As I reflect back over the twenty year arc of the Doheny Blues Festival, I am reminded of an evening in 2010. I was having dinner in Dana Point on the Friday before that year’s event. I was with some women who represented various facets of the blues business. They were all deeply concerned and quite vocal about the fact that Crosby, Stills and Nash and The Black Crowes were the festival headliners that year. They were upset that the word “blues” was being co-opted by classic-rockers and that this would stop the world from spinning on its axis, or some such calamity that would only be slightly less disastrous.  

Not wanting to enflame this conversation, I simply asked them, “If this is so offensive to you, what are you doing here?” Thankfully it got real quiet, real fast. I then suggested that this festival has been going on for some time and maybe, just maybe, the producers of this event might know what they are doing.

They reminded me that I have been accused of being a champion of traditional blues music and were baffled as to why I wasn’t offended at Rich Sherman and Omega Events’ most recent affront to humanity.  I told them that it is headliners like CSN and The Black Crowes who make it possible for me to listen to some of the greatest blues musicians in the world each and every year at the Doheny Blues Festival. It’s no secret that many of my personal favorites have so little box office appeal that, on their own, it wouldn’t make opening the front gates each year a viable economic option.  

I can live with the fact that blues music represents a tiny fraction of the overall music business. Yet, I have always contended that changing what makes this music so special in the first place isn’t the answer to remedy this fact. Despite this, the Doheny Blues Festival not only has survived, but thrived while presenting music that is constantly under siege by the driving force of our existence...commerce.

I was asked who I was looking forward to hearing over the weekend. I told them I couldn’t wait to hear Lynwood Slim being backed up by the Igor Prado Band. The Prado Band were all in their early to mid-twenties by 2010 and hail from Sao Paulo, Brazil. The other name that popped into my head was Bharath Rajakumar and his Rhythm Four. Rajakumar is of Indian heritage, but lives in Montreal, Canada. The Prado Band and Rajakumar are extraordinary musicians despite their non-traditional blues pedigree.

Then I was asked who I enjoyed at the 2009 festival the previous year. I told them Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. “That’s NOT BLUES!” they screeched. Yeah, but it is damn good music. I had enough of this conversation and bid a hasty retreat back to civilization and friends who, like me, enjoy many forms of music, all of which sit comfortably next to America’s quintestial art form, the blues.

Many of the acts that have graced the Doheny Blues Festival stages fall into the general category of roots or Americana music. Just a few of these that have played this festival through the years are The Paladins (2012), The Mavericks (2015), The Blasters (2011), Nikki Hill (2014) and Junior Brown (2002 and again this year). The list of this type of act who has played Doheny is as long as my arm. These veteran performers go over big with this blues curmudgeon and the audience as well.

However, it is the music that falls under the umbrella of traditional blues, where I find my greatest joy. Nowhere can one find this music in such abundance as you can at the Doheny Blues Festival. It is wonderful to see these artists, who, in some cases, are playing in front of huge crowds for the first time in their lives. People who might not darken the door of a small bar or tavern where these musicians often ply their trade in public can enjoy the real thing seated under a palm tree and just a few steps from the blue Pacific. Artists like Big Jon Atkinson (2015) and John Long (2016) for instance, play an uncompromising brand of blues that reflect their own soulful muse. 

Many of these artists got their starts during the blues revival of the 80’s and 90s and are now the senior torch bearers of this great music. Acts like Jimmie Vaughan and the band that he co-founded along with Kim Wilson, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, played way back in 1998. Jimmie even jumped up on stage and played with his old band that evening. That same year Robert Cray, as well as Anson and the Rockets featuring Sam Meyers and Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers, all helped to kick off the first Doheny Blues Festival in style and set the tone (no pun intended) for the next 20 years. Anson, Kim, Jimmie, Robert and Rod would all return through the years.

Sugar Ray and the Bluetones (2016,) Duke Robillard (2010) and Ronnie Earl (2017), along with Roomful of Blues (2005), have all held down the blues fort in New England for decades and have made very rare west coast appearances to play at the Doheny Blues Festival.

California based artists James Harman, Nathan James, Rick Estrin and the Nightcats, Kid Ramos, Junior Watson and others are international blues stars in their own right and have played festivals all over the world, but also have played a handful of times in their own backyard at Doheny.

Sometimes it is a musical pairing and an artistic symmetry that is compelling and the Doheny Blues Festival has seen their fair share of these moments. Bay area blues legend Sugar Pie Desanto joining Little Milton on stage was a very rare treat. Nick Curran played with the old Hollywood Fats Band now calling themselves the Hollywood Blue Flames (2002) and then a few years later did the same with the Fabulous Thunderbirds (2007).  By then he was an official member. On both occasions he shared guitar duties with another young kindred spirit, Kirk “Eli” Fletcher. Nick and Kirk were not yet born when these bands made their first records.

The Hollywood Blue Flames backed up the great Texas blues man Philip Walker (2009).  Another time, the man many consider the greatest harmonica player of his generation, Kim Wilson, was joined on stage by the recently departed, Mr. Super Harp himself, James Cotton.

One aspect of the Doheny Blues Festival that has distinguished itself from any other American blues festival has been the inclusion of international blues artists. Jeff Scott Fleenor, who is universally recognized as the world’s leading authority in the field of international blues, has booked at least one band from overseas for many years.  

It is a source of pride for me to realize that America’s most enduring and endearing cultural import, the blues, is so respected and treated with such reverence by so many great musicians from all over the world. Starting with Sweden’s Knockout Greg and Blue Weather in 2001, with two appearances each from Germany’s B.B. and the Blues Shacks, Sweden’s Trickbag and Brazil’s Igor Prado Band, to Big Pete from the Netherlands, along with the undisputed Godfather of the Scandinavian blues scene Sven Zetterberg, who we lost this past winter, international blues has been well represented at this festival.

In visiting with Fleenor recently, I asked him why so many of the world’s greatest blues musicians come from other countries. He said, “There are just as many bad blues bands all over the world as there are here in the U.S. It is just a matter of finding the right bands.” He went on to tell me that it took six months to track down Japanese guitarist Mitsioshi Azuma who played the festival in 2004.

It doesn’t seem like twenty years ago that I attended the very first installment of this event. Then, it felt like, and continues to feel like, a family reunion. If you look around the grounds of the Doheny Blues Festival you can see that our family has grown and prospered.

If one were to choose a date and a location for a family picnic, it would be hard to imagine a better time and place. The weekend before the Memorial Day observance at a beautiful California state beach park, from which the festival gets its name, is as good as it gets.

For me the relatively short drive down the Pacific Coast Highway to the festival is just as exciting and magical as if I were traveling halfway around the world. For many of the artists, that is exactly what they have done. These musicians are fulfilling a lifelong dream to travel to the Doheny Blues Festival and play the music that was born right here in the U.S.A.

- David Mac