Boo Hanks, 2 p.m.
The
Entertainment Committee had wanted to get Boo Hanks for Thursday
night's lineup featuring the roots of the blues. That's because
James Arthur "Boo" Hanks is an
acoustic blues guitarist with roots in the Piedmont string band and
blues traditions who began playing 75 years ago. He saved money for
his first guitar by selling packets of garden seeds, and then picked
out the same old-time songs he heard his father playing after long
days in the tobacco field.
As a young man in the 1940s, Hanks earned pocket change playing guitar at barn dances with his cousins accompanying him on mandolin and spoons. His rich musical repertoire reflects his multi-ethnic heritage. (His ancestors are African American and Ocinneechee Indian, and family folklore claims they are descendants of Abraham Lincoln's mother Mary Hanks.) According to the Music Maker Foundation Web site: "Today, Boo Hanks lives in Virgilina, Virginia, just over the North Carolina border and a stone's throw from the rolling hills where he was born. Drawing from the deep musical well of his region, Boo Hanks showcases his virtuosity in the driving time and delicate finger-style guitar of the classic Piedmont blues made famous by Blind Boy Fuller."
"Most people," Boo says on the Web site, "when they hear me play, they think it's two guitars, because I play the bass and the other strings at the same time. They say, man that's two guitars, and I say no, it's me, it's just me by myself. They say, 'Don't believe you. It sounds like two guitars to me!'"
- Karen McFarland
Doug MacLeod, 3:30 p.m.
Doug
MacLeod is a gifted blues guitarist and superb songwriter who learned
from the old blues masters and is carrying on their tradition.
Whether picking or playing bottleneck on his National Reso-Phonic
guitar, MacLeod is known for his unique and powerfully rhythmic style
of acoustic guitar, a blend of churning bass and intricate
finger-picking that has been forged by his early years playing blues
bass and also influenced by his journeys into jazz and electric
blues.
Doug has been prolific as a songwriter, having now penned several hundred compositions. His songs have been recorded by Albert King, Albert Collins, Son Seals, Joe Louis Walker, Papa John Creach, Dave Alvin, Eva Cassidy, Coco Montoya, Chris Thomas King, Sun Records veteran Billy Lee Riley, and James Armstrong. These songs express life and times and experiences on a level that makes the listener feel as if he knows each person inside out. As MacLeod puts it himself: "Makes ya think I been reading your mail, huh?"
It is during his unforgettable live performances, though, that MacLeod shines the brightest. He entertains and draws his audience closer by telling the stories that inspired the songs. It is no wonder that MacLeod is highly sought after as a festival performer and has entertained music fans throughout the world at countless international blues, jazz, and folk festivals.
MacLeod has garnered many honors. He has been nominated for numerous W.C. Handy and Blues Music awards. You will find his portrait hanging in the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He was celebrated as one of the "49 musicians shaping a new blues tradition" in Art Tipaldi's book Children of the Blues. Blues Revue magazine said of him, "MacLeod is not a mere imitator of a style, but one of the vibrant voices that will keep this sound into the next century." And blues legend Honeyboy Edwards said of him: "Now there's a man who can play the blues."
- Glenn Cotabish
Marie Knight, 5:30 p.m.
If you've never heard of Marie Knight, maybe you've heard of the legendary Sister Rosetta Tharpe. I guarantee that Marie Knight's set will be the sleeper of the entire festival. Here's a brief historical recap from the liner notes of Marie's 2007 album Let Us Get Together: A Tribute to Reverend Gary Davis, written by noted author Geoffrey Himes:
"In the first weeks of 1949, a most unusual record entered the top 10 of the R&B singles chart. Titled 'Up Above My Head, I Hear Music,' it was unquestionably a gospel number, for the singer exclaimed that the celestial notes she heard proved that heaven was waiting for her. But it was also one of the wildest, rockingest tunes of the year.
