You might also like to visit the GALLERY section for some scanned interviews and other interesting stuff.

REVIEWS & LINER NOTES

"The Yugoslav native sings and picks acoustic blues and country with the Southern back roads authority."
TOP 20 CDs of 2003 , ACOUSTIC GUITAR MAGAZINE, USA, February issue 2004

"Homesick Mac sings blues and traditional country tunes in a southern baritone as rich as molasses; his fingerpicking calls to mind Doc Watson, among others; and listening to Leaving, it is difficult to believe that he is a Yugoslav (now living in Sweden) who has never set foot in the US. But Mac has absorbed American musical idioms so well that he doesn't merely imitate Watson on "Deep River Blues," but takes the blueprint and runs with it. Exemplified by the title track, which could pass for a 70-year-old country blues standard, Mac's originals bespeak an artist contributing his own voice to the story and deserving greater recognition in the music's birthplace". (Vertical Jazz, www.verticaljazz.com)
Ian Zack, ACOUSTIC GUITAR MAGAZINE, USA, March issue 2004

YUGO/SWEDEN HOMESICK MAC “Leaving” Vertical Jazz VJ 021, 12 + 2 bonus tracks, 43 mins.

One time Sam Mitchell collaborator - Homesick Mac is of Yugoslavian birth (now Serbia-Montenegro) and has lived in Sweden since 1992. This impressive woodshedder (spellchecker off me back) also he sings as American as you can possibly get. You can catch Mac in action Apr./May at the Pocklington Arts Centre, and in Aug. at the 2004 Blues Week in Exeter teaching bottleneck guitar, check this and how to get hold of this CD at www.homesickmac.com. The album is a celebration of blues, folk & country music. “Leaving” is mostly a solo effort, and with little accompaniment outside of the two live bonus tracks. The live tracks hold a lot of interest in atmosphere and a dirtier feel, Robert Johnson’s, ”Sweet Home Chicago” has a great rumba arrangement, while Jimmy Roger’s “Today, Today Blues” is much the greater for Pera Joe’s country blues harp. Mac’s own compositions are very varied from a possibly Son House inspired “Colletta”, a short instrumental that brings Paul Geremia to mind, an almost sweet folk lament, the title track that has a John Jackson flavour, and an instrumental that starts off as a bottleneck slow scene setter, then turns into almost a classical gavotte. Of the non-originals we are treated to “Deep River Blues” credited to the Delmore Brothers, Cisco Houston’s “900 Miles”, and Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” that is given a downhome acoustic slant with breathy gospel backing. Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky” dances along thankfully without Presley-esque growling, and could “New River Train” have been the inspiration for Little Feat’s “New Delhi Freight Train”? Leaving this CD out of your collection will be an omission, it’s evidence that richly textured roots music has legitimately gone global …

Billy Hutchinson,BLUES MATTERS , UK, March 2004

"I'm deeply impressed with the performance of Blues Trio. I haven't expected meeting such good musicians. These guys are fantastic !"
John Hammond in an intervew for Radio Belgrade 1988

"On stage, Mac is running his bottleneck slide up the neck playing Robert Johnson«s classic Mississippi blues " Come on In My Kitchen ". His axe is a Dobro, the vocals evoke the Deep South, a growl of a bass capped by a lonesome falsetto. Central Europe's best acoustic blues musician worked for a luthier in Germany before settling in Sweden.

He returns to Hungary regularly to do club dates and festivals, singing his unique brand of blues, ragtime and old time country songs. His lively stage style evokes the wit of the turn of the century American minstrel shows, and his guitar work is crisp and percussive, without the flashy self-consciousness that mars the music of so many European blues guitarists.

Mac has guitar chops up the wazoo, as we say, and he can sing an old ragtime hokum tune with just the right bit of cheek and playfulness. Outside of North Carolina, it doesn't get much better than this. "

Mary Ellen Leibovitz , "BUDAPEST WEEK" (American newspaper in Hungary )

"Homesick Mac's 16 tracks, featuring solo guitar and voice interpretations of traditional acoustic blues and rags by folks like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Big Bill Broonzy are solid blues performances. Mac mixes traditional licks in such a way that each cut becomes his own. This is the first album by a bluesman with major potential ! "
Dale Miller " ACOUSTIC GUITAR " magazine, U.S.A.

