BLUES JUNCTION Productions
7343 El Camino Real
Suite 327
Atascadero, CA 93422-4697
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Blues in the New Millenium
Today, at the end of the first decade of the new millennium, Blues is played everywhere.
The new millennium began on January 1, 2001. I know that we like even numbers, so someone decided we should celebrate January 1, 2000. I get that, but since there was no year zero, the real millennium didn’t really start until… well I think you get my point.
As time marches on the decades are remembered as individual, social and cultural time packages that we can identify. These time capsules have their own flavor, personality and soundtrack. There are times when specific events might delineate one decade from another. For instance, there are those who maintain that the decade we now think of as the 60’s didn’t begin until November 22, 1963.
It could be said that the first decade of the new millennium didn’t really begin until September 11, 2001.
On that day thousands of Americans were murdered. It sparked almost universal sympathy around the world towards the United States. We squandered that good will, attacked a sovereign nation that posed no threat to our national security and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. We began a downward spiral that signaled an abrupt end to what historians have called The American Century. We entered a new era of nationalism and xenophobia. Misguided patriotism insured we would re-elect for a second term a colossally incompetent President.
Many Americans at home, as well as overseas, would not survive the Bush administration’s brutality and ineptitude. George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina was a reminder to everyone in the world that even a country as blessed as the United States is only as great as it chooses to be. The suffering caused by the administration’s indecisiveness, negligence, and heretofore almost unimaginable callousness following Hurricane Katrina, struck directly at the birthplace of the Blues.
For most of the balance of the decade we would watch the Bush administration engage in an unprecedented series of scandals, missteps and outright debauchery. We watched our young people as they were shipped off to “war” and weren’t allowed to watch them return in caskets. We began the new millennium with peace and prosperity. We began the decade with a federal budget surplus, a robust economy and unprecedented low unemployment levels. We end our decade…well you know how the story goes.
Where would the great American folk art form that is the Blues take us? Where would we take this music in the first decade of the new millennium?
In these troubled times, Blues music did what it has always done, which is provide us with rhythms that we can dance and make love to. Blues music provided us with verse, that told us why both these things are so important to a civilized society.
In the information age, people interestingly enough didn’t necessarily feel the need to be informed about anything terribly important. The lines were blurred between real news and editorial commentary. Television told us they were offering us “reality” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The most popular television show over the past decade was a reality show of sorts that was (is) music related but has more to do with celebrity idolatry than music.
Music in 2010 is as readily available as a McDonald’s hamburger. It doesn’t necessarily mean it is any good. Blues music is however like finding a great place to eat. It often requires a little effort, research and sometimes a recommendation from a trusted source. The music and musicians are still out there. These artists by and large had trouble connecting with an audience the way they had in previous decades. Believe me when I tell you, it is not the fault of the artists.
The Blues music revival of the 1980’s and 90’s came to a steady and painful halt during the past ten years. Blues night clubs tried to hold on but continued to fold. Record stores went out of business as well.
The television and movie industry continued to offer different ways to enjoy their product offerings. The flat panel, wide screen, DVR world in which we find ourselves changed the way we stare at the boob tube. I think it also meant more people gazed at the idiot box more often. Dumb shits with smart phones can watch low brow entertainment on hi def. We spend more time “on” Facebook, than we do reading books. I don’t necessarily view this as progress.
Fewer of us would venture from the mind numbing assault that is television to enjoy each other’s company in the congregational environment of a live music venue. Downloading has replaced flipping through the bins at a record store. Texting often supplanted talking and instant messaging has replaced meaningful conversation. BTW this is not a LOL matter.
All this technology, instant communication and cyber social networking helped to make Blues music that much more meaningful. The organic beauty of Blues music is a more welcome oasis in the digitally sampled, sound bite, techno groove world we contend with every day. The contrast Blues music provides us in our ever increasing commercialized and homogenized surroundings makes it stand out that much more. The universal healing power that comes from listening to blues music might even offer us a way out of the polarized public discourse that tears at our civility and humanity every day. Real musicians negotiating the muddy waters of our complex world through music remain the best reality show ever. Fewer and fewer of us however take the time to seek out and enjoy this art.
As I write these words, I am listening to a Ronnie Earl Record that was released last year. It is coming out of my Windows Media Player and not a turn table. I am listening through a pair of Bose noise reduction speakers, so I don’t have to hear any of my fellow caffeine junkies at the local Wi-Fi café. You are just as likely reading this on a website, as you are in a printed publication. The times they are a changing and how the Blues music industry responds to those changes will help to determine its future. With an industry full of staunch traditionalists (like me) and middle aged, technologically challenged people (like me) we are not in the best position to make inroads into the music buying public. The victims of our collective inside the box, old school thinking will be the musicians themselves.
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The past decade saw the untimely and tragic deaths of Sean Costello, Gary Primich, Marco Fiume and Robert Lucas. It seemed like too many of the old timers left us as well. Out here on the West Coast two of the oldest and most respected Blues festivals in San Francisco and in Long Beach discontinued their grand traditions. It was, in general, tough times for the Blues.
(Little Milton at the 2001 Long Beach Blues Festival)
During the past decade we did however see the emergence of some exciting new stars like Nick Curran, John Nemeth, Gary Clark Jr., Bharath Rajakumar and Kirk Fletcher. Many of the great veteran artists of this genre forged ahead with some creative new recordings. The Blues continued to flourish overseas and Europe continued to produce a staggering amount of young, very talented and dedicated practitioners of the American music.
