Last week Jake & I made a blues pilgrimage we'd wanted to do for many years, spending 4 nights in the northern Mississippi Delta, the birthplace of the blues! We couldn't have had much better a time of it. We spent the week in apartments located directly above Morgan Freeman's Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, MS and spent every night downstairs listening to - or contributing to! - some great blues music. During the day we made day trips throughout the upper Delta, as far west as Rosedale, and south to Indianola and Leland, travelling highways 61 and 49 up and down. Whew!
We made great friends with the house's sound engineer, Walt Busby, and had a great time hanging with him each night, sharing music, drinks and general camaraderie. We met and talked with several other local blues artists as well, like Josh "Razorblade" Stewart and LaLa Craig, getting to know them all at least a little. I feel like we made some new friends, and a part of my soul is still there.
Here's the link to our photos from the trip, captioned for your enjoyment:
Delta Photo Set
We also got to play a couple of songs on their jam night last Thursday, and got invited up again for a couple more on Saturday night. Thursday was jam night so we'd talked it over ourselves ahead of time, and were able to drive the bus when we went up... picking the songs and telling the and the keys and beats. We did "Shotgun Blues" and "Driving Wheel", and I think we pulled it off pretty well! Saturday night we were invited to join the feature band, the All Night Long Blues Band, and were a bit more at their mercy but we did okay, covering "Let the Good Times Roll" and "The Thrill is Gone" with them!
I've got video from the two Saturday night songs, courtesy of Buster & The Momma watching us from home over the club's web feed:
Let the Good Times Roll (Jam Part 1):
The Thrill is Gone (Jam Part 2)
I wish I had more from Thursday, where I think we were probably better, but The Momma's computer froze up Thursday night before we got on. A friend at work did get a series of 10-15 second snippets of the Thursday night songs (all his cellphone could do), so at some point I'll try and stitch them together and upload it for at least a taste.
I already can't wait to get back there!
