Big Brother plays on in shadow of Janis Joplin

June 23, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

More than 40 years later, the shadow of Janis Joplin still hangs heavy over her former backing band Big Brother and the Holding Company. Today, the classic-rock outfit continues on, providing audiences with their last link to classic rock’s legend Joplin.

“I think maybe they saw in Janis some kind of freedom or difference that it made in their lives,” said original guitarist Sam Andrew, calling from his home outside of San Francisco. “We still play danceable music, otherwise I don’t know why people are interested. I keep expecting a new generational thing to happen any minute, and I guess they’re happening all of the time, but it wasn’t quite like the counter-revolution thing. Nothing has happened like that since then.”

He added, “If you play something exciting to a group of people, they’re going to like it. It doesn’t matter if it’s old or new. But it’s hard to say why audiences still come out. I’m not sure why. They just do.”

For Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company, fame would be short-lived, centering around the time their 1968 disc “Cheap Thrills” went No. 1. This classic disc contains the act’s definitive tune, “Piece of My Heart.” By the end of that year, Joplin would go solo, leaving Big Brother and the Holding Company in the precarious position of replacing one of the genre’s best blues singers. Joplin died in 1970 from a heroin overdose.

The latest version of the act includes Andrew, Peter Albin (bass), Dave Getz (drums), Cathy Richardson (vocals) and Cleveland native Ben Nieves (guitar). Looking down the road, Andrew is optimistic Big Brother and the Holding Company will receive a bump in attention when the much talked about Joplin biopic is filmed and released. If history serves, such as Johnny Cash’s story in the 2005 feature “Walk the Line,” Hollywood will help put Andrew and company back in the spotlight.

“Amy Adams is the latest person mentioned as playing Janis, but it’s very hard to get a film made,” Andrew said. “And any added attention we’d get would be ancillary, but it would be fun to see it made.”

For fun, Big Brother and the Holding Company play out as much as possible, including a Saturday show at the Warren amphitheater. Naturally, the act plays all of Joplin’s hits, as well as a few new tracks that actually may take classic audiences by surprise.

“Our newest songs are from the album ‘Hold Me,’ which came out four years ago,” Andrew said. “The title track is a ballad, and people love it the first time they hear it, which is really unusual. People usually respond to a song they know like ‘Summertime,’ but when we play this one, they relate to it right away.”

That’s not the surprise. No, the song “It’s Cool” finds Andrew and the band tapping into, yeah, well, um, a hip-hop motif.

“That’s kind of rap-fusion, perhaps,” Andrew said. “It has a little bit of hip-hop. Yeah, it’s old white people hip-hop. It just came out that way.”

Finally, how does Andrew think Joplin would feel about Big Brother and the Holding Company delving into the rap world?

“Oh, she’d say, ‘That’s great, man,’” said Andrew in a high-pitched, almost Mickey Mouse-sounding voice. “Janis was a natural soprano, so she had a high voice, and when she would get excited, she’d cackle and scream like that. And if Janis was still here, unquestionably, she would have done a couple of albums of jazz standards a long time ago and then, by this time, she would have tried everything.”