Blue, Brews, and Barbecues VI
SELECT PERFORMERS
Baker, fresh from recording sessions in Vancouver, opened the festival's 34 public peformances with a one-set jamfest at the Matt Osborne Stage, Kitchener Market. Sounding at times like a young Mick Jagger, sixteen-year-old Baker's all original tunes were with a lesson in bluesy pop. My favourite song of the set was "One-Way Streets", an upbeat, on-the-hunt number that whet my appetite for more blues. |
Upgrade to a Jazz bass and splice in wah-wah pedal--you've got local offering Flash Flood, another three-piece band following Baker's. Flash Flood's sound is clearly more bluesy than Baker's. The guitar work was crisp and clear on the blues numbers, but a bit sloppy on the Stevie Ray Vaughan and Hendrix covers. The highlight of their set came shortly after inviting Detroit Woman Lady T to the stage. (The Detroit Women were in town for the Mel Brown Award Night. Their performance on last year's main stage was superb. Imagine seven lovely ladies lined up and swaying, belting out the blues. They were also in town for the World Fastball Championship.) Lady T sang her signature song, "Dirty Old Woman", (read "I am and I ain't gonna stop"). |
Six-piece Toronto Zydeco aficionados, Loco Zydeco, rocked the Main Stage later on Friday with their bluesy Cajun accordian party music. A tender cover of "Jolie Blonde" would have been a nice contrast piece in an otherwise all-out-rockin' set. Their debut CD, "Yeah, you right, eh!" was available to purchase along with offerings from most of the other bands. |
Cheryl Lescom starred in the $100/plate B3 fund-raising gala, took her place among the Detroit Women, and headlined Friday on the Main Stage with an ever-changing cast of musicians that included Loco Zydeco band members, the Horn Dogs, and Shawn Kellerman. She also sang in more intimate settings such as The Boathouse on the so-called Workstage Stage. There, she was accompanied on vocals and piano by Charlene "Chuckee" Zehr, who then sped off to do her own set at the market. Cheryl began her career over thirty years ago singing back up with Ronnie Hawkins and Long John Baldry and has been a mainstay of the local music scene for at least twenty. Her performances on the Main and Workshop stages were standard Lescom: heartfelt and inspiring. Cheryl was recepient of the 2006 Mel Brown Award for contributions she made to the local blues community. |
Watermelon Slim Apparently, a petition was circulated to ensure Slim's return to this year's festival. A native of Oklahoma, Watermelon Slim learned to play guitar on a $5 balsa wood model with his zippo lighter as a slide while on military tour in Vietnam. He then drove a truck for a time and obtained a master's degree in History. Oh and yes, he actually farmed watermelons for a spell. Slim is a real crowd pleaser whose wireless microphone allows him to wander through the crowd. He's also somewhat of a story teller and likes to talk about the mojo laid out around his hollow-body slide guitar. His mojo includes around twenty harmonicas, "the world's best capo", and several slides including a small unopened, bottle of liquor. His solo set at the market was punctuated with deeply emotional songs that evoked the smell of slow-moving Mississippi tributaries and shared the pining for family of a long-range trucker winding along endless highways. The tenderness evident in his songwriting came in sharp contrast to his gravely baritone. I was pleased to find that Slim had been close behind me when I headed over to the Boathouse, where he was filling in for a no-show guest of Someday Baby. I was also pleasantly surprised to find myself unexpectedly sharing a table with his band, "The Workers", who were digging into some steak and portobellos. We talked about blues artists past, compared currency, and discussed the pros and cons of universal health care. Following the day's festival events, I had a chance to see Watermelon Slim perform a third time, with The Workers, at a local club. Young up-and-coming guitarist Ronnie Mack was a great addition to the band. His licks were clean and inventive. His dark suit, slicked-back hair, and black Telecaster enhanced the look of the band, at least according to some of the ladies in the crowd. |
