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by Eric Steiner
LET’S
GIVE THANKS!
I know I’ve spilled a
lot of ink on the pages of Midwest
BEAT and a lot of bytes on the screens of our dot-com home this
year on the Year of the Blues. It’s been a great
ride, and while I’m appreciative of sponsors like Volkswagen and
Experience Music Project for their support, let’s face it: every year
is the year of the blues for blues fans.
Regardless, we’ve been lucky to have a spotlight shone our way.
HAPPY
THANKSGIVING... I’m going to
celebrate Thanksgiving, as I usually do, at the Gran
Pacifico Marathon race in Mazatlan, Mexico with my family. This
year, it will be a special event. My son Paul
will turn 21, and we’ll run the 5K or the 10K race together.
Our Mexican escapades
are decidedly less adventurous than Freak’s
amazing trip to the bullfights, documented in these very pages some
month’s back, but it’s safe to say that the folks behind Corona,
Pacifico, and Negro Modelo beers will again treat us very, very well. Some day, I hope Freak
will join me at the 10K, a short 6.2 mile jaunt that begins in the
Golden Zone and runs through the Old City and back.
Pacifico is one of the title sponsors, and each year I’m
indebted to Chicago’s Bill Ligas, a Vice President of Barton Beers, who is always
charitable with kind words at the finish line.
Perhaps more importantly, Bill and his crew make sure that
there’s plenty of cerevezas frias at the post-race party for me.
With a lime stuck in the clear bottle’s neck, Coronas in
Mazatlan are truly a vacation in a bottle.
Bueno, Bill! TOMMY
CASTRO’S GRATITUDE... San Francisco-based
bluesman Tommy Castro is one
of my favorites. So, it’s
no surprise that I’m wild about Gratitude, the first CD released on his own label, Heart and
Soul Records. On Gratitude, Tommy gives
thanks to the music that has inspired him to play the blues, from Muddy
Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Howlin’
Wolf, to Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, and James Brown. Gratitude
features a dozen classics, and I particularly like his souped-up version
of Chuck Berry’s “Tulane”
and a heartfelt tribute to John Lee Hooker, “It
Serves You Right to Suffer.”
For my money, Tommy’s one of the best bluesmen around. I like
his stripped-down, Stratocaster-fueled blues attack.
He’s also got another
good CD out on Telarc called, Triple
Trouble, teaming up with Lloyd
Jones (of Lloyd Jones Struggle) and Jimmy
Hall (of Wet Willie), and they form what’s got to be this year’s
premier blues pick-up band. If friends need hints for holiday gifts this
year, ask them to include these two discs.
GO
TO SWEET HOME CHICAGO... I caught the opening
night of the Sweet Home Chicago exhibit at Seattle’s Experience Music Project,
and wanted to give you my initial impressions of this unprecedented
salute to Chicago blues. The exhibit focuses on
the explosive growth in the blues from 1946 to 1966, and it is scheduled
to open at the Museum of Science & Industry in January.
First of all, I was
pretty skeptical about blues in a museum.
I think back to my fifth-grade class at Blackhawk Elementary
School in Park Forest walking through the Field Museum, with the
teachers making sure we wouldn’t make a sound.
Sweet
Home Chicago, though, features records, guitars, large-screen
videos and full-length songs from the Delta to Bronzeville and back.
Singing, dancing, experiencing the blues, and shouts of praise
are definitely allowed in this exhibit. Sweet Home Chicago exhibit
features many videos, including portions of the Maxwell Street
documentary “And This is Free”
as well as footage from The American Folk Blues Festival (just out on
DVD, from Universal), originally produced by German television.
Seeing Howlin’ Wolf live on the big screen for the first time,
for me, remains one of my favorite memories.
There’s also a fitting tribute to guitarist Jody Williams, shuffle master Sam
Lay. Notebenders will
appreciate the guitars from Eric
Clapton and Muddy Waters, as well as samples of blues styles from
the West Side to the South Side. There’s
also a wealth of information and music from country blues, too,
including the sign from King
Biscuit Time, the radio show from Helena, Arkansas, that brought
the music of Sonny Boy Williamson
(Rice Miller) and Robert Lockwood
Jr. to the air. Sweet Home Chicago
is not conducive to a traditional hushed walk through a museum.
As I listened to the songs at each station through a handheld
Museum Exhibit Guide (MEG) computer, I was transported back in time,
back to when I first heard the records of Muddy making magic at 2120
South Michigan Avenue at Chess Records.
HOT
BLUES SHOWS...
Lonnie Brooks will also be at
FitzGerald’s in Berwyn on the 15th.
Tinsley Ellis brings
his blues with a Southern accent to House of Blues on the 5th, while
red-hot young bluesman Joe
Bonamassa holds court on the 14th and 15th.
Check out his new Blues
Deluxe CD, it’s killer (though I noticed it’s got the same
title as an outstanding snapshot of ChicagoFest’s blues stages from WXRT). Don’t forget to
welcome Anthony Gomes back to
the Midwest at Porter’s in Crystal Lake on the 22nd – he’ll also
be at Kingston Mines on Halloween and Nov. 1st.
Until next month, give thanks in your own way.
My way’s to play the blues.
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