For the past sixteen years, Michael Kinsman has produced music events in the San Diego area, including twenty outdoor festivals (attendance ranging from 3,000 – 30,000 people) and more than 100 other concerts.

Michael owns a consulting business called, Hoodoo Productions and in that capacity has worked with events and festivals in the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee and Washington.

Additionally he has written about blues and roots music for more than 25 years. His work has been published in the San Diego Union Tribune, VH1.com, Blues Revue and Blues Music Magazines among others.

He is currently the producer of the San Diego Blues Festival and the Ocean Beach October Fest

I sat down with Michael recently and we talked about his background in music and what has become one of the premier blues events on the calendar, The San Diego Blues Festival.

David Mac (DM): How did you get involved in the blues business?

Michael Kinsman (MK):  I have a background as a newspaper man. I have been a writer my whole life. Back in the 80’s I was writing for the business section of the San Diego Union Tribune. I guess you could say I was business writer who didn’t particularly care for business. At the time, the people who wrote for the entertainment section of the paper had their desks right next to mine. One day someone in that department said to me, “You know more about music than we do. You should do some stories for us.” So I did.

DM: Do you remember your first story?

MK: I do. It was on James Harman. It was back when he had Kid Ramos in the band. They would play at the Belly Up Tavern up in the Northern San Diego County enclave of Solana Beach. That piece led to some other things and over the past 25 years I have interviewed over 400 musicians. Mostly blues artists, but others as well. I have interviewed some Cajun musicians, R&B and some pop artists. I also did record reviews and then CD reviews for the newspaper. I did that for a number of years.

DM: That must have been an interesting experience.

MK: I feel like a kid in a candy store. I get to talk to people who I have revered and admired my whole life and now I get to ask them anything I want... or almost anything. You know exactly what I’m talking about.

DM: I do.

MK: One day I am talking to J.J. Cale, the next day it is John Prine and the day after that it is B.B. King. These people for example are all people whose music I really like. It was kind of interesting because blues, as you know, is a niche market, but I am doing these interviews and writing these articles that are showing up in the 20^th largest daily newspaper in the country and being read by a mainstream audience. Not many big city newspapers cover blues. That put me in a unique position to make a lot of good contacts.  

DM: Let’s talk about your involvement and association with the blues scene in San Diego.

MK: In 1998 I was one of the co-founders of Blues Lovers United of San Diego. It is our blues society down here. For five years I served as that organization’s president. So I started running events under the auspices of that organization. We used to have a party the night before the Blues Cruise left from the port of San Diego. I would book the bands for that event.

DM: When and how did you get involved in the blues festival business?

MK: I knew a guy who was from Chicago named Mark Slaga. He was into the blues. He ran a blues bar here in San Diego called Blind Melon and we became friends. He got involved with the Tampa Blues Festival. I was back there at the festival in 1997 and I looked around and said, ‘This is great; I could do this.’

DM: (laughs)

MK: Yeah...I kind of wish I had put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger.

DM: (still laughing) I think Michael, this falls under the general category of, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’

MK: EXACTLY!  Bear in mind David, I had never run anything in my life. I had been a newspaper reporter for twenty five years. I had no management experience whatsoever. Reporters don’t manage people. I had no operations background, no marketing background and no accounting background. I had to learn all those things. Seven months after making the decision to do this, I had a blues festival.

DM: Who did you have on the bill for the first San Diego Blues Festival?  

MK: Jimmie Vaughan, Lucky Peterson, Rod Piazza, Taryn Donath, the King Brothers and Billy Thompson.

DM: I remember that festival. Wasn’t it at the same location you have now?

MK: No, but you are pretty close. It was at a spot that was about 100 yards away. It is where the summer pops is now.

The festival ran for six years starting in 1998. We had Booker T. and the M.G.s, Robert Cray, Ike Turner, Otis Rush, Janiva Magness, The Staples Singers back when Pops Staple was still alive, Elvin Bishop and others. We had a nice little festival that didn’t make any money. We were plagued by a lot of things starting with bad attendance, ticket fraud...

DM: Ticket fraud?

MK: People were printing counterfeit tickets. We had bad weather, if you can believe that in San Diego. It rained the last two years of the festival. The final straw was when I lost my title sponsor and the festival grounds to the San Diego Pops. That was about it for me. I owned the thing, but I had a full time job at the paper. So it was just me and a lot of volunteers. So I was done. It was heartbreaking really, but I just licked my wounds and went off and did other things. The festival business is not for the faint of heart. There are a million details and it is a lot of hard work.

