Bad Luck City, 1:30 p.m.
Winners
of the 2007 Iowa Blues Challenge for solo/duo acts, Bad Luck City
features Matt Woods on guitar and Michael Swanger on drums. Coming
from the north-Mississippi-hill-country tradition, Bad Luck City will
give you a full dose of juke-joint party music. This duo knows how to
deliver stomping slide workouts and a low-down groove that's raw as
a saw blade.
A native of Des Moines and still in his 20s, Matt is versed in traditional Delta, hill-country, and urban electric blues. Matt's travels to Mississippi and beyond have allowed him to learn firsthand from his influences, in the fields, shacks, and barrooms that are the true birthplace of American music. Matt's first CD, If I Was a Fish, has received critical acclaim, and finished in the top five of the International Blues Foundation's "Best Self-Produced Blues Album" category in 2006.
Michael "Thunderfoot" Swanger, of West Des Moines, kicks like a mule and thumps like a man possessed in a style like his influences Ted Harvey, Willie Smith, and Cedric Burnside. A versatile drummer, Michael has played with anyone who's anyone in central Iowa, from the Soul Searchers to the Iowa Blues Hall of Fame House Band.
For part of the Tent Stage set, Bad Luck City will be joined by veteran bassist Scott Cochran, transforming the band to Matt Woods & the Thunderbolts. This combination won the Iowa Blues Challenge in Des Moines and will represent the state of Iowa in the International Blues Challenge in Memphis next January.
- Karen McFarland
Jimmy "Duck" Holmes, 3 p.m.
Who the heck is Jimmy "Duck" Holmes? Well, Jimmy is a guitar player and singer. Not just any guitar player, though. Jimmy plays what is called the Bentonia-style blues, a style notable for its haunting, forlorn lyrics and guitar played using the unusual open E tuning. Some people call it country blues. Jimmy was schooled by the late Jack Owens with some of Skip James' influence thrown in there, also. From everything I have read on the subject of Bentonia blues, Jimmy might be the last man on this planet to be able to play it proficiently.
Jimmy was born in 1947 in Bentonia, a small town in Mississippi. His family has owned the Blue Front Café (a real juke joint) in Bentonia since 1948. Now Jimmy runs the place.
Until recently, Jimmy has been an unknown with his blues music . But Broke & Hungry Records released a unique recording of Jimmy's entitled Back to Bentonia. With Jimmy singing and playing in the style he has been accustomed to over the years, this CD is storytelling at its finest. Listening to this seems like a trip back in time. Blues Revue magazine wrote, "Holmes wrings every emotional tone and musical possibility from these tunes."
I got a chance last year to hear Jimmy in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and I was mesmerized by the songs and style that he was singing and playing. Jimmy "Duck" Holmes should be one of the artists you will see in the tent and say, "Wow! Where did this cat come from? I sure am glad I was there to hear him!"
- Michael J. Livermore
Alberta Adams & R.J.'s Rhythm Rockers with CeeCee Collins, 4:30 p.m.
"Really
your whole life is the blues," Alberta Adams told the Detroit
Metro News in 2005. "I
was an orphan on a doorstep, so that is the blues."
The "Queen of Detroit Blues," Alberta Adams was born Roberta Louise Osborne in Indianapolis in either 1917 or 1924. An aunt moved her to Detroit after Adams' mother abandoned her at the age of three. She never saw her father. She spent her childhood years with two aunts, neither of whom particularly wanted her.
Performing since the late 1930s, Alberta gained a foothold in the booming Detroit entertainment industry as a tap dancer in the early '40s at Club D&C. Her singing break came when the headliner took ill one night. Adams' impromptu two-song performance led to a five-year gig at the club, and she has been singing ever since.
"I was hot, baby!" Adams told Blues on Stage. "They'd bring in big-name acts that couldn't follow me." Word of her vocal prowess spread, and since 1945 Adams has performed with Duke Ellington, Louis Jordan, Dizzy Gillespie, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, and T-Bone Walker, as well as with most of the premier jazz, R&B, and blues groups in Detroit during that era.
Adams admits to no single influence on her singing style. "Big Joe Turner was it," she told Blues on Stage, "and Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, and LaVern Baker - those were my girls. But nobody taught me nothin' about singing. I taught myself." Like the singers she admires, Adams is a soul-inflected shouter whose strong, rich voice has a tone and expressive quality that grabs a listener and won't let go.
- Karen McFarland
Ari Brown Quartet, 6:30 p.m.
