The annual D.C. Blues Festival is one of my last hurrahs of the year when it
comes to blues. After that, it starts getting too cold for festivals. You can
catch individual acts at clubs, but it’s just not the same as the musical smorgasbord
available at a festival. I’m sure you
can relate.
Anyway, this year’s festival at Carter Barron Amphitheatre in northwest D.C. provided enough good music to
hold me for a while. The headliner was
Sugar Ray & the Bluestones, a New England-based band that has backed
Roosevelt Sykes, Big Walter Horton and J.B. Hutto. Also playing was Sista
Monica Parker, who has shared the stage with luminaries such as the Neville
Brothers, Ray Charles, Little Milton, Etta James and Koko Taylor and Lionel
Young, who fronts his award-winning band with an uncommon lead instrument, the
violin. Two D.C. area favorites, Clarence “the Bluesman” Turner and the D.C.
Blues Society Band with singer Ayaba Bey, were also on the bill.
The Bluetones pretty much highlighted the blues festival
with a performance of “Evening,” the title song of their 2011 album, a project
that secured four nominations in the 2012 Blues Music Awards, including Album
of the Year:
A former Marine, Sista Monica is known as “The Lioness of
Blues” in Europe. She cut her teeth singing in the choir of the church she
attended in her native Gary, Indiana. I
can definitely hear that influence here:
Lionel Young is a classically-trained violinist who has
played with the Pittsburgh Opera-Ballet Orchestra, as well as other orchestras.
He is the first and only person to win both the solo/duo and the band
competition at the International Blues Challenge, winning the former in 2008
and the latter in 2011. He also played
the 2012 D.C. Blues Festival’s after-party, where this performance with singer Nadine Rae was shot:
We didn’t shoot video of Clarence “the Bluesman” Turner or
the D.C. Blues Society Band at this year’s festival. But we have plenty of them
from past years.
Here’s Clarence at the College Park Blues Festival last
November:
And here’s the D.C. Blues Society Band featuring Ayaba Bey
at the same event:
Hey, I don't have to tell you it was a fun festival with good performers. Let us know what's going on in your area. Contact us at beldonsbluespoint@yahoo.com
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