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The Filmmaker's Notebook on Mac Arnold and Plate Full O' Blues

October, 2010 ... as Mac and the Band set out upon their second European tour...the first one lasted 4 weeks...now back by popular demand, this one will be for two months...

"Blues history is in the soil and soul of Mac Arnold and his farm in Pelzer, South Carolina.

And as the manager at Buddy Guy's LEGENDS club in Chicago said when Mac showed up one frozen winter night in 2005 and was invited to perform, "Mac, I heard Muddy Waters here tonight. And it's good to have you back in town!"

Mac Arnold is back from his days as bass player for Muddy Waters and his Chicago blues band - some 45 years later. And in between Mac went from forming his own band in Chicago and moving to L.A., to working with the originator of SOUL TRAIN to start up that legendary early TV showcase for African American singers and songwriters to learning TV production and editing to answering the call back home to come to the aid of his ailing mother who could no longer run the family farm Mac grew up on.

Mixing farming with pick-up jobs driving trucks for companies like Belk's and working on well digging jobs, Mac was discovered in 1991 while getting the diesel engine on his truck repaired by a blues-history-saturated young musician who had researched the blues and knew intimately the music of blues greats ... including Muddy Waters. The mechanic repairing the diesel engine was Max Hightower (harmonica, keyboard and guitar player/music writer for Mac Arnold's Plate Full O' Blues band) who was playing an esoteric cassette on his boom box that had been recorded live at a Muddy Waters club performance...and Mac began singing along with the music. "You know that song?", Max asked as he watched Mac mime the strumming of a bass guitar as he sang. "Know it? I was playing bass on it" Mac replied. "Nawww!" was Max's reply. Max asked if he could come out to Mac's farm. And this led to a pursuit of Mac while Max jammed with him for over ten years, always encouraging him to come back and start a band so young musicians who dug the blues could learn from a master and so that the new generation who knew only jacked-up mass produced rap, rock, and rhythm and blues could hear what the authentic blues sounded like.

Finally, after being encouraged that Max could produce four really committed musicians who wouldn't be the type of young people who would start out and then quit after seeing how the effort to return to the blues would be long hours of rehearsal and hard work that would require years and not months, Mac agreed to invite Max and these musicians to jam at his farm until Mac could get to know them and be sure they were committed in the way Mac required them to be committed. And out of this beginning, where Old Mac Arnold had a farm, came a new blues band that would rise to bring back the old sound of authentic down home blues from Mac Arnold's Chicago days: MAC ARNOLD and PLATE FULL O' BLUES."     - Stan Woodward, Producer