BLUES JUNCTION Productions
7343 El Camino Real
Suite 327
Atascadero, CA 93422-4697
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As a kid we took a family vacation from our home in Orange, California, up to San Francisco and beyond. It was the beyond that I remember most. It was in fact beyond belief. What made a lasting impression was the Redwood forests that we visited.
These groves contain the tallest trees on the planet and are among the oldest living things found anywhere in the world. As I walked in sheer wonderment through these woods and reveled in the beauty that I was experiencing I thought how wonderful it was this scene hasn’t changed in hundreds of years.
The sheer majesty and beauty of these trees lies in their timelessness. The same can be said of the music presented at the Redwood Coast Music Festival, in Eureka, California, earlier this month. As time marches on, the music of early and mid-twentieth century America stands tall and sturdy on a foundation of rhythm & blues. This is the quintessential American music and something to be cherished, enjoyed and for which I feel a sense of home-grown pride. Jazz, western swing, blues, zydeco, swing, cajun, rockabilly, outlaw country and various permutations of the above were presented at this festival.
Of course, like the Redwood forests, this music will not come to you. You have to go to it and there also lies an inherent beauty.
The town of Eureka is roughly 250 miles north of San Francisco. It sits between Humboldt Bay on the Pacific Ocean and is otherwise surrounded by Redwood laden mountains. Seven different venues, located in relative proximity to one another, were serviced by shuttle buses. However, many of the venues and hotels which were serviced by this efficient transportation system were within easy walking distance of one another in the historic downtown area on the waterfront.
With 40 bands and 100 sets of live music happening simultaneously, spread over four-days, seeing everything is of course logistically impossible. The website to the Redwood Coast Music Festival was very helpful in that they had artist bios which were accompanied by that particular musician’s performance schedules and with whom they would be performing.
I could start anywhere but take for instance the Southern California based guitarist Tommy Harkenrider. He played with Dave Bennet’s Swing Quintet in the Morris Graves Museum. Bennet is a clarinet player who mined the material of Benny Goodman and other performers of the 30’s and 40’s. This was when swing was the popular music of the day and Goodman was known the King of Swing. This set was very well received and just one of many highlights from the weekend in Eureka.
Harkenrider then walked next door to the Eureka Theater. He was the featured guest artist with the Uptown Kings. They were billed as a jump blues band and played very familiar covers, mostly in that tradition.
The very accomplished veteran guitar player and world-renowned educator wasn’t finished. He then went to the Adorni Center to do some plank spankin’ with Dave Bennett (yes, that same Dave Bennett) and the Memphis Speed Kings. Here the band closed that venue’s day of music with Bennett abusing a piano (in all the right ways) with his brand of Jerry Lee Lewis inspired rockabilly. This could have been viewed as a tough slot, given they were following Dale Watson & the Lone Stars.
Pianist Carl Sonny Leylend was a ubiquitous presence at the Redwood Coast Music Festival. Leyland did full sets with his own trio, guitarist Joel Paterson and his trio and two different versions of Dave Stuckey’s muse. This included a band that played western swing in the spirit of Bob Wills. Leyland performed no less than ten sets of music with five separate ensembles over the four-day weekend.
Any discussion regarding the 2022 installment of the Redwood Coast Music Festival wouldn’t be complete without mention of Joel Paterson. Paterson is an extraordinarily gifted guitarist. He has worked with various ensembles out of Chicago for many years. His very rare west coast appearance had Paterson fronting his own trio, which are Beau Sample on bass and Alex Hall on drums. They also are dedicated stalwarts on the Chicago roots music scene and have supported Paterson’s various excursions into the world of vintage music for a long time.
This trio provided a formidable anchor for pianist Carl Sonny Leyland (as mentioned) as well as sax man Jonathan Doyle. The trio also backed vocalist and guitarist Dave Stuckey whose articulated knowledge of the back pages of the great American songbook is mind boggling. The Joel Paterson Trio along with Carl Sonny Leyland also backed 26-year-old blues wunderkind, Jontavious Willis.
The various indoor spaces presented a variety of offerings without, for the most part, designating the artists or their performances to specific musical genres. The breaking down of these artificial barriers is part of what the producers had in mind anyway when they conceived of this event in the first place. Outside of Friday’s “Soul Night” which featured Curtis Salgado as the headliner and “Blues Night” the following evening which featured Sugar Ray and the Bluetones with Duke Robillard topping the bill, everything else was a delightful gumbo of music. As I’m sure most of our readers are already aware, Ray can sing in a deep soul context and Curtis can sing the hell out of the blues, so in my view the labels “Soul Night” and “Blues Night” were somewhat superfluous.
Both these events were held at the Eureka Theater. This 1939 building is on the National Register of Historical Places. The Art Modern style theater is an aging beauty and is in need of some serious refurbishment and sprucing up. The same could be said for me, so I won’t belabor this point. However, while the enormous venue was capable of handling the large crowds for these shows, the cavernous building took away much of the intimacy that I associate with music of this nature.
The moment Sugar Ray hit the downbeat with his band the Bluetones one could hear what distinguishes a band who has been together for forty years and relative newcomers to the field. By the time that guitarist Duke Robillard, a true national treasure, joined his fellow Rhode Islanders on stage, one realized they were in the presence of greatness. The Bluetones, which also included guitarist Troy Gonya, were anchored by drummer Neil Govan and bassist Michael Mudcat Ward. They closed out the evening’s event with a swagger that is seldom heard these days. Govan and Ward reminded everyone why they call it rhythm & blues in the first place. Underscore the word rhythm.
Needless to say, I have barely scratched the surface but continuing in this vein would just be a mind-numbing orgy of superlatives. I’ll save that for the fans who deserve kudos as well. I was surrounded by people doing something I haven’t seen in a while. They were actually listening to music. Some of these folks even did this while dancing. Really…I’m not yankin’ your chain or pulling your rickshaw.
They weren’t talking over the music or pretending they were photo journalists or filmmakers, as an excuse to fiddle with their smart phones like dumb asses. They were listening, not multi-tasking. Both the audience and the musicians were living in the moment and they seemed to enjoy it there very much.
The enthusiasm and attentiveness of the audience helped to elicit even finer performances from the various bands this past weekend. This of course, stands in sharp contrast to the normally overly chatty crowds which often treat musicians like background music at a cocktail party.
This wasn’t a blues festival which tries to attract that large but stupid LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) crowd by booking watered down blues-rock acts. It wasn’t one of those pseudo-jazz festivals which often presents smooth-jazz pablum. The Redwood Coast Music Festival treated their patrons with as much respect as the performers treated the music. This after all is America’s music. It is a huge part of our cultural heritage and it was wonderful to hear it played with such precision, passion and verve.
For four days, on the first weekend of October, in Eureka, California, people gathered to celebrate one of the greatest achievements this country has ever produced, our music. This great music is under siege by crass commercialism, popular trends and the notion that music must be in a constant state of change to be relevant. The Redwood Coast Music Festival obliterated any such notions.
- David Mac
Copyright 2022 BLUES JUNCTION Productions. All rights reserved.
BLUES JUNCTION Productions
7343 El Camino Real
Suite 327
Atascadero, CA 93422-4697
info