DM: You got back into it again though Michael. Why?

MK: I really love the music obviously. Back in the old days starting in 98’ I had a minor sponsor in AimLoan.com. The company is an on-line mortgage banker that was started by a guy named Vince Kasperick. Every time I would run into Vince he would say, “Hey Michael when are we going to do another festival.”

Ay ay ay!! I would roll my eyes and think ‘Don’t even go there.”  

DM: (laughing)

MK: Anyway Vince has a second home up in Portland and he always wanted me to go to the Waterfront Blues Festival there. He loved that festival. He kept saying ‘Let’s see what they are doing and see if we can’t do something along those lines.’ I told him I would come up to the festival, but I told him ‘I am going to talk you out of doing another blues festival.’

DM: When was this?

MK: It was 2010. I saw what was happening. The San Francisco and Long Beach Blues Festivals ceased operations.  It was bad times for the blues business...bad times for the economy.

So I went up there and son of a gun if he didn’t talk me into doing another blues festival. We walked the festival grounds and talked about some of the things we liked that they were doing at the festival.  We talked about some of the deficiencies, some of the things that we couldn’t do in San Diego and so on. When we got back we got together and strategized and then contacted the folks at the San Diego Food Bank. We went out to dinner one night with the C.E.O., the Chairman of the Board and the Director of Development. I gave them the blue print of the event. Vince was going to put up some money. The food bank was going to be the beneficiaries of the event. They bought the idea right there at the table and so we were off and running.

DM: Let me ask you this. Why wouldn’t they say yes? They are the beneficiaries.

MK: Because they are now the owners of the event. They are taking on the financial responsibilities for the festival; at that point I became an independent contractor to the Food Bank.

DM: So the first year back was 2011.

MK: That’s right and we turned a profit. We made $25,000 for the San Diego Food Bank. That’s not a lot, but we didn’t lose money either. It made a little more the second year and a little more in the third year. Now we are in our fourth year and we have expanded the event to two days.

DM: There are people who may not be familiar with San Diego or the venue, let’s talk about that. In my opinion it is a pretty special place.

MK: I happen to think it is one of the best spots I have ever seen for a festival. I think the venue has a lot to offer. We are on a peninsula of land in downtown San Diego. The festival is held in a park that juts into the bay. On one side you have the bay with a view of the Coronado Bridge. You can see boats in the harbor and Coronado Island across the bay. On the other side of the venue is a Marina with the downtown skyline in the background. It is quite spectacular. It really is beautiful. On top of that we have the wonderful San Diego climate. I feel really blessed to be able to put on an event there.

DM: You are also very blessed to be in a position to help so many in need through your association with the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank. Let’s talk about that. Lay some numbers on me Michael.

MK: In the past three years we have made $225,000 for the food bank. We have gathered at the festival more than ten tons of canned food.

DM: Let’s talk about the beneficiaries of this event.

MK: The food bank feeds 320,000 people a month in San Diego County. They have 28,000 volunteers that pass through there on an annual basis. Mind you they have a very small staff so those volunteers are crucial to the success of the organization. The food bank supplies food to other non-profit partners, like food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, low income day care centers and care facilities for the elderly and disabled.

It is estimated that there are 462,000 people who live in San Diego County who live in poverty and are faced with what is referred to as food insecurity. 30% of these people are children. There is a large number of military poor and military dependents who live in poverty. There are the working poor and a whole emerging class of people who during the economic downturn have been forced off their jobs and had to take an early retirement in their 50’s.  

The other fact that nobody wants to discuss is the fact that there are really two San Diegos. We are a huge tourist town. So while there are some high income jobs in the service industry, you know bartenders or wait staff at a high end restaurant pulling down a nice income in tips, there are many more minimum wage jobs. There are luxury hotels with rooms going for $300.00 a night and up, yet the housekeepers are often paid minimum wage or close to minimum wages. You can’t live on that.

The food bank distributed more than 20 million pounds of food last year, which is equivalent to 16.6 million meals.

DM: You know Michael it has got to be tremendously gratifying to work with the musicians, put on shows that bring people a lot of joy and on top of that be able to help out a very worthwhile cause.