(Gary Clark Jr. & Eddie Shaw at the 2007 Long Beach Blues Festival)
For a few days in May of 2005 three Norwegians, Chris Andersen, Amund Maarud and Vidar Busk barnstormed Southern California and teamed with Junior Watson to form an international super group. They called themselves Guitarmeggedon. In front of thousands of enthusiastic fans at the Doheny Blues Festival, a hundred yards from the Pacific Ocean, these four guitar slingers took a break from more conventional blues music. They combined a medley of 60’s surf tunes with a traditional Scandinavian folk song. It sounded like the soundtrack to a film directed by Quentin Tarantino and Ingmar Bergman. After their set Vidar Busk jumped off the stage ran across the festival grounds and dove into the Pacific Ocean.
(Junior Watson & Amund Maarud at the 2005 Doheny Blues Festival – Dana Point, Ca)
More often it was American musicians diving into the inviting sea of fans in Europe. Their appreciation of this form has helped produce a sophisticated fan base of listeners and a new generation of practitioners of this music.
When I was growing up in the 1960’s some of the first Blues records I ever heard were from British bands. American television and radio gave these foreigners unfettered access to America’s broadcast airwaves while ignoring Americans, playing the real thing. Jim Crow was still alive and well in the entertainment industry. Today the mostly young and yet highly evolved new wave of European musicians have a better grasp of Blues music and are light years ahead of what the British invasion era artists were playing.
Our country’s low priority as it relates to the arts puts our musicians at a distinct disadvantage to their international counterparts. Many international artists are benefactors of government grants. Some foreign musicians don’t have to take day jobs to make ends meet. Many civilized nations make health care available to all their citizens, even musicians. Crazy foreigners…
The world’s leading authority on the international Blues music scene is Jeff Scott Fleenor. This Southern California native has for 14 years featured international Blues artists on his weekly radio program that’s broadcast out of the University of California at Irvine. Jeff has also booked at least one international act at the Doheny Blues Festival in Dana Point, CA, every year over the past ten years. Musicians from not only Norway but Finland, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Canada, Japan and Brazil have played this festival. These players and others have an ear for American Blues and a desire to interpret old tunes as well as create new material that is in many cases far superior to what their biker bar, Blues–Rock, Stevie Ray ‘wanna- be’ counterparts are producing on this side of the pond.
Listening to American music through these young artists is a moving, inspirational and a welcome trend that just might save an important component of our own culture.
(Jeff Scott Fleenor and Brazilian Bluesman Igor Prado at the 2010 Doheny Blues Festival)
My generation of American Blues artists remains as strong and as resilient a class of players that has ever existed. This group continued their exciting careers, despite the downsized market in which they ply their trade. These baby boomers seemed like a novelty act thirty years ago when audiences first heard the Blue Wave mixed in with their New Wave on the radio and on the concert circuit.
Harmonica players and front men like Kim Wilson, James Harman, Rick Estrin, Lynwood Slim and Rod Piazza are now the elder statesmen of the Blues. I do not think they are afforded the respect that their predecessors received at this juncture of their careers.
(Kim Wilson at the 2007 Long Beach Blues Festival)
Guitarists Ronnie Earl, Bob Margolin, Joe Louis Walker, Anson Funderburgh, Duke Robillard, Jimmie Vaughan and Junior Watson remain at the top of their games as leaders and often as side men. These greats continue to inspire audiences with their style, creativity and technique. These players all have made great recordings in the past decade.
(Anson Funderburgh at the 2008 Doheny Blues Festival)
Many acoustic players have maintained the grand tradition of the troubadour. John Hammond Jr., Keb Mo, Bernie Pearl, Paul Oscher, Nathan James and others engage audiences in a more intimate way. Perhaps no one exemplifies this spirit better than Doug MacLeod. This guitar player, singer, writer and raconteur is nothing short of a national treasure.
Women in the Blues still find themselves on the fringe of the Blues landscape. The Blues and its often misogynistic culture has never been a very welcoming arena for female artists. Even some very hip Blues radio programmers rarely, if ever, play any female Blues musicians on their programs. Despite the uphill battle in this field, a few very entertaining artists made a name for themselves in the past decade. Shemekia Copeland and Ruthie Foster emerged as first rate vocalists and entertainers.
(Swedish guitarist Staffan Astor & Ruthie Foster at the 2010 Mammoth Festival of Beers and Bluesapaloosa – Mammoth Lakes, Ca)
One of the great stories of the past ten years was the success of Los Angeles area based singer Janiva Magness. Janiva started the new millennium right where she left the last one, by continuing to make one first rate recording after another. Her stage presence and personality remained unrivaled as she continued to perform at the top of her game.
(Janiva Magness at the 2009 Irvine Lake Blues Festival – Orange, Ca)
Even in an era where popular taste is dictated by commercial interests who pay very little attention to music of any kind, the Blues has survived. It has been battered and abused. It has been dismissed and misused. It is often misunderstood and marginalized. The Blues however still lives in the spirits, the hearts and in the souls of all who connect with this music.
Blues music can be heard everywhere. It is heard on luxury cruise ships in the Caribbean and in modest taverns in the Mid–West. It can be heard in a VFW post in the San Gabriel Valley and at huge festivals in Scandinavia. It can be heard in a big dance hall in small central Texas town and in a bar tucked into a strip mall in San Jose. From Memphis to Montreux and from Monterey, California to McComb, Mississippi you can hear the Blues. It is played by amateurs, in small band shells at city parks and seasoned professionals at the Hollywood Bowl. You can hear the Blues at a backyard barbeque in East Los Angeles and at a Saturday night fish fry in Lafayette, Louisiana.
The entire world understands the great American music. Young and old are still captivated by the pulsating rhythms and the universal themes of the Blues. A new day has dawned. We are a decade into a new millennium and America’s gift to the world is still here and it’s not going anywhere.
- David Mac
BLUES JUNCTION Productions
7343 El Camino Real
Suite 327
Atascadero, CA 93422-4697
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