This year’s Carolina Blues Festival, the 23 rd annual fete put on by the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society on Saturday at Greensboro’s Festival Park, has something for everybody. We’ve got contest winners, local heroes, piano heroics, guitar wizardry and a couple bona fide legends all gracing the stage. As usual there will be plenty to eat and drink, fun activites for the kids and (hopefully) loads and loads of sunshine. Bring some sunscreen.
Bring a lawn chair. Bring some cash for souvenirs and beers. Then let the whole bluesy afternoon unfold into the evening, when headliner Cyril Neville will take the stage to close out the festival.
Cyril Neville with Monk Boudreaux headline CBF By: Brian Clarey
Before Cyril Neville makes his way to the Carolina Blues Fest, he will do what he always does on the first Sunday in May: Close out the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival with his brothers on the fairgrounds’ main stage.
Cyril Neville, of the Valence Street Nevilles, is the percussionist for the legendary Neville Brothers band, the youngest and most outspoken of the First Family of New Orleans Music. He’s also a dynamic solo artist in his own right, singing about New Orleans cookin’ and Rosa Parks with the same passion and style.
His slot at the Carolina Blues Festival marks the first time a Neville has graced the stage at this event. But before there was Cyril — before, even, the legendary Neville brothers picked up instruments and branched off the thriving New Orleans R&B scene — there were the drums and tambourines, the legacy of the Mardi Gras Indians. That’s where Monk Boudreau comes in. Maybe you’ve heard about the Indians, the New Orleans street tradition that dates back to the 1800s. As the story goes, escaped slaves on Louisana’s sugar plantations found allies in the Native American tribes in the area. As a tribute to this relationship, African Americans began constructing elaborate headdresses and costumes, roaming through the streets of New Orleans in
organized tribes, chanting, drumming, singing and, sometimes, fighting.
It’s the reason why some of the toughest guys in New Orleans are good
with a needle and thread.
The rhythms of their songs harken
back to Congo Square, the section of the city where slaves, pirates and
preachers celebrated and traded on Sundays, in the process creating New
Orleans music.
And Monk Boudreaux is a brother from way back.
His father was a member of the Creoles and the Wild Squatoolas Black
Indian tribes in the 1940s and ’50s, when the culture was at something
of a nadir after an era of violence in the ’20s and ’30s. Boudreaux got
his start with the Golden Eagles in the ’60s, and had risen to the
title of big chief before hooking up with childhood friend Big Chief Bo
Dollis of the Wild Magnolias, a collaboration that would bring Mardi
Gras Indian music to prominence outside the confines of New Orleans’
hardest streets.
Boudreaux and Dollis, with the Wild
Magnolias, performed on stage at the very first New Orleans Jazz Fest
in 1970, and they began recording their sounds in 1973, the seminal
work The Wild Magnolias with one of my favorite singles ever, “Handa Wanda.”
Boudreaux
is one of the last links to the oral traditions and customs of the
Indians. He still teaches the up-andcomers how to sew suits, dance
under the Claiborne Avenue overpass.
By 1976, Boudreaux,
Dollis and the Wild Mags had aided in the resurrection of Mardi Gras
Indian culture in New Orleans. Another big chief by the name of Jolly
wanted to organize a summit of sorts to make a recording of this music,
and he wanted his nephews, whom he had been training in Indian rhythms
and chants, to participate. His nephews, brothers Art, Aaron, Cyril and
Charles, were kind of busy: Aaron was singing ballads like his idol,
the Tan Canary Johnny Adams; Charles was playing avant jazz in New
York, Cyril and Art had formed the Meters and were burning up the ’70s
funk scene. The brothers had never recorded together before.
The result was the album Wild Tchoupitoulas, which
brought the song “Hey Pocky Way” into the popular culture and contained
one of Cyril’s first songs, “Brother John.” An unintended consequence
of the recording was the formation of the Neville Brothers band. Monk
Boudreaux still sews Indian suits, still parades on Mardi Gras Day and
on St. Joseph’s Day, which in Mardi Gras Indian culture is called Super
Sunday.
Cyril Neville left New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina
for Austin, Texas, but he still performs in New Orleans and around the
world with his brothers and in various solo projects.