"It burst from the gate with a rollicking boogie-woogie piano riff chased by a stinging blues guitar like a hound after a fox. The lead vocal was a piercing soprano that was immediately echoed by a warmer, fuller alto. With each call and response, as if she could hardly wait her turn, the alto crept closer and closer to the soprano, until they were overlapping on the crucial line.
"The soprano and lead guitarist was Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and the alto was Marie Knight. If 'Up Above My Head' represented their commercial peak, their artistic high point was 'Didn't It Rain,' recorded in 1947. Once again the pianist was the blues legend Sammy Price [shout out to Mike Hogan and Chaz Mesick!], but this time the drummer was Kenny Clarke, the bebop genius who also played with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and the Modern Jazz Quartet. ... Both Tharpe and Knight got so caught up in the spirit that the normal structure of a call-and-response hymn broke down, and their voices got tangled together in impatient, overlapping shouts."
Shout "Amen!" for Marie Knight!
- Karen McFarland
Big George Brock, 7:30 p.m.
Big
George Brock has been known for his "Delta went North" style of
blues for more than 50 years. Born in Grenada, Mississippi, on May
16, 1932, Big George Brock spent his teenage years near Clarksdale,
Mississippi, before settling in St. Louis in the 1950s. While living
in the Clarkdale area, he did back-breaking fieldwork, boxed on
weekends, and played the blues.
As UBL.com wrote: "When the 74-year-old Brock sings the blues, he ain't lying. When he sings, 'They call me a lover,' know that he has 42 kids. When he talks about 'that lonesome cotton field,' understand that he grew up a Delta sharecropper. And when he boasts about beating a rival and taking his 'little girl home,' remember that in his younger days, Brock once wrestled a bear for money and flattened Sonny Liston in a boxing match."
Even when Brock covers blues classics by Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and others, note that he learned these songs firsthand, not just from a record. Today, more than 60 years after he first picked up a harmonica, Brock is in the midst of a comeback. From recent all-star recording sessions for actor Steven Seagal to filmings for upcoming documentaries, from blues festival dates in Italy to his Blues Music Award-nominated Club Caravan CD, Brock proves he's back and as real-deal as they come.
- Amanda Coulter
The Holmes Brothers , 9:30 p.m.
When
the Entertainment Committee was looking for a way to close down the
fest in the Adler Theatre, the Holmes Brothers instantly came to
mind. They tore the roof off the tent in 1991, when they were
relative unknowns, and rain in 2001 forced them off the bandshell and
into the tent - their gritty gospel and soul-inflected music
mingling intimately with the audience's energy, where it belongs.
It's hard to categorize the sound of Wendell and Sherman Holmes and Popsy Dixon, but the band's Web site calls it "a blend of secular and spiritual - spine-tingling harmonies and telepathic musicianship mix Saturday night's roadhouse rock with the gospel fervor of Sunday's church service. Rooted in blues and gospel, the Holmes Brothers' sound is all their own. The rhythm laid down by Sherman's bass and Popsy's drumming perfectly complement Wendell's hard-driving guitar solos."
The Brothers have been playing together since the 1960s, and their internships have included the usual backing of legends including John Lee Hooker, Jerry Butler, and Inez & Charlie Foxx. Since then, they've played with Van Morrison, Peter Gabriel, Odetta, Willie Nelson, Rosanne Cash, Levon Helm, and Joan Osborne and have toured the world over. In 2003 they participated in the recorded tribute to Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sing, Sister, Shout!, so we may even be treated to the Holmes Brothers together with Marie Knight on the Adler stage.
Of their latest Alligator release, State of Grace (which just won the Blues Music Award for Best Soul Blues Album), USA Today says, "Rootsy R&B, gospel, and country. They are glorious, full of soul and surprises." And Billboard raves that the Holmes Brothers deliver "a deft blend of gospel, R&B, blues, soul, and country - an amalgam ... virtually unattainable by anyone else."
- Karen McFarland
