By Michael Gaither

This Sunday afternoon is a bit of a homecoming for slide guitar legend Roy Rogers. He’s playing Moe’s Alley in Santa Cruz, his first time there since Lisa Norelli and Brian Ziel took over the club in 2001 from Bill Welch. (Welch ran this local staple of live music for over 30 years.) The Sentinel caught up with Rogers earlier this week to talk about his blues influences, his recording and production adventures and to hear what’s in store from his upcoming album, “The Sky’s the Limit.”

“I played for Bill many times, along with the Santa Cruz Blues Festival. This is my first time playing under the new ownership. I’m really looking forward to it. As you well know,” he said. “It’s a struggle these days for any venues, particular small ones, to get anybody in the door. And the music has shifted and changed so dramatically in the past. It’s good to see people making a go of it, and you have such a great musical community down there I Santa Cruz. You have so much great stuff going on.”

I mentioned how many local bands have risen out of the ashes of COVID — for many, it was either form a band or just make sourdough bread at home like everyone else during those years.

Rogers agreed, and he sees that on a wider basis: “I play in a lot of areas in the country still, and with the demise of the music business as we knew it, with airplay and the streaming thing, you’ll still see a burgeoning of individual places (to play) and bands playing in them. That’s what people are concentrating on in their area. They’re starting locally and emanating from there.

“It’s a really good thing,” he added. “We have to perform. Whether we’re writing or playing. This is what we do.” And despite changes in the business, for better or worse, “live performance is going to be strong, regardless what the technology does,” he said.

For Rogers, it’s always been about the blues. He started playing guitar at age 12. His first teacher was a blues fan, so blues was there from the start. He recalled that his first band — at age 13 — “concentrated on blues and early rock and roll. This was in 1963 before the British thing was going,” he recalled. “Then one day my older brother brought home a record of Robert Johnson, the King of the Delta Blues.”Rogers self-produced his first few records, which gave him producing chops that equaled his slide playing. After a few years in John Lee Hooker’s band, he produced four albums for the blues legend. That was followed by producing for other friends including Bonnie Raitt, Norton Buffalo and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, just to name a few.

“Ramblin’ Jack,” Rogers emphasized, was “one of the most inspiring men I’ve ever met. It’s a joy to know him. This is a guy who toured with both Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, and he’s still out there doing it. People need to remember that.”

Over the years Rogers has earned eight Grammy nominations as a producer, recording artist and songwriter.

He took the producing reigns for his new release. It drops early next year, and a couple of teaser tracks will be released this fall. “I spent a lot of time writing on this one,” he said. “I haven’t recorded since pre-COVID, so it’s been a while. I’m not one of these guys who writes just to go on the road to have a new record. I go when I feel that I have good enough songs and can do something different.”

He continued, “This new record has a little bit of everything. Like all my records, it’s a combination of acoustic, electric and band songs.”

And with all those accolades and music under his belt, Rogers is still just a mild-mannered guitar player at heart. He laughed and added, “I’ll be 75 in July. I’ve been playing since I was 12, and I’m still looking for the right notes!”

Michael Gaither is a performing songwriter, radio DJ and the music writer for The Santa Cruz Sentinel.