The Ricky Lewis Band

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  Master guitarist Ricky Lewis distills a lifetime of dedication, hard knocks, and myriad influences into the music he seems destined to play—energetic, and uniquely tasty, hard-rockin’ blues.

A native of North Carolina, Lewis was already a veteran of live TV performances by the age of ten. As a teenager he wrote and played with a number of rock bands touring the Eastern Seaboard club circuit. His first “successful” band was the Southern Rock ensemble “Bull” from Richmond, Virginia. Their first single was “Sometimes” written by Ricky, B/W “Better Mean What You Say” written by his lifelong friend and Bull bandmate, Julius Ray Pittman, released in 1976. Later in 1978 Bull recorded the LP “A New Era In Rock & Roll” released on the indie label Wheels Records

And like so many talented young men before him, Ricky decided to go to the West Coast in search of opportunity.

   A newcomer to Southern California in the early 80’s, Ricky began to explore and master new musical genres. He immediately joined the popular 60’s Surf Rock band The Chantays, of “Pipeline” fame, [1963]. Enlivened by Ricky’s fresh guitar leads, as well as his writing and arranging skills, The Chantays returned to prominence with their 1994 release, “Next Set”. In 1996 their culturally successful “Waiting for the Tide” made the L.os Angeles Times’ Top Ten list as # 10 and a rating of 4 ½ stars. While continuing with The Chantays, Ricky Lewis also played, toured, wrote, and recorded with a number of other local bands throughout the 1980’s.

Among these were he and Mike Reilly’s Southern Rock and Blues band “Whistler”, L.A. pop band, “The Gliders”, West Coast touring band, “Da Whiz” and on numerous sessions with too many names and artists to mention. Ricky Lewis also made successful ventures into Country Music. In 1995 and 1996 he did session work in Nashville with some of the best known Country artists and producers. Back in California, Ricky joined forces with Nashville artist Bill Davis to make the band, “Endless Highway”, one of the hottest new country acts on the local Southern California scene. For 1999, the prestigious Country Music Association (Orange County and California Chapters) recognized Ricky with its “Lead Guitarist of the Year” award. In 2000 he also got the “Instrumentalist of the Year” at the finals for the North American Country Music Association International held in Gatlinburg TN.

In the mid 90’s Ricky took his band to Las Vegas to record a CD titled “Blues On The Rocks”. It was a great experience co-writing all the songs and the next logical step working as an arranger as well as producer. He also got to expand his soloing abilities as a performer.

Now, with his own band, guitarist, Ricky Lewis, master of many genres, is writing and playing the Blues, Southern Rock and R&B he clearly loves.

The first CD release for the Ricky Lewis Band is “Songs For The New Depression”. This is by far the most creative and energetic work he’s done so far. It has been his true love to create a Blues, R&B and Southern Rock record. Writing, playing, producing, arranging, mastering and handling all the artwork was both challenging and gratifying. It has been selling worldwide since its release.

Ricky’s band on this CD was the core band with quite a few add-on player’s/singers. Jerry Waller (Keys), Brian Nussle (Bass) and Franc Ortega (Drums) provided the foundation and power to make the songs come alive in the studio!

Ricky is currently playing with many of his great friends and colleagues in several local and soon to be touring projects.

The new CD to be released later in 2010 will contain an expanded blues genre with the highly acclaimed new song he wrote after touring the Balkans and Afghanistan, “Soldier”

Go to my new myspace music page and sign up as a friend!

myspace.com/rickylewisband

email link:  ricky@rickylewis.com

Updated 8/9/2011