Blues on the Road - Queen City Blues Festival

Blues on the Road - Queen City Blues Festival
by
Gary Miller
July 11, 2001

The 2001 Queen City Blues Festival, held at the Sawyer Point Park in Cincinnati, OH, was a great event for blues lovers. This festival had something for everyone. Besides the main stage, which housed the bigger acts, there was an acoustic stage. The Acoustic Stage featured guitar players, harp players and boogie-woogie piano. All genres of Blues were here and it was a real learning experience.

The Greater Cincinnati Blues Society hosts this event annually and the turnout was pretty good, considering threats of severe thunderstorms and some actual downpours on Saturday. But by the afternoon, everything turned out nice and hot. Red Hot Boogie Hot!

Great acts, such as local act N-2-DP, Big John Dickerson and Blue Chamber, DC Bellamy and Lil' Ed & the Imperials headlined Friday the 6^th of July.The Acoustic Stage featured Biersdorf & Kolbe, Catfish Keith, and John Weston. Saturday featured workshops on Cincinnati Blues History and a guitar, harp and piano workshop. Featured here were Wendy Dewitt, Catfish Keith and Frank Lynch. In the afternoon, it became the Boogie Piano Stage, with performers Rob Rio, Ricky Nye, Micheal Kaeshammer, Mark Braun, Barry Cuda/Little Boy Flowers, Big Joe Duskin, Wendy Dewitt, Bob Seeley, and Axel Zwingenberger. More to come on Zwingenberger soon. This guy has about twenty-some albums out in Europe. He has played with the likes of Sippie Wallace, Joe Turner, Jay McShann and Champion Jack Dupree, to name but a few.

Saturday, the Main Stage kicked off with Sonny Hill & the Nightshift, Brown Street Breakdown, H-Bomb Ferguson & the Medicine Men (a local piano heavyweight), and a Blues in the Schools presentation, a very worthy concern of all Blues societies. Blues In The Schoolsteaches young adults about Blues history and introduces them to the music, with some of them actually performing. Bring 'em up right!

The headliners for the evening included the Downchild Blues Band, Carey Bell, Kenny Neal, and Roy Gaines. This was one rockin' evening! The Downchild Blues Band, in case you haven't heard, is a rockin' band from Canada, led by Donnie "Mr. Downchild" Walsh and his amazing blend of some fine, talented musicians. These guys jump and swing, and Donnie's great harp and ferocious guitar playing really get the crowd to their feet.

Carey Bell, one of the finest of the great Chicago harp players, was most interesting. His group of young, talented players—Steve Jacobs on guitar, TA James on bass and Mark Tiffault on drums really tear it up. When they're not doing that, they are laying down some of the best grooves around. I haven't heard a better combination yet, so Carey Bell finds playing with these guys a real joy and a pleasure. His style is unhurried, but determined to give some of the finest and most unusual harp licks around. Playing regular, chromatic (several) and tremolo harps, Bell's playing is a showcase for the Chicago-style. Harp players, give a listen to his latest album, Good Luck Man, on Alligator Records. Also, watch here for an interview with Carey Bell coming up.

Kenny Neal, with a great band, gave a sterling performance. His stuff is so nice and he is a very personable performer. He was the right act to come before Roy Gaines. Roy Gaines usually freaks out the crowd by jumping in the air, laying down while playing frantic Texas hard guitar and generally going nuts. His music is a real crowd pleaser, too. His Texas-style guitar playing and backup by a full throttle Jazz/Blues-oriented group of very heavy cats constitutes one of the most memory making acts in the business. Crowds Love This Guy! He really has them in his hand and Cincinnati had one of the most pleasurable Blues evenings allowed by law. I will keep going back to this festival, so I really want to thank all those folks that made it such a great event. Special thanks to Jean Fudge and Amy of the GCBS for all their help, especially for sending me to hear the greatest jam in my recent memory at Lucille's.

BluesSource.com

(Published by Blueswax 07/11/2001)