other people. We are so used to each other that we are one. At one point I realize that after so many years you can go on stage and play on automatic, having my head elsewhere. You're really 'set' to do things with your band a long time ago and sound that way.

I have a hard time working with people other than them. The Mississippi is a thing that took root with each other, very difficult to achieve with other musicians. It is impossible for me.

How did the arrival of an album like “Criollo” come about??

It is a road record in the sense that we were recording it while traveling.. It's a nice record to listen to in a car. Dura 40 minutes, which is equivalent to a short journey, like the commute from work to home. It was an album that we liked to do it in parts because we were composing it throughout the country.

There are spaces that bands don't use much to compose. Sometimes they stop to compose and stop playing -which is a format that we have also done-, But not in this case. We kept playing and composing along the way and used a space that is not used much in composing., what is the sound test. We have places or theaters that we liked and there we used to compose and record little things. Then we went to the living room and started the songs. That took us a while and was the basis of the entire composition of the album..

What was the reception of the people?

It was very good because we were introducing it little by little. First there were two issues, then another two. It was good that people heard what the album was about. We were changing the audio with Mariano Bilinkis while we were doing it.

We initially liked an audio, then there was another and it kind of had an initial process of searching for the mix. The mix is ​​something particular: is knowing how you want the album to sound and that was changing throughout the entire process of the album. We adjusted it according to our auditory requirement, where we record with very classic things.

They had it in their heads previously ...

We have been thinking about it a little. We thought what instruments we were going to play, how we were going to touch them. Sometimes we raise which strings we were going to play, the drums ... it's the whole process of art.

And as for the lyrics?

The focus of the lyrics is the last thing for me. First we make the music, with time. So much so that we were recording a song on a Thursday and on Saturday we had the last recording session and I didn't have the lyrics. It was a base without lyrics and I wanted to record it. The theme ended up being "Promises of yesterday", with a letter that has things that one said in the past and then do not remember.

What's left for the rest of the year?

We will be closing it at Luna Park, meanwhile we continue to make a great tour throughout the country, where Spain was also included, so there's a lot ahead. I will also be composing for a future album.

It is 2018 it's interesting because 30 years is not mucus of turkey. It's good to meet that number within a band that works so hard and I think it will be a nice celebration, which includes all Argentine provinces and neighboring countries.

If you had the possibility to travel back in time and see Ricardo before leaving Arlequines. What would you say?

Do the same but do not eat so many fried