Tim Parsons / Tahoe Onstage
The man with the hottest horn in the blues will be in Tahoe tonight, when Terry Hanck appears with the Buddy Emmer Band at Harrah’s Tuesday Night Blues, a free weekly show from 8 to 11:30 p.m.
“I like working with Buddy and Kim and the band,” Hanck told Tahoe Onstage the morning of the show. “They are all professionals and nice people to work with.”
Last August, Hanck played a nightly show at the California State Fair in Sacramento for the 18th summer. Although he lives in Florida, he plays more shows in California, where he built his career. He has been working on his fifth album that will be produced by Kid Andersen at the Greaseland Studios in San Jose, and the seventh album they’ve worked on together. Chris Cain and Joe Louis Walker will appear on the album scheduled to be released in Spring 2019.
Terry Hanck is the 2017 recipient of the Blues Music Award for best saxophone player, the second-consecutive year he’s been so honored and third overall.
“I was surprised,” Hanck told Tahoe Onstage in May after winning the award. “I just figured since I won it twice, including last year, that some other people might win. But I am delighted.”
Hanck is nominated for another award this year, Best Live Album, by Blues Blast Magazine for “From Roadhouse to Your House Live!”
Hanck’s blues-based sound is flavored with early rock and roll — when the saxophone, and not guitar, was the featured instrument.
A Chicago native, Hanck was inspired at a 1962 B.B. King concert. He moved to California in the late ’60s to surf and play music. He was a member of the Elvin Bishop Band during Bishop’s most commercially successful period from 1977-87.
“I went from playing in a club with three people who didn’t care, to all of a sudden doing the same thing at the Oakland Coliseum for a Day on the Green with 55,000 screaming people who loved it,” Hanck said.
Earlier this summer, Hanck returned to the Midwest where he played major festivals in Chicago and Milwaukee.
“We complain about the traffic in California but Chicago is just nuts with the urban sprawl,” Hanck said.
-Tim Parsons
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