But when
the two take the stage at the Carolina Blues Festival, expect to hear
some of those old-school Indian chants and rhythms and prepare to feel
like you’re back in Congo Square.
Steady Rollin’ Bob Margolin brings his blues from down the streetBy: Jordan Green
Steady Rollin’ Bob Margolin performs his own set and performs with Diunna Greenleaf & Blue Mercy at the Carolina Blues Festival on Saturday.
You know him from The Last Waltz, Martin
Scorsese’s documentary of the Band’s 1976 farewell concert. He’s
standing beside the regal Muddy Waters as the blues master shouts
“Mannish Boy.” Waters is an elder statesman, and Margolin the
understudy is a smidge younger than the pantheon of rock stars
assembled to see the Band off; he’s also playing in a purer form than
most of them. He looks at once cocky and scared shitless.
You
may not know that after Waters’ band folded and the elder blues man’s
health failed, Margolin found nourishing audiences in sleepy backwaters
in Virginia and North Carolina before whom to continue his vocation,
that he stayed in Greensboro because of a woman who is now his wife,
and that he’s settled on a piece of land outside High Point in Davidson
County.
Over a long career that continues to bring accolades and the rewards of collaborating an evolving cast of blues players, the gruff-speaking but generousspirited Margolin doesn’t mind talking about The Last Waltz. In fact, he’s posted an account on his website, “with long and complete answers, that basically tell everything I know.” (It was an honor to be included, he writes, noting that “friends and folks at my gigs say, ‘I saw you on TV!’ Then, they’ll tell me that I looked… happy, nervous, angry, calm — however they would have felt.” Fans in search of rock-and-roll lore won’t be disappointed by Margolin’s account. He mentions a reputed “backstage cocaine room” and an encounter in the “green room” with a smiling, joint-bearing Neil Young, who says, “We’re all old hippies here.”
Margolin notes that film of Young’s performance “revealed a white rock up his nose, which was edited out frame-by-frame for the movie.” This anecdote is similarly fascinating:
“California governor Jerry Brown popped in and invited Bob Dylan to get
together with him sometime. Dylan, relaxed and outgoing until the
governor arrived, instantly turned sullen and distracted, barely
nodding without looking at Brown. The uncomfortable governor soon left,
and Dylan laughed just before he was out of earshot and reverted to his
friendlier mode.” The Boston-born Margolin writes that “all through the
’80s I ran up and down the highways, mostly in Virginia and North
Carolina” playing one-nighters with his own band after he left Waters’
employ. They played for appreciative crowds in venues that are now
largely forgotten — Desperado’s in Washington, DC; the South Main Caf
in Blacksburg, Va.; the Nightshade Caf on Tate Street in Greensboro.
Speaking
by telephone from his home outside of High Point while monitoring a
repair man’s progress fixing a hot-water heater, Margolin tells me: “I
didn’t make records because I didn’t have to. I enjoyed playing music
without any commercial considerations mostly for nice people in bars.
It wasn’t until the end of the eighties or the early nineties that I
realized that to survive as a blues musician I needed to get out on a
national or worldwide scale.
I was dragged kicking and
screaming into the nineties. I had to learn how to be a songwriter and
how to record better. Which is probably a good thing.”
Notwithstanding
the onset of the internet and the cratering of the music industry,
Margolin’s approach to music doesn’t seem to have changed much. He
expresses appreciation for the healthy turnout at a gig last month at
the Zion Bar and Grille in Greensboro.
“There was a tornado
warning,” Margolin recalls. “We expected to get our asses kicked pretty
bad, and we didn’t. It was a good crowd of blues lovers out there. Roy
Roberts and Ray Burnett were some of the musicians that got up and
jammed, besides the local band that I have.” Margolin performs often
with Matt Hill, a young Greensboro blues guitar player who has been
making waves of late. The onetime Muddy Waters sideman’s role as an
ambassador across the ages is not lost on him. “The deep blues music is
kind of like a club for guitar players, and the older ones are
generally encouraging to the younger ones,” Margolin says. “I’ve had
some older musicians be really nice and really helpful to me, and I try
to pass that on.” Margolin will be performing his own set at the
Carolina Blues Festival, and joining Diunna Greenleaf & Blue Mercy
for their set. Margolin met Greenleaf, a Houston blues singer, about 10
years ago while he was hosting a blues jam on Memphis’ Beale Street.
