One night—shortly after beginning what would become over 20 years in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley—I drove past the historic Bethlehem Steel complex for the first time. At night the iron foundry, the headquarters building, the annex, the elevated rail ore-moving system, the blast furnaces, the ore bridge, the gas blowing engine house, the high house and other structures that form the site create an eerie skyline that I remember thinking at the time would make the perfect set for a sci-fi movie.
Never did I dream then that the plant, shuttered since the mid-90’s, would provide the personality for a new festival featuring top-notch blues talent. But the weekend of Sept. 16-18, it did just that. Converted since its closing into the campus for an arts and performance center, the site that weekend provided the backdrop for the Blast Furnace Blues Festival, a new event created by Michael Cloeren, whose Pocono Blues Festival closed in the summer of 2010 after 20 years.
As you can see from the photo above, the site is striking. But the maiden voyage of this festival was also memorable for a more solemn reason: the death of drummer and harmonica player Willie “Big Eyes” Smith (see a biography of Smith written by Bob Corritore in our last post), who succumbed to a stroke at age 75 two days before he was to perform at the festival with his fellow “Chicago All Stars:” guitarist Hubert Sumlin, bassist Bob Stroger and guitarist Bob Margolin. Smith's death was all the more bitter because it followed the death in March of another Chicago All-Star, 97-year-old pianist Pinetop Perkins, with whom he had shared a Grammy this year in the best traditional blues album category for their 2010 recording “Joined At the Hip.”
But the remaining All-Stars sought to make the Sunday night concert they put on to close the festival a joyful celebration of Smith's life rather than a sad ceremony over his death. “Willie wanted us to keep going,” a local newspaper reported Stroger telling the audience. “The last few days have been hard. But are you ready to have some fun?”
But whether you could see them around the Levitt Pavilion, a raised outdoor stage; or out of the windows of the Musikfest Café, an auditorium-style room restaurant/dining room/performance center on top of the campus’ 68,000 square foot headquarters building, the so-called Steel Stacks were a constant presence throughout all of the concerts, which, in addition to the All-Stars, were given by The Kinsey Report, Eddie Shaw and the Wolf Gang, the James Supra Blues Band, Mississippi Heat, the Sarah Ayers Band, the Deb Callahan Band, the Cedric Burnside Project, Mike Dugan and the Blues Mission, Andrew Jr. Boy Jones, Johnny Rawls, Eden Brent, Homemade Jamz, Dana Fuchs, Charlie Musselwhite, Bernard Allison, B.C. Combo, Buckwheat Zydeco, the Craig Thatcher Band, Todd Wolfe, Donovan Roberts, Teeny Tucker, Friar’s Point, the Holmes Brothers, Ruthie Foster, Chubby Carrier, Guy Davis, Sharrie Williams, and J.J. Grey and Motro. At times you could literally smell the residue from years-gone-by steel production.
You will see what I mean from the following set of videos, which includes interviews with some of the performers. The Kinsey Report was there Friday night, first performing by themselves then hosting a jam that over the course of the evening joined them with Eddie "Vann" Shaw of Eddie Shaw and the Wolf Gang; singer Sarah Ayers; guitarist Mike Dugan and bassist Rob Fraser. Here are the Kinseys performing by themselves:
Here they are with Shaw and Ayers:
And here's the Kinsey Report and Shaw with Dugan and Fraser:
By the way, you can catch a question-and-answer style interview with Kinsey Report bassist Ken Kinsey on our May 29, 2011 post and a video interview with his brother, guitarist Donald Kinsey, on our June 19, 2011 post.
The next day, we caught up with former Sheryl Crow guitarist Todd Wolfe, whom I remembered from my time living in the Lehigh Valley, where he still regularly hosts jams. I used to go to his jams all of the time; he even once showed me how to tune up my bass when I first started playing.
