Disney Revisited!

Just touched down in Orlando, another Disney trip, this time with the family! Listening to Disney music on Disney Magical Express bus, en route to Polynesian. Watch Twitter feed for updates!

Boston House of Bules Grand Opening

Boston finally has its own House of Blues again, after the original HoB in Cambridge closed about 5 years ago. This past Saturday night (2/21) they had their Grand Opening VIP Party, and though invitation-only (which is a shame) Jake & I were able to get in by way of a charity auction.

So we made the show, and had a fantastic night! Friday afternoon Buster & I suited up and hopped in the Bluesmobile to pick up Shotgun at Logan airport; he'd flown in his suit, sans shades and tie but then added those finishing touches just after deplaning. The three of us enjoyed a nice dinner at Pizzeria Uno's before heading back to Bismo's Bluesmansion for the night.

Saturday, after dropping Buster off with friends to spend the night, Shotgun & I headed into town to check into the hotel room included in our auction package. We cruised by the House on the way in, and got plenty of appreciation both driving down Lansdowne Street and while cruising through the city in general. After checking into the hotel we went up to our room... and looked at each other. Then at the single king-size bed in the middle of the very nice room. Then at each other again.

About 45 minutes later we'd finally gotten a room with two double beds instead... crisis of brotherly love averted! After dinner on Boylston Street at a nice little Irish pub ("Solas"), we hung in the hotel room listening to music and each having a small glass of bourbon (Blanton's) while waiting for showtime, then headed over.

We'd found out (finally!) Friday morning that the House management had decided NOT to park our Bluesmobile out front... they had tenting up along the front of the club to provide heat for the lines, and didn't think it was practical to try to set up a parking area for us. We'd debated just leaving the Bluesmobile at the hotel then, to avoid extra parking fees and to free up my liver for enjoying the night's VIP open bar, but ultimately we both knew she HAD to go with us. So we drove her back over and after cruising by the line once, circled back to park her in the garage next door.

The line was a little surprising... VIP or no the wait was well over half an hour to get in, as they were checking people in at tables in the foyer, similar to registering for a SciFi convention. But eventually we were in, and after that the night was just fantastic!

The place is indeed very big, three levels. The main floor (all standing room) has a bar lining each side wall, then a step down to the main dance floor. I'd decided that since we DID bring the Bluesmobile and I'd be driving home, I'd stick with beer for the evening, so asked for a Sam Adams... but they weren't supposed to sell bottles that night, only cans (presumably to avoid broken glass on the open dance floor, though why they wouldn't pour out into cups is beyond me), and none of those beer choices appealed to me. So I had bourbon (Woodford Reserve). What can you do, ya gotta have standards!

The gospel choir had just started when we got in, the same group that will be performing when they get the gospel brunches started up there. (We chatted with one of the singers for a few minutes between sets when she came over to get her picture taken with us.) A lot of the folks in there were mingling around, hunting out the free food sample tables. We made our way right up to the front of the stage, of course, and basically settled in for the evening. We thought about looking around more first, and maybe checking out the Foundation Room (that our VIP tickets gave us access to for the night), but ultimately we're there for the MUSIC so we pretty much stayed put. Plenty of people were coming by to chat with us though, and we were also in demand by many, uh, very attractive ladies who wanted their pictures taken with us in numerous fun poses. (I gotta search Facebook and the like to find copies of those for ourselves, they're great ego-boosts!) There was also another woman there dressed as The Penguin, which was very funny... when we first noticed her moving our way through the crowd, we started ducking and dodging the other way and soon she was chasing us through the crowd, armed with her own ruler!

Ronnie Earl and The Broadcasters was the next act, a very well-respected Boston-based (with some national exposure) blues band, and it was a great set. After that there was about a 25-minute break, which meant more photos and more mingling, all very fun with all great people. Nina, the barmaid working our area, came by frequently to chat and even hung with us during her break. I was resisting a second bourbon... not 'cause I didn't want one, but because I'd found it's difficult to dance - especially Blues Brothers dancing! - with a sloshing cup of bourbon in your hand! (You can see this in the TV video linked to below.) But Jake ordered a second one and when Nina came back she had one for me too... 'cause she knew I really wanted it. She was, naturally, correct! I sipped it for a bit then downed the rest in a hurry once the Sacred Hearts Band took position on stage.


The Blues Brothers show was awesome, of course! Pretty similar to the show I saw last summer, and what others have described seeing in Atlanta, Texas and elsewhere, though with some local flavor and some special guests thrown in. James Montgomery, a local harp hero, sat in for many of the songs, notably a kick-ass version of "Muddy Water" (aka "Boston You're My Home") worked up for the town. Skunk Baxter was also there and played on a few songs, and best of all Paul "The Shiv" Shaffer, Mr. Entertainment himself, came out for the second half, leading the band in "Green Onions" and then playing through the second set!