“She
got up on stage,” Margolin recalls. “We became really good friends
really quickly. We actually call each other on the phone every day
instead of e-mailing or twittering.
It’s an old-fashioned
friendship.” Margolin turns 60 on Saturday at the blues festival. “It
will be good to spend it with my good friend and my neighbors,” he
says. “I’m kind of looking forward to that.”
After almost 40 years, the Nighthawks have come to embody blue-collar blues By: Ryan Synder
You don’t often hear of bands hitting their prime after more than 35
years of recording and performing, but the Washington DC-based blues
warriors the Nighthawks are doing just that. Coming into their
performance at the 23 rd Annual Carolina Blues Festival, their first at
the festival in 10 years, the four-piece touring dynamos are riding the
crest of one of the most successful albums of their careers. They’ve
maintained a stable lineup, though they have witnessed some alums go
off to even greater notoriety, and built a reputation as one of the
hardest working acts of any stripe.
With their 26 th album to date among numerous solo efforts, American Landscape has performed very favorably among the various official and unofficial blues charts. It has landed at No. 8 on the Living Blues rankings, while multiple tracks have peaked as high as No. 2 on BB King’s “Bluesville” on Sirius/XM Radio.
The album’s title itself is a fitting handle, as its content runs the stylistic length of the entire American blues spectrum.
With but two original tracks, both by bassist Johnny Castle, American Landscape isn’t
necessarily a cover album. It is, however, an honest and forthright
take on some of the band’s major influences and favorite tracks
tempered by years of performing, from the prominent to the obscure.
With reworked material by Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Ike Turner, Marvin Gaye
and even a new take on the theme from “The Andy Griffith Show,” the
album shows the simultaneously rugged and refined chops of Castle,
vocalist and harmonica player Mark Wenner, drummer Pete Ragusa and lead
guitarist Paul Bell. Founding member Wenner says that this may very
well be the strongest the band has ever been in its 37year existence
and though each member’s pedigree indisputably supports that assertion,
one can only wonder where they might be today had a certain lineup
addition worked out for the long term. When original lead guitarist
Jimmy Thackery decided to leave the band in 1987 after tiring of their
persistent touring, several musicians were brought in to serve in the
interim.
Among them were Steuart Smith, James Solberg and Bob
Margolin, but one in particular went on to leave an indelible
impression on the blues world.
Also working as a member of
Dickey Betts’ band Great Southern, Warren Haynes was asked to fill in
on lead guitar for the Nighthawks. Great Southern’s down time came just
at the right time and Haynes obliged the request.
“Jesus, he
was amazing,” said Wenner. “Between being an incredible guitar player
and singer and just being a super great guy, I would have loved to have
him in the band.” Haynes went on to spend a month touring with the
Nighthawks and an offer was made to make him a permanent member, but he
instead honored the commitment to work with Betts once Great Southern
picked back up. Since then, greats like Danny Norris have worn the lead
mantle until Bell settled in five years ago. He’s not exactly a fresh
face, however, as he’s sat in with the band repeatedly over the entire
length of their existence.
“Since Paul’s been here full-time,
the Nighthawks have been kicking some serious butt,” Wenner said. “I
really think this is the best work we’ve done in years.”
THE NIGHTHAWKS
The Nighthawks will perform at Greensboro’s Carolina Blues Festival at 5:45 p.m.
Burleson uses brushes on snare and easel By: Ogi Overman
The natural convergence
of art and music manifests itself in many ways, but none more
significant than when the artist and the musician are one and the same.
And while Jim Burleson makes no claim of being either, the proof is in
the pudding. A drummer by avocation, Burleson’s contest entry for the
poster for this year’s Carolina Blues Festival presented by YES! Weekly was the handsdown winner.