"Mac feels at home playing a number of different styles - from a rythmic "Mercury Boogie" via a rag to Sippie Wallace and on to Robert Johnson. Even though we've heard these songs before, it sounds fresh and offers you a variety of listening pleasure. Steady Stomping is a record that has slowly but surely grown to be a positive surprise."

Bosse Majling in "JEFFERSON MAGAZINE", SWEDEN

"The Homesick Mac CD was very tasteful and well done. He's a good player with a nice touch with ragtime and slide. His voice isn't great, but he has good blues feeling and no European accent, which surprised me. I wish he had done some less familiar songs, but this was way better than I ever expected. Very few people can perform this kind of material effectively, and Mac does."
Bruce Iglauer , ALIGATOR RECORDS U.S.A.

Liner Notes from various albums

Homesick Mac "Leaving"

I first encountered Homesick Mac's music in a damp cellar tavern in north Denmark, just a stone's throw from Hamlet's old haunt, Elsinore Castle. A sign at the tavern's entrance suggested Mac was American, and an evening of well - executed blues, rags and breakdowns gavce no reason to expect otherwise. In fact, Mac's penchant for readily switching between Delta Blues and Doc Watson style fingerpicking and healthy disregard for genre boundaries suggested to me that he was from the South.

Turns out Mac was southerner, just not from these parts. A native of former Yugoslavia, Mac grew up with relatively little access to the records of his musical heroes, but devoured those that came by. During the '80s his musical stomping grounds expanded northward from Belgrade into Checz Republic and Slovak Republic, Hungary, Austria, Italy, and Germany, and in 1992 Mac settled in Helsingborg, Sweden, his base for the last decade.

It didn't take long for Mac to seal his reputation as one of the leading acoustic guitarists in Scandinavia, and as this CD suggests, his success has had as much to do with his commitment to entertainment values as his technical skills. The music here reflects the diversity of his live shows, with tips of the hat to bossmen Muddy Waters and Bill Monroe, creative reworking of work horses by Chuck Berry and Robert Johnson, and a couple classic train songs thrown in for good measure. His inventiveness is perhaps best exemplified, though, in his own instrumental compositions, including tributes to his daughter Hedda and contemporary guitar great Alvin "Youngblood" Hart - a musical highlight of my time in Sweden was hosting an impromptu jam with Alvin and Mac at my apartment. Given the trajectory of Mac's career I suspect it won't be long before we'll see a repeat performance on these shores.

Scott Barretta ( writer, sociologist and music researcher, former editor of the Living Blues Magazine, U.S.A and the oldest blues magazine in the world JEFFERSON, Sweden)

Sam Mitchell and Homesick Mac "Two Long Way From Home"

Blues records were a relatively scarce commodity in the Eastern Europe of Homesick Mac's youth, and among his treasured tapes when he first started picking the blues were tracks by a certain Sam Mitchell, whose licks he placed up there along with those of favorites like Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson. The guitar mastery of Sam and other early influences initially seemed "untouchable" to Mac, but his single-minded dedication to learning the blues soon led to his being regarded as "Central Europe's finest acoustic blues musician", playing with John Hammond and Louisiana Red, and musical travels across Europe.

And upon settling in southern Sweden in the early 1990s imagine his surprise in discovering that one of his musical heroes was just an hour away in Copenhagen. A native of Liverpool, Sam moved to Copenhagen in the mid-1980s after twenty years in the London music scene, where he played and recorded with artists such as the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Long John Baldry, Alexis Korner, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Howlin' Wolf. Once in Denmark Sam became a major figure in the music scene, playing rock with the successful band The Sandmen, and keeping his foot in the blues with solo gigs at places like the city's wonderful blues club MOJO. It was at one of these gigs that Mac first presented himself to Sam.