The real highlight though was Sam Moore, who came out for a few songs and of course took the lead on "Soul Man". He looked and sounded fantastic, and it was especially fun watching Danny staying off to the side and just grinning ear-to-ear watching HIS idol playing his own song! Shotgun & I were also both pleased to note we could easily see from our vantage point that Danny did indeed have "ELWOOD" on his knuckles. (And as for ourselves, when the genuine article, no-imitation Blues Brothers are in the house, Shotgun & I went with, well, "SHOTGUN" and "BISMO" on our own knuckles.)

After the show ended, I'd say around 12:15am (the Brothers started their performance at 11pm), we hung for a few as the place emptied out and thought we'd at least look around a bit more. We went up to the second level (a standing-room mezzanine) and found the Foundation Room was still open! So we decided to check it out after all. It was filled to capacity so they were letting folks in as others came out, but with the concert itself over the wait was only about ten minutes before we could get in. We saw Judy Belushi-Pisano talking to some folks there, though didn't get a chance to meet her (or any of the band, alas).

Once in, we ended up spending about two and a half hours in there! We chatted with a great many people, and we ultimately settled into a smaller corner room on a couple of couches with a bunch of 20- and 30-somethings (hmm, it felt like the cast of "Friends"!). They didn't have any glass bottle restrictions in there so we were finally able to enjoy a couple of Sam Adams as well.

Jake spent about 90 minutes chatting with a young lady who was about to get married and so was enjoying her flirting, and who was also apparently soon to be joining the Army... Jake having just retired from the USMC that gave them plenty to talk about. He found out only after they'd been talking quite a while that this young lady was Judy Belushi's niece!

Meanwhile one of the other 20-something young ladies, very, uh, nicely attired, decided my harp playing was making her homesick for Kentucky so she came over, snuggled in against me for the next hour or so and asked me to teach her how to play! I was, of course, happy to oblige. (It's just suck and blow, ain't it?) We finally closed the place down when they kicked the last of us out around 2:45am, picking up our commemorative show posters on the way out. (I'll get a photo of posted at some point, haven't taken a picture of it yet.)

Now, it being hours after the show ended we had to find someone to unlock the Lansdowne Garage for us since it had already been closed, but fortunately we were able to get ourselves extricated. We pulled back up to the front of the hotel, looked at each other and realized we really didn't want to sleep there... we only had the room because it was part of the auction package, after all. Since I hadn't had much to drink (sure, two bourbons and two beers, but that was over an almost 7-hour period, with close to 3 hours between the bourbons and the beers alone!) and hell, only lived 25 miles away, we walked into the hotel at 3am, grabbed our overnight bags and checked out. After all the trouble to get the double-bedded room, I don't think we as much as SAT on one of the beds! But it felt the right thing to do. By 3:45am we were home, had a nightcap bourbon and hit the rack.

Now the part you're waiting for, here's the link to the rest of my photos from the night:

Boston House of Blues Grand Opening - a set on Flickr

Also I showed up in this live story from WBZ-TV (local CBS affiliate) that aired the other night:

WBZ-TV Video Archive - wbztv.com

I DID take some videos of my own, and hopefully they won't pull the vids on me since technically posting a concert vid like this could be an issue... but I doubt anyone'll be complaining! Here's the YouTube link:

YouTube - BismoBeerbelly's Channel

Okay, now I'm ready for a vacation... only about 36 hours until we're on a plane for Florida!

Meet Honeyboy Edwards

I still owe you a post or two about our trip to that incomparable blues mecca, Walt Disney World, last month ;-P .... we had a great time, and yes, we did find some decent blues while there! But for now I'll catch you up on my latest blues show.

Last night I experienced a true slice of history, when I was privileged to see David "Honeyboy" Edwards performing at the Tupelo Music Hall in Londonderry, NH. Honeyboy is the Real Deal... an original Delta bluesman, born in 1915 (ten years older than B.B. King!) and playing guitar in jukes before he was a teenager. He used to gig through the south with Robert Johnson himself back in the 30's, and was actually with Johnson the night he was (purportedly) poisoned and died.

This was a show in the tradition of the oldest delta style, albeit electrified... two men with guitars, plus an accompanist on blues harp. The second guitar was a guy named Rocky Lawrence, himself a dazzler with the acoustic guitar and someone I'll be watching for in his own right; Rocky opened with an acoustic set of his own before Honeyboy joined him on stage and his playing is fantastic, in a style very much patterned after Robert Johnson himself.

Honeyboy's first set was a little disjointed at first, as they had some amp problems that resulted in trying to mix Honeyboy's electric Gibson through, as near's I could figure, the same line as Rocky's mic'd acoustic. But the soul was there and when Honeyboy sang, he drew us right in. The second set, on the other hand, was magical. Honeyboy was locked in, playing in his own world leaving his accompanists doing there best to follow along! He also told a few great back-in-the-day stories, or riding the rails in the 40's, stowing away on freight and mail trains to get from place to place. Fantastic. The man was also gracious as could be... 93 years young and still waiting for every autograph to be satisfied, not seeming to mind chatting with all comers.