As
a career employee of the General Services Administration, Burleson
played in numerous bands around the Washington, DC area. But when the
digital era dawned and the GSA chose him to train as a graphic artist,
he quickly realized that he had a knack for that side of the creative
ledger as well. “I’ve always been able to draw,” he said, “and graphic
design seemed rather natural for me. My staff and I created book covers
and marketing brochures and various illustrations, and it was not a
hard transition into creating original art.” So when Burleson, now
retired from the GSA and living in Mocksville, picked up his copy of YES! Weekly a
few months ago, the proverbial light went off in his head. “I saw the
ad for the poster contest for the blues festival and said, ‘Gee, I like
the blues and I like art, let’s see what I can do,’” he smiled. “I knew
there was going to be some real competition because there are some
amazing artists around here, so I’m really honored to have won. Plus,
I’ve seen some of the posters from years past and it’s very flattering
to even considered be in that league.”
Burleson created the
poster using the Adobe Illustrator software program. “I started on it
one afternoon, put it aside for the evening and finished it the next
morning,” he disclosed. “It actually came together pretty quickly.”
Burleson
discovered Mocksville years ago visiting relatives in Spruce Pines and
Marion, and when he’d put in his time at the GSA, he and his wife of 36
years, Sandy, were only too happy to get out of the politically driven
environment and head south.
“I couldn’t stand the DC rat race
any longer,” he admitted. “It’s not good for your psyche. Back then the
interstate ended at Mocksville and we’d always pull off and eat at
Miller’s Restaurant. We’d always loved North Carolina, so it was not a
hard choice to decide to retire here.” Now with some time on his hands,
and still a relatively young 58, Burleson is able to pursue both his
creative outlets with renewed passion.
“I dabble in acrylics
and watercolors and pastels, but I’m not as good at computer-generated
stuff,” he said. “I’d like to get back to doing art again, of all
kinds.
And I plan on keeping up with my drumming.” The
contest-winning poster is primarily in earthtones and features a
guitarist, bordered by a vertical and horizontal fretboard, and a
drummer.
“Well, I had to get a drummer in there somehow,” he grinned, almost sheepishly. “You gotta have a drummer.” Indeed.
Paul Burleson, poses with his winning artwork for the Carolina Blues Festival.
Landon Spradlin Blues Band: Blues Challenge winner By: Keith T. Barber
At the tender age of
eight, Landon Spradlin got his first guitar. Elvis and Little Richard
were his heroes back then. At the tender age of 55, Spradlin and his
band won the PBPS Blues Challenge.
He moved back to southern
Virginia two years ago from the Dallas-Fort Worth area (Blues Finishing
School, as he likes to call it) and began to focus on his faith and
sharing God’s word through music. His online profile from
livebluesworld.com sums it up perfectly: “I’m to an age where I’m not
chasing the ring at the merry-go-round, I’m letting it find me,” he
writes. “So goes the circle of life, so goes the blues.”
But
the spry 56-year-old can still hold his own on stage, and so can his
bandmates. “I just got the best players in the area I could find to put
it together. I just called people I knew who liked where I was coming
from musically,” Spradlin said. Drummer Phil Riddle gets immense
respect from some of the finest jazz drummers in the business, said
Spradlin.
“We won the blues challenge last year, and we
represented Greensboro in Memphis at the International Blues
Competition, and there was one drummer who plays with the world’s best
blues musicians. He was flipping out over Phil’s drum playing — he was
smitten,” Spradlin said. Bassist Danny Farmer knows how to lay down “a
great bottom end” and has the most life experience of anyone in the
group, Spradlin added.
“The parts are interchangeable
depending on people’s schedules,” Spradlin said. “Sometimes we play
threepiece, and then for the larger gigs we add several very
accomplished keyboard players in the area.” Keyboardist James Pace
joined the Blues Band during a recent gig at the Blue 5 in
Roanoke.
Craig Motley played keyboards with the band during the International
Blues Competition in Memphis, and Steve Edmonds, an accomplished
keyboardist from Danville, often joins the band at area gigs. Spradlin
cites playing the Dallas Guitar Show the past 11 years, along with
playing at Madison Square Garden and jamming with Eric Clapton’s rhythm
section in London as some of the high points of his 31-year blues
career.