Wolfe started in New York City with a band called Troy and the Tornadoes, which opened for the Neville Brothers, Greg Allman, the Outlaws, Albert Collins, Johnny Winter and other acts. He recorded a demo with Crow, then a relatively unknown back-up singer, after moving to California in 1990. We conducted the following interview with Wolfe:
Later, he played acoustic guitar before an audience:
He also did this tune:
A short time later, Andrew "Jr. Boy" Jones was at the Musikfest Cafe. Check out the cool haircut his drummer has:
Here's more from Jones, whom, by the way, we interviewed for an April 25, 2011 post:
Next, it was Homemade Jamz' turn at the Musikfest Cafe. The band's members--19-year-old Ryan, who plays guitar; 18-year-old Kyle, who plays bass, and 12-year-old Taya, who plays drums--are bigger and even more polished than when we interviewed them for a Beldon's Blues Point post that ran October 13, 2010. Those familiar with the group will see what I mean here:
We wanted an update on what they have been doing lately:
Also on the outdoor stage was Dana Fuchs, a singer raised in rural Florida who has drawn comparisons to Janis Joplin and who actually played Joplin in Love, Janis, an off-Broadway musical. Fuchs, who at age 19 went to New York to pursue a singing career, also displayed her acting chops in Across the Universe, a 2007 love story set in the Vietnam era and built around Beatles music in which she plays an aspiring singer. You can tell from this video that she was probably pretty convincing in that part:
Here she is again:
Back at the Musikfest Cafe, singer/guitarist Johnny Rawls was delivering Mississippi Soul Blues:
A one-time band director for Southern soul legend Overton Vertis "O.V." Wright, the Columbia, Mississippi native worked with stars like Z.Z. Hill and Little Johnny Taylor while still in high school. In addition to being a recording artist, the 59-year-old Rawls is also a producer who has worked with singer/guitarist Lonnie Shields and others. I had chance to talk to him that night, after he hosted the Saturday night jam:
Next, on the outdoor stage, it was time for veteran harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite, who had recently recorded a couple of songs on Memphis Blues, Cyndi Lauper's blues album:
His set also included this:
The night came--
--and with it guitarist Bernard Allison and his band:
Allison, who first recorded at the age of 13 when he played on a live album made in Peoria, Illinois by his father, legendary guitarist Luther Allison, ended his set with:
Next outside was Saturday's headliner, Buckwheat Zydeco, aka Stanley Dural Jr., whose band once played for President Bill Clinton and who in 1996 performed before three billion people at the closing ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia:
They had a romp with this song:
At the Saturday night jam, Rawls invited Shaw to the stage:
We later had a chance to talk to Shaw about why he took up guitar when his father, Eddie Shaw, played saxophone. Shaw also talked about musicians he liked. Because of an interruption, the interview is in two parts. Here's part one:
Here, he talked about an upcoming album he has with Pinetop Perkins and Willie "Big Eyes" Smith! The recordings are ten years old, but haven't been released yet:
Sunday opened with singer Teeny Tucker, Cloeren and Jonny Meister of the University of Pennsylvania radio station WXPN discussing music legends Big Mama Thornton and Big Maybelle. While that was going on, the Lehigh Valley's own Friar's Point was performing outside. The group is known for representing the Lehigh Valley at the 2008 and 2010 International Blues Challenges in Memphis:
Later that morning came The Holmes Brothers. The band consists of Sherman (bass) and Wendell Holmes (guitar, piano), two brothers from Christchurch, Virginia who later relocated to New York; and Popsy Dixon (drums)another Virginian whom the Holmes met during a New York gig. Together, the three have shared the stage or recorded with Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Lou Reed, Merle Haggard, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Rosanne Cash, Odetta, and The Jungle Brothers, among others and in 1992 became the first American band to record for Peter Gabriel's Real World label. In 2003, they recorded two songs for the soundtrack of the televison series Crossing Jordan. See them here:
Afterwards was a one-man show from Guy Davis. The son of actress Ruby Dee and the late actor Ossie Davis, Davis first discovered the blues at a summer camp in Vermont run by John Seeger, brother of Pete Seeger. There, he learned to play the five-string banjo.
Davis has also been involved in acting, appearing as Dr. Josh Hall on the serial One Life To Live from 1985 to 1986. In 1993, he portrayed blues guitarist Robert Johnson in an off-Broadway production, Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil. His show at the Blast Furnace Blues Festival mixed music and comedy:
Meanwhile, back at the Musikfest Cafe, Chubby Carrier
was showing an audience the pleasures of zydeco:
Later, he performed his take on the theme song of "The Jeffersons" television series:
We then had a chance to talk with him:
Back outside, Texas-born singer-songwriter Ruthie Foster was bringing her mixture of soul, gospel, rock and blues to a Pennsylvania audience:
Foster, who seemed to lean more towards folk in the earlier stages of her career, also performed this song:
Well, we know this post isn't the same as hearing all of these great musicians live. But we hope it gave you a taste...
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