Ari
Brown was born and reared on the South Side of Chicago. He picked up
ideas of playing the piano as a child by watching his mother's
fingers as she played the piano at home. However, he didn't take up
the instrument seriously until he entered college in 1961. While
attending Wilson Junior College, he met future Association for the
Advancement of Creative Musicians stalwarts Joseph Jarmon, Roscoe
Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, and Jack De Johnette, all of whom shared
much musical knowledge with Ari.
Although now better known for his sax playing, Ari didn't pick up the saxophone until 1965. In 1971 Ari gave up day jobs and began devoting himself to playing music full-time. In 1974 an automobile accident knocked out some of his teeth, and he gave up playing the sax for close to a year. But he was still able to play the keyboard, and he performed with blues and soul singers such as B.B. King, Lou Rawls, Gene Chandler, Tyrone Davis, Chuck Berry, and the Four Tops.
Near the end of the '70s Ari joined Elvin Jones' Jazz Machine for a gig that lasted two years and continued off and on until Elvin's death in 2004. Ari also spent two years performing and touring with Lester Bowie. Ari hooked up with percussionist/composer Kahil El'Zabar and his Ritual Trio in 1989, which resulted in five CDs and tours in Europe, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Singapore.
Ari has recorded two CDs with his quartet: Ultimate Frontier (1996) and Venus (1998). Both feature Ari on tenor and soprano saxes as well as on piano, with brother Kirk Brown on piano, Josef Ben Israel on bass, and Avreeayl Ra on drums.
- Jimmie Jones
Watermelon Slim & the Workers, 8:30 p.m.
Watermelon
Slim, a.k.a. Bill Homans, was born in Boston and raised in North
Carolina listening to his maid sing John Lee Hooker and other blues
artists around the house. His father was a progressive attorney and
former Freedom Rider, and his brother is now a classical musician.
Slim dropped out of Middlebury College to enlist for Vietnam. While
laid up in a Vietnam hospital bed, he taught himself upside-down
left-handed slide on a balsa-wood guitar using a pick cut from a
coffee-can top and his Zippo lighter as the slide.
Returning home a fervent anti-war activist, Slim first appeared on the music scene with the release of the only known record by a veteran during the Vietnam War. The project was Merry Airbrakes, a 1973 protest-tinged LP with tracks later covered by Country Joe McDonald.
In following years Slim was a truck driver (many of Slim's current songs began a cappella in his rig keeping him awake), forklift operator, sawmiller (where he lost part of his finger), firewood salesman, and collection agent. He ended up farming watermelons in Oklahoma - hence his stage name and current home base.
During a career spanning more than 30 years, Watermelon Slim has played with Henry "Sunflower" Vestine of Canned Heat, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, John Lee Hooker, and in France with Champion Jack Dupree. Somewhere in those decades Slim completed two undergraduate degrees in history and journalism.
In December 2006, Watermelon Slim garnered six Blues Music Award nominations for artist, entertainer, album, band, song, and traditional album of the year. Now joined by veteran players Michael Newberry on drums, Ronnie Mack on guitar, and Cliff Belcher on bass, Watermelon Slim & the Workers is quickly becoming one of the most talked-about blues bands today.
- Bob Kieser
For more information, visit (http://www.watermelonslim.com).
Trudy Lynn with the Chicago Rhythm & Blues Kings, 10:30 p.m.
Trudy
Lynn began singing in Houston, Texas, in an era when neighborhood
blues and early R&B culture were first turning into a new sound
known simply as soul. As a younger female working with established
hometown favorites such as guitarist Albert Collins, Trudy learned
how to fuse classic blues elements with the music of the moment.
Since then she's evolved - as both singer and songwriter. Trudy told Roger Wood on her Web site that "I'm not so much a blues singer; I'm a soul-blues singer. Now I can do tradition. I can do all types. I can even do country, you know. But my first thing is really soul - kind of soul and blues mixed together."
Trudy's work speaks to the universal human condition, experiences all people can appreciate. "I write, and I enjoy, songs about real life," she said. Combined with her capacity for delivering convincing vocal interpretations, a Trudy Lynn track simply tells it like it is.
Lynn is joined by the Chicago Rhythm & Blues Kings, who have been blasting out their own soul-steeped brand of R&B and blues throughout the Midwest blues circuit for more than a decade. They've played at least twice before at the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival, and sax player Gene Barge is a RiverRoad Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Prior to '93, they were the celebrated Mellow Fellows, the high-energy, brass-leavened outfit that backed giant-sized soul/blues singer Big Twist until his tragic 1990 death.
- Laura Ernzen