The bluesmen hit it off immediately, and were soon sitting in at each others gigs, each finding a special chemistry that they rarely experienced with others. When Mac's record company suggested they document their collaboration, Sam was more than willing, and this CD marks his first blues recording since the early 1980s. It isn't often that two guitarists team up for a project in which they share equal billing, and Sam and Mac's success here attests to both guitarists' humility and mutual respect for one another. Watching their live shows it's obvious that they enjoy the challenge of playing with each other, but their aim never seems to be to outplay the other, but, instead, to achieve a harmonious blend a la Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, albeit here on two guitars. The material here is drawn about equally from each man's solo repertoire, but in their hands this didn't result in the predictable situation of one taking a passive or imitative role while backing the other. Rather, each's playful and distinctive comping of the other only adds new dimensions to each man's ability to make classic blues tunes their own.

Their reading of the Sittin' On Top of the World, for instance, demonstrates Mac's considerable abilities to make an individual statement within the delicate Piedmont fingerpicking style, while Sam's sweet slide work provides the tune with an eerie sound that transcends conventional genres. These transformational abilities are likewise evident on their Statesboro Blues, where the two replace Blind Willie McTell's original 12-String guitar work with the intricate interweaving of their combined twelve strings, or their rendering of Bo Carter's racy double entendre blues Ants In my Pants into a tender love appeal. Similar things could be said of the rest of the album, and whether you're a seasoned blues fan or new to the music you'll be certain to find their combined sounds to be fresh and intriguing.

It may have been chance which brought Sam and Mac from the opposite ends of Europe to the Copenhagen area, but there's nothing accidental about the quality of their work together. Let's hope that this is only the beginning of a long relationship.

Scott Barretta ( writer, sociologist and music researcher, former editor of the Living Blues Magazine, U.S.A and the oldest blues magazine in the world JEFFERSON, Sweden)

BLUES TRIO "This Train"

When they first appeared, the BLUES TRIO had brought in new amounts of energy into our blues scene, which was gradually forming its recognizable expression. The TRIO, which became a duet eventually, was accepted genially from the start, built up the career step by step, with its performances at the concerts, getting better and better in Yugoslavia, as well as abroad.

The discography of this band had the usual progress from cassettes and LPs to CDs. However, it became evident in a while that both Dragan Ruzic - Macan (HOMESICK MAC) and PERA JOE are exceptional musicians. The former is in Scandinavia, building up a solo career, and the latter has become an indispensable session musician, whose favors has been abundantly used in recording studios by many for the past few years. PERA JOE and MAC make such a goos and experienced team that whenever they play live, they sound better than the previous time. The birthday party of the "All That Jazz" programme at Beograd 202 Radio station was their most convincing performance I had ever heard.

This is pure energy taking the world by storm, and "the smallest trio in the world" at its best. Enjoy yourselves!

Branimir Lokner (music journalist from Belgrade, Serbia)

HOMESICK MAC "Steady Stomping"

It is true, that the blues is a particularly American musical idiom. Like fine wine, it sometimes doesn't travel well. When it does take that long lonesome trip across the globe, it tastes all that much better.

With Dragan-Macan the blues traveled very well indeed. It's not just the fact that HOMESICK MAC has assimilated the guitar technique of deep american blues music, or that he can command a broad range of blues vocal styles from the high tenor of the Delta to Chicago shout. HOMESICK MAC shows respect. The language and the lyrics come from someplace depp inside him.

When I first asked MAC to play me a Robert Johnson piece, he answered "Nobody can play Mr. Johnson's pieces, but I can play something inspired by what Mr. Robert Johnson played." He than played one of the finest renditions of "Walking Blues" I had ever heard.

Although most of the old country bluesmen are gone today, HOMESICK MAC offers them and their work the kind of respect denied to them while they lived. Respect is what the blues are all about. It is what HOMESICK MAC is all about.

Bob Cohen ( journalist, world music researcher and musician living in Budapest, Hungary)