Popa Chubby returns with a new album titled Back To New York City via Provogue Records on October 11. The singer shares, “If there’s one thing I want people to know about me, it’s that I’m a survivor.” His story reads like a docudrama, having faced challenges that easily could have placed him on a path of no return. The death of his father at the age of seven left him to largely fend for himself, where at 18 he wound up in New York with a debilitating heroin habit that placed him on the streets by his early twenties. His move to begin playing again saved his life, rising from the New York Blues scene of the early ‘90s, and forging a successful worldwide career that continues to thrive today.
Following two initial albums on his own Laughing Bear label, he was signed to Sony’s briefly revived O-Keh Records, the one-time imprint of Mamie Smith, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and other influential blues and jazz artists. Popa Chubby came into his own as a songwriter with 2002’s The Good, The Bad & the Chubby with the affectingly sincere post-9/11 testimonial “Somebody Let the Devil Out.” Over the next decade, he has continually aimed to straddle the rock and blues, a task expertly accomplished by an extraordinary blend of song craft, musicianship and personality in Back To New York City that telegraphs the message “what you hear is what you get.”
http://www.popachubby.com
