By Jesse Bertel

Get ready to groove because the Dennis Herrera Band is hitting the stage with live blues at The Point Bar & Lounge, 114 N. Montezuma St., Prescott, at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 20.
Dennis Herrera, a native of San Jose, California, grew up immersed in the vibrant music scene of the 1960s Bay Area. Influenced by the likes of The Yardbirds, James Brown, and the blues greats, Herrera’s musical journey began with a transistor radio and blossomed into a lifelong passion.
From his early experiences attending concerts across the region to forming his own garage bands, Herrera’s path eventually led him to embrace the blues as his true calling. Over the past three decades, he has recorded three albums and continues to captivate audiences with his original blues compositions and timeless favorites, showcasing his enduring dedication to the music that shaped his life.
The band’s members are Herrera on guitar/vocals, Robert Church on drums, Steve Beals on bass, Elvin Killerbee on guitar, and Paul Ruffner on sax. Herrera spoke with Across the Street ahead of the performance. The following interview was edited for length and clarity.

What can you tell me about your new album?
That’s going to be released in probably June, so it’s all ready. I got the final mixes yesterday and I’m going to go through those and then my engineer will master them. It’s a tiresome label, but it’s blues. It’s a blues recording and I have 11 songs on it. They’re all original. There’s going to be a guest saxophone player, a guest keyboard player and a couple of artists who live in Los Angeles. I recorded it in Los Angeles, in Torrance, at a studio that I’ve recorded the last three albums. It’s a really great studio, actually. I’m kind of fortunate in that area because the engineer and the owner of the studio plays keyboards, so he actually has been on all the records to date. He plays piano, the big Hammond B3 and laid the keyboard and piano on most of the songs.

What do you like most about playing the blues?
It’s what I have been playing for a long time. I started with rock ‘n’ roll when I was in high school. I was listening to The Rolling Stones and The Animals and Savoy Brown, Fleetwood Mac — the old Fleetwood Mac — and learning that music, because I started playing music in high school. I always was fascinated by the composers and the guys who wrote those songs from these rock bands, and they were all blues guys. You hear a lot of Muddy Waters and Elmore James, John Lee Hooker, that are the composers of a lot of the songs that The Rolling Stones played back in the day. So, I started listening to the old guys and it just stuck with me. I really enjoyed listening and playing that music rather than rock ‘n’ roll.
For more information about the Dennis Herrera band, visit www.dennisherrera.com.

Jesse Bertel is a reporter/videographer for the Prescott News Network. Follow him on Facebook @ JesseBertel, email him at jbertel@prescottaz.com, or call 928-445-3333, ext. 2043.