Eureka! I love this word. I love its origins as well as its applications and meaning as it relates to the Golden State. It is in fact our state motto. Can you dig the fact that California has a state motto that is only one word?  

There is also a rather charming town on the Pacific Ocean in the far northern part of California named Eureka. Catch Eureka on the right day and one would have to look far and wide to find a more delightful community. Sitting as it does right on top of a confluence of a couple of tectonic plates that are primed to do battle at anytime, I don’t want to be there on the wrong day.

This past weekend Eureka hosted its annual Redwood Coast Music Festival which contained just as much blues music as festivals with the word, “blues” in their name. It marks the beginning of the music festival season. Today, Monday, April 4^th, is the official opening day of the Baseball season. It makes me wonder how I survive the other six months of the year.

With all this in mind I present a very special edition of BLUES JUNCTION. It is our spring spectacular. This month we celebrate two of the three great American inventions which might be what people think of as our greatest achievements and contributions to humanity, blues music and baseball. Oh and the other, in case you’re keeping score at home, is the Constitution. I’ll leave that one alone for now, as it isn’t doing so well these days.

As far as Baseball is concerned, its connection and similarities to blues music is clear to me and I discuss some of that in a piece entitled, Baseball and Blues Music.

There is yet another wonderful connection between music and baseball. That can be found in the voice of the greatest sports broadcaster of all time, Vin Scully. Today he begins his 67^th year plying his trade for the Los Angeles Dodgers. I have some thoughts on this national treasure. I also urge our readers to seek out a great piece in today’s Los Angeles Times written by Chris Erskine who describes Scully’s delivery in musical terms.

In Scully’s first few years of broadcasting for the Dodgers he befriended a man who has become one of the single most important individuals in our nation’s history as it relates to our ongoing and continuing struggle with racial equality. His name of course is Jackie Robinson and he is yet another reason I am a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He made his Major League debut on April 15, 1947. Enjoy a piece entiled Jackie Robinson & the Rights of Spring.

Today also marks the 48^th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Robinson and King were instrumental in making America a better place for all Americans by bringing to light most examples of institutionalized racism in the United States. It is now up to the rest of us to see that our Nation continues to adopt a vigilant posture against the horrible specter of racism that keeps our country from reaching its full potential.

We also have some new music to celebrate. This month in our Jukebox at the JUNCTION we have ten songs from ten brand new and soon to be released albums, many of which can be found at Charlie’s Bluebeat Music.

Two of the albums featured are scheduled to be released on Friday, May 20^th, right on the eve of the Doheny Blues Festival. These releases both happen to be on the Delta Groove Music label. They are Stand Your Ground by John Long and House Party at Big Jon’s by Big Jon Atkinson & Bob Corritore. I also reviewed both of these albums here this month. The first available offering for these outstanding CDs will be at Bluebeat Music who will sell them to you direct at the Doheny Blues Festival. I would like to congratulate Jeff Scott Fleenor of Delta Groove for presenting straight ahead natural blues without compromise and without apolology.

John Long will be appearing at this year’s Doheny Blues Festival.  For those who might not recognize his name he will be featured in an interview in the upcoming May edition of BLUES JUNCTION.

In our April Re-Visited spotlight is an artist who will also be performing at this year’s Doheny Blues Festival, Kirk Fletcher. As we look forward to his performance, we look back on his 2004 album Shades of Blue and those heady times for the young guitarist at the dawn of his career.

I remember like it was yesterday when I first heard Kirk Fletcher play. It was in the spring of 1998. He was the talent search winner at the Doheny Blues Festival and was given a prime slot on the main stage.  I said, Eureka! Here was a discovery that gave me hope for the future of this music. It was like that steaming hot August afternoon in Newport Beach, California, in 2001 when I heard Nick Curran perform for the first time. It was like just a few years ago when I heard Big Jon Atkinson play the blues.

It was like on Easter Sunday in 2011 while traveling up the Pacific Coast Highway on a magnificent afternoon I heard some first rate blues music coming out of a little tavern. The band as it turned out was called the Mighty Mojo Prophets. They were playing a mix of original material written by the band’s leaders, vocalist Tom Eliff and guitarist Mitch Dow, and some very cool covers. They had yet to release their first album.

Now some five years later and almost to the day, The Mighty Mojo Prophets hosted a private CD release party at the home of the band’s harmonica player, Tom Richmond. Their third nationally released CD, Record Store, was reviewed here in the February edition of BLUES JUNCTION. The thirteen song offering continues to grow on me with repeated listening. I thought I’d pull the piece from the album review section of our archives and put it on back on the top shelf.

As far as the event is concerned, it was a backyard fandango of the highest order, where the Prophets played three sets starting at 7pm and concluding at 11:30pm. They were joined by several special guests that included the one and only San Pedro Slim. Slim is a harmonica player, vocalist and song writer of the first order and an accomplished recording artist in his own right. He is also the artist who painted the four pieces that you can see on our home page. 

As always I’d like to welcome people who are visiting the JUNCTION for the first time. We hope you enjoy what you read here. We also hope that you enjoy the never ending joy of discovery that I have when you hear some new or emerging artist that you read about here in our feature driven monthly ezine.

It is why we celebrate the young emerging musicians with the same passion and zeal with which we celebrate the wonderful and rich history of what we call the quintessential American music.

Discovering great music that is new to you, whether or not it is old, new, or somewhere in between, is like that prospector who pulled a nugget out of the American river in the western slopes of the high Sierra’s in Northern California. You can yell EUREKA!

-   David Mac

Editor’s Note: Like a spring flower our April edition of BLUES JUNCTION is just starting to bloom. Check back as we will be adding a surprise bonus feature or two as the month unfolds. Oh and I should mention no more baseball features....at least for now.

Sorry, I was gone for a few hours, but I’m back and happy to report the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the San Diego Padres 15-0. Until we meet again, most likely at a blues festival or maybe even a ballgame, be well and be in touch.

 

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