Someday Baby hail from Budapest, Hungary. The most striking thing about this group, besides the energy with which they played, was the tuba virtuoso who handled the bottom end. Most people are surprised to see a tuba in a blues band, but let me assure you that it works just fine, especially given the skill and lung capacity of Janos Mazura. Mazura also plays in two other bands and was once the Principal Tubist of the Instanbul State Opera (who'd have ever imagined). The tuba amplification wasn't working out at the Workshop Stage, so he popped out the mouthpiece and dropped it into the opening of a two-liter pop bottle. Then, with microphone in hand, he provided a surprisingly astute rendering of the bass line. It sounded, I imagined, as though they had trained an elephant to play along. Everyone enjoyed the show. |
Saturday headliner Bobby Rush likes women with large proportions. Indeed, he claimed that his woman weighs 319 pounds and showed us samples of her underwear to prove it. Perhaps more surprising than this, the high energy Rush claims to be 73 years old. Festival organizers obviously knew the man had talent and gave him the highest profile spot at the event. He did not disappoint. Neither did his band; they didn't stop once during the set. Every open area was soon filled with people who needed to commune with his funky rhythm and blues or "folk funk", as he likes to call it. Rush is every inch an entertainer and, apparently, an inventive businessman, too. His colleagues like to tell stories of how he would shuttle between three clubs in one night or of how he bamboozled one unsuspecting club owner into double pay by disguising himself as someone else to emcee the same event. Bobby Rush was joined on stage by Shawn Kellerman, a local guitarist whose playing has placed him in high regard. Kellerman also played another set with Bobby Rush at the Matt Osborne Stage.
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Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir The Agnostics opened main stage activities on Sunday with some decidedly spooky kind of bluegrass. They don't actually describe themselves anywhere, but I can tell you that Sunday noon is definitely not when I would expect to hear these guys playing. The music suggests another time, say, twelve hours earlier, beside fifteen-foot flames, in a clearing in the middle of nowhere. The primal percussion, acoustic instruments, and straining gravely voices testify to the here, the now, and the whatever. These guys couldn't be from anywhere else but Calgary, the spawning ground of country punk. Moreover, after hearing "Neighbourhood Butcher," I am entirely convinced that Alaskan Russians must have met there regularly with Irish immigrants, probably on some ancient burial grounds, for the ultimate in east-meets-west hellraisers. Where is that craving for vodka-spiked mead coming from? and why did I move my wallet to a front pocket? |
Mel's set closed the festival. Other performers included Soul Circus, James O'Brien, Blues Monkeys, Wayne Charles, the Cast Iron Potty Jug Band, Web's Jr. & The Hollywood Express, the Mississippi Hippies, Chuck Jackson & The All-Stars, the Groove Merchants with Ila Han, Nathaniel Mayer, BIAWW, Robert Jones, Lil' Dave Thompson, The Chain Gang, and the Tucson Choir Boys, a talented duo I heard at One-Eyed Jack's during last year's festival. |
The festival also provided great opportunities for clubbing and mingling with musicians. Many local nightclubs took advantage of the talent passing through town, hiring blues players to draw on an estimated 45 000 festival-goers. This helped to maximize an artist's investment in a trip to Kitchener. For example, Watermelon Slim played four venues on Saturday--one set at each of the festival stages and two up the road at Crooners, Waterloo. The "Barbecue" element of B3 was another well-developed variable of the festival, nicely done. If the aroma of the award-winning ribs wasn't enough to send hands to wallets, there was great jerk chicken and philly steak at stands set up respectively by the always dependable Caribbean Kitchen and Ali Baba Steakhouse. Blues fans could also find huge, perfectly grilled sausages and outstanding Vietnamese-style barbecued pork subs nearby. B3 organizers ensured that plenty of cold beer, the third B in B3, was conveniently available. Blues, Brews, and Barbecues: a winning combination and a well-conceived and flawlessly delivered event destined to be repeated here in K-town. Let the good times roll! |
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