But winning last year’s PBPS crown ranks up there near
the top of Spradlin’s list of career achievements. “It was a real
affirmation and a great encouragement,” he said. Pastor of a church in
Gretna, Virginia, Spradlin has five children who all sing, play
instruments and write songs, including his eldest daughter, Judah — an
accomplished blues singer in Savannah.
They represent the
continuation of a musical tradition he hopes lives forever. “I’m really
considering starting a family publishing company,” he said.
LANDON SPRADLIN
The Landon Spradlin Blues Band performs at 2:45 p.m. on the main stage.
Bump & Logie: Blues Challenge winner By: Keith T. Barber
Winner of Best Acoustic
Duo at the 2008 PBPS Blues Challenge, Bump and Logie is the duo of
William “Bubba” Klinefelter and Lorenzo Meacham. The two talented
musicians began their careers playing bars and clubs in their native
Greensboro in the mid- 1980s, and eventually joined forces.
“We
crossed paths many times playing in different band situations,”
Klinefelter said. “I would be on one side of town playing in a night
club and he would be on the other.”
Klinefelter, also known as “Big Bump,” has taken a three-pronged approach to his collaboration with Lorenzo or
“Logie.”
Klinefelter, a guitarist, has played with the band, the Stun Gunz,
since 1985. When Logie was added to the mix, Klinefelter created Bump
& Logie and the After Hours Blues Band — the electric version of
Big Bump & Logie.
When Lorenzo isn’t singing and playing
acoustic guitar, it becomes Big Bump & the Stun Gunz. To further
complicate matters, Klinefelter’s wife, Shiela plays the bass in his
band and has branched off to form Ladies Auxiliary. Chuck Cotton
accompanies Big Bump & Logie on the drums. He’s one of the anchors
of the group and frequently plays with Bob Margolin. Big Bump, Logie,
Shiela and Chuck are all recipients of the festival’s Keeping the Blues
Alive Award. The multi-talented Logie plays acoustical guitar and
washboard and sings most of the band’s songs. It is his signature sound
that helps define the various groups he and Bubba bring to the local
music scene.
“Logie can shout the blues and he can sing the
blues,” Klinefelter said. “He’s got a voice that can do a lot of
different styles from gospel to country or whatever he wanted to do. He
can bring it forth. He’s good at working the crowd and getting the
audience participating in whatever’s going on onstage. He can sing
everything from children’s songs to old smoky bar room songs. He’s very
charismatic, he’s got a great blues voice and good at making up lyrics
on the spot.” Bump & Logie haven’t recorded an album since their
1999 record After Hours, but Klinefelter said he’s “tossing
around” a few new song ideas. He’s most proud of a song he co-wrote
with Pinetop Perkins entitled, “I’d rather quit her than hit her,”
which made it on to Perkins record that was nominated for a Grammy.
Adrian Duke brings keyboard talents to this year’s Blues Festival By:Brian Clarey
The New Orleans influence at the Carolina Blues Festival has become
something of a tradition, and this year Adrian Duke straddles the
divide between the North Carolina heartlands and Louisiana bayou
country. Duke, of Chapel Hill, has performed on piano and Hammond B3
organ all over the Carolinas and has even played before the Queen on
her recent trip to the US. But he’s been known to commune with the
ghosts of New Orleans boogie-woogie piano — Mr. Eddie Bo, the legendary
James Booker and the man born Henry Roeland Byrd, but better known to
piano freaks as Professor Longhair.
On his CD Live in New Orleans, Duke
tackles classics like “Lil’ Liza Jane,” “Iko Iko” and “Tipitina.” But
his repertoire doesn’t begin and end in the Crescent City. Duke’s body
of work mines the entire South and even plumbs some big-city sounds as
well. His latest, Adriatica, features covers of classics like
“Cabbage Alley” from the Meters, “Lucky Old Sun” by Louis Armstrong
“Will it Go Around in Circles” by Billy Preston and “Kid Charlemagne”
by Steely Dan, all intoned with a tin-pan baritone that is seriously
quirky.
This is Duke’s first performance on the Carolina Blues Festival stage, so all we can guarantee is that the set will be hot.
