There are blues festivals all over the world these days. The festival experience is something relatively new in the overall historical arch of this music. I initially found the blues festival a welcome contrast to the sometimes dark and smoky nightclubs where I first heard this music being performed live. The festival always represented a kind of a trade show like atmosphere where various aspects of the “industry” are put on display for the large throngs that flock to these events. The blues world, which in recent years has been nearly institutionalized out of business, gets to show off and put its best foot forward for the folks outside the sometimes cult like, so called blues community.

The blues festival gives the artists a chance to play in front of the large crowds many of us always knew that they deserved. It has always been the prevailing wisdom that exposing blues to people who might never otherwise experience this music is a good thing. One would think this goes without saying. I say it because despite the growth of the blues festival concept, blues record sales have plummeted and nightclub attendance, which keeps the business afloat during the other seven months of the year, has all but dried up. These colossal carnivals of commerce, for me, represent the very best and worst that the blues music experience has to offer. Virtually anything that is designed to have mass appeal almost always sacrifices some of the unique aspects of what made that “thing” so interesting in the first place. This naturally applies to the blues festival experience as well.

The blues business had always been, until a few years ago, a nickel and dime affair. Back in the day there were lots of nickels and dimes. Blues was like America; it had a large and healthy working class. Now the “haves” have even seized blues music from the “have not’s.” The “one percenters” are now running the blues industry. You know there has been a shift in the paradigm when you go to a blues festival and the principal underwriting sponsor is a Mercedes Benz dealership. I suppose that’s what you get when you have a blues festival in Orange County. I will get out in front of this right now and admit that I am an Orange Countian that has actually driven that brand of German automobile to the Doheny Blues Festival in the past. I am writing this missive from a top floor, patio outside of a large executive suite overlooking the Pacific Ocean at a resort hotel moments after tearing a “gold pass” wrist band off of my right arm that cost hundreds of dollars. Despite this outward contradiction, I will try and keep my hypocrisy to a minimum.

The Doheny Blues Festival is now one of the big kids on the block. This festival, now in its 16^th year, grew up quickly and kicked it’s bigger and older brother’s ass, the Long Beach Blues Festival, several years ago. That festival no longer exists. In their press release the festival’s producers sited a slumping economy for its demise. What do you expect Long Beach? You were giving the middle class, real blues music and lots of it at prices they can afford. As a result the Long Bleach Blues Festival is as dead as the one income household in America. One of the largest and certainly most prestigious blues festivals on the planet didn’t survive in a working class port city.  

On the other hand, blues and at times an unreasonable facsimile, survive and in fact thrives some thirty miles down the coast at a world class, destination resort in Dana Point, California. Come on, this is the O.C. and that means three things.... location, location, location. The Doheny Blues Festival has all three. It also has Rich Sherman who understands his audience. He is the founder and president of the Orange County based Omega Events which has produced the Doheny Blues Festival since its inception. This modern “blues” audience wants more of everything and Sherman gives it to them. More micro brews and more micro blues. More wine tasting, more varietals and more variety, more stages, more acts, more vendors, more food, more boob jobs and more palm trees.

For years what I enjoyed most about the Doheny Blues festival is that I wasn’t working. For a long time I was part of the mostly volunteer crew at the Long Beach Blues Festival. At Doheny I wasn’t required to be back stage, which can be a good thing as blues festivals can be like sausages and legislation, you don’t necessarily want to see how they are made. Having a little insight into what it takes to insure these events are a success, makes what Sherman has done at Doheny that much more impressive. He pulls off this high wire act off seemingly without a hitch. This is a testament to Sherman’s experience, business acumen, attention to detail and hard work.

There is something else that the Doheny Blues Festival has going for it. It has a certain elitist component that is part of the appeal to the new blues world. I meet people each year who fly in from all parts of the country and make the Doheny Blues Festival the centerpiece of a California vacation.

All of this costs more money. It is this aspect of the blues business that has caused the music to suffer so dramatically in recent years. What this means is that fewer people are paying more money to keep some version of what they perceive to be blues music alive. In what has become troubled economic times, these well-heeled folks have become the taste makers and the problem lies in the fact they don’t seem to have any.

This past weekend in Dana Point, I spent a great deal of time with the two disparate blues worlds. The one world is made up of initials like BMA, IBC, LRBC and “your town here” BS. The other is made up of OMG, WTF are you people doing to our music? That first world, for the most part, doesn’t know the second even exists and if it does, it certainly doesn’t care. That second world is keenly aware that while it goes about its business of studying, practicing and trying to share this art form with an audience, that the pain of that first world’s boot on their neck is omnipresent. Trickledown economics has been a proven failure in the macroeconomic world but in that first blues world, it is the first rule of engagement.

Be that as it may, I have not missed a single day of the Doheny Blues Festival in its long and glorious history. It is good to see an all American success story unfurl before my eyes and ears. The crowds have, it seems, doubled in size. While other festivals have floundered and have discontinued their operations, The Doheny Blues Festival is a smashing success. Sherman and his Omega events have responded to this success by opening a third stage a few years ago called The Backporch and in doing so added additional seating and standing areas to accommodate the increased flow of traffic.

This smaller more intimate stage and seating area is where much of the real blues takes place. These showcases often happen simultaneously while the thunderous more rock oriented acts hammer away a couple of hundred yards away on a huge stage. On every break in the music at the Backporch stage you can hear the din coming from the much larger stage. I can’t think of a better metaphor as to what has happened to blues music over the past few decades.

The Doheny experience for me represents another magnificent day at the idyllic Doheny State Beach Park. I love sharing the music I love with the people I love. In the many years, I have attended this event I have experienced moments of joy, too numerous to catalogue. This year’s festival was no exception. Thanks to Rich Sherman and his Omega Events for another wonderful weekend of fun in the warm California sun.

- David Mac