MK: I couldn’t ask for a better job. I don’t think I am getting paid nearly enough for what I do, but it’s not always about that. I always had jobs I enjoyed. I always thought there was a certain sense of social responsibility to work at the newspaper. I thought it was socially important and yet was never just about making money.

DM: At this point it would be the time most people would ask you to run down the line-up for the festival. Rather than do what most people would do, I thought it might be interesting to focus on a couple of artists who don’t get talked about nearly enough.

MK: Like John Primer!

DM: That’s an excellent place to start Michael.

MK: To me John Primer is one of the most vibrant Chicago blues players that are still around. He is a second generation guy. He played with Muddy of course toward the end of Muddy’s life. He played for years with Magic Slim and the Teardrops. They had a fearsome band. He has also had his own solo career. I think this guy is tremendously underrated by the public, the media and the industry. I am thrilled to have him at the festival.

I am excited about Kevin Selfe and the Tornadoes from Portland. Kevin is a great player and a real talented guy. I saw him at the Waterfront Blues Festival and he blew me away. I went over to him after his set and told him how much I enjoyed his act and told him that I would love to book him in San Diego, but I couldn’t afford to bring his whole band down. I told him I would get him a horn section if he brought down the rest of his band and he agreed. Every year, I try and put at least one person on the bill that doesn’t make sense.

DM: You don’t mean artistic sense, but economic sense...

MK: Exactly! Kevin has no marketability in San Diego. Before he goes on stage he might have four people who know who he is, but by the time he is done, he is going to have a bunch of new fans. One of the things I like most about doing this is surprising people. Introducing new acts to people...

I have a lot of friends who really don’t know anything about blues or have had no interest in this music for whatever reason but they will show up to this event simply to support me and the food bank. After the show they will come up to me and say, “Michael, this music is great.” That is what puts a smile on my face.

I also try and give the festival some variety. I don’t want to put up on stage four cookie cutter blues bands with a harmonica player who is usually terrible and then over plays just to prove the point. That grates on the audience and turns potential new blues fans off to this music.

DM: Amen to that Michael.

MK: Let me share with you something David that maybe is kind of philosophical, but it was experiences that I had that instilled the kind of approach I take to booking a festival. Back in the day there was this huge music event here in San Diego called, Street Scene. They had every type of music under the sun. It is where I first heard Zydeco for instance. I was thrilled; that sound was new to me and I was blown away. I remember going to Jazz Fest in New Orleans and hearing all different kinds of music and how that affected me. That is the kind of experience I want to bring to the San Diego Blues Festival. Now don’t get me wrong, I know I can’t present something to you David that you haven’t already heard, but for most people there will be something that is new and exciting that will have them walking away shaking their heads and saying, ‘That was really great.’  

DM: Back up just a minute Michael. I do hear new and exciting performers that simply knock my socks off. In 2001, it was Nick Curran. In 2007, it was John Nemeth and just a year and a half ago it was a guy who you are bringing to the stage this year, Big Jon Atkinson. I saw him in Long Beach sitting in with Nathan James and the Rhythm Scratchers. When he started playing harp, I literally stood there in this nightclub and had a couple of tears rolling down my cheeks. Those are the moments I live for. That simply doesn’t happen that often at this stage of my life but it happened with Curran, Nemeth and now with Atkinson. Let’s talk about Big Jon for a moment if you don’t mind.

MK: Jon is just fabulous. He is twenty five years old and is talented beyond belief. He also has a deep, deep understanding of this music...and life. He really has it together. He is being backed by Nathan James and the Rhythm Scratchers at our festival. Jon is special and I am proud to bring him to the stage.  Why do you think Kim Wilson is working with him? Kim knows a thing or two about talent.

DM: What would you like people to know about the San Diego Blues Festival?

MK: I really hope this doesn’t come across as being self serving, but I truly like this festival because it is being presented for the right reasons. It presents musicians who are truly worthy of being highlighted. We are doing this to give a great experience to the audience. It is also a festival that helps some of the less fortunate in our community. What’s not to love about that? David, I really don’t want to sound egotistical. Maybe I shouldn’t have said those things, but that is truly the way I feel. I am very proud of this event.

DM: Michael you SHOULD be proud of this event. In a short time it has really grown into something special and a real highlight on the blues calendar. I will see you this weekend in San Diego.