I fear there are fewer and fewer players like Honeyboy around every day... see them when you get the chance, for you won't get many.

Time to Sing the Blues.....

Yeah, I know, I got "quiet" again... c'est la vie! But a quick note that I'm only two days away from this year's Blues trip... though this time it's a bit of a mash-up as Jake and I are off to visit my other passion, Disney World! We'll be focusing more on food, drink and music than the rides but I'm sure we'll have a great time.

And yes, we expect to be at the Adventurer's Club for it's Last Call Saturday night. Kungaloosh.

Blues and Brews!

Buster & I had a great time Saturday, when we suited up and drove the Bluesmobile up to the Blues'N Brews Festival in Westford, MA. I'd been in touch with one of the festival organizers and they had us drive right onto the field in the stage area to display the car and pose for photos throughout the day.

Pretty much perfect weather... sunny, high 70's... but no cloud cover so the sun was a bit brutal during the middle of the day. I've got the sunburned forearms to prove it where I had my sleeves rolled up! Buster made out better as he used the umbrella I found in the Bluesmobile's trunk, though he wilted for a while in the heat anyway. By 2pm it was already improving and all was good. It was an all-day event, 11am-7pm. Since we were parked in the stage area we had to get there before they opened, at 10:30am, to park and then couldn't move the car again until after the grounds had cleared, around 7:30pm. So a long day.

The toughest part for us was certainly getting up at 8am, as we're well-known night-owls. Buster & I made a pact to try and get to bed by midnight the night before... and we did!

....Two hours later we both got up, since we weren't sleeping, had a quick snack and got to sleep around 3. Sigh.

The first band of the day was Jason James and the Bay State Houserockers... High-energy start to the day, Jason plays like Thorogood with lots of dance music, very enjoyable and must be awesome in a bar setting! Next was Ottomatic Slim, whom I'd heard of but knew nothing about... damn good harp player, put on a great show. For his last song he asked if he could bring a friend up to join him... and up came Magic Dick! Of course, there could only be one last song for Dickie... "Whammer Jammer" live, hadn't heard it from him in many years! I should'a videoed it but was too busy drooling at our luck. Highlight of the day!

Next came the Bruce Marshall Group, whom I've seen around a few times... great player, very tight band. The highlight here was a tribute to Robert Johnson he did with some beautiful slide guitar. Wonderful.

Next came The Love Dogs, another group I'd only heard about but they were quickly added to my list of local favorites! Very funky, good horn section... much like a slightly smaller Roomful of Blues, or a bluesier Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Awesome, fun stuff, and the one CD I bought that day was from them. Not to mention the lead singer, Eddie "Duato" Scheer, had the coolest purple suit we've seen in a while! From just a little bit of distance he looked like The Joker, but in a good way!

Lastly was the headliner, Ronnie Earl. Ronnie's an awesome Chicago-style guitarist, who loves to make his guitar cry and pull the emotion out. I've seen Ronnie before, though it'd been quite a while, and he's always fantastic!

The festival was holding a couple of charity auctions, one of which was for a gold-plated Lee Oscar harmonica signed by Dan Aykroyd. I bought two $5 tickets... but of course didn't win. Fortunately it was won by someone near us, so I at least got a good look at it afterwards:


Sorry for the focus, in the bright sunlight it looked like the photo came out better than it did, should'a used a macro mode. Ah well, you get the idea....

Also plenty of good beers to try all day, from all sorts of regional microbrewers. It was like the old "Happy Days" episode, where Richie tells his dad, "All they had was beer... in teeny little glasses!" "How many tiny little glasses did you have?" "72." I stopped with 12 though, over a 6-hour period, and each only 3.5 ounces; had to get Buster home safe, after all! (Didn't stop me from having a couple more "full size" brews after I got home though, along with my weekly glass of bourbon shared with Jake over the phone.)

So all in all a fantastic if very long (and tiring) day. Buster did well with the long day, and mostly enjoyed himself, but he's not sure he'll be up for another one this season. That's pretty understandable, and not something I'd push, so we'll see if we're done for the year. There's a couple more coming up over the next few weeks all nearby, but none we're expected at, so we'll just see how we feel week to week. Either way, August has been an awesome blues month!

(As always, there's additional photos on the Flickr site.)

One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Blues God!

Buster & I, along with my sister and her friend, went to see Buddy Guy and George Thorogood last night at the Bank of America Pavilion (formerly and forever more "HarborLights") in Boston.

It certainly was a great show! My only "complaint", is Thorogood came on after Buddy. Don't get me wrong, I love Thorogood, but Buddy is after all a god. Still, it may be that Buddy didn't want to close, he came out and did an amazing 45-minute set, Thorogood did close to 90 minutes with multiple encores. So it made for a long night. (There was also a local band before Buddy.)

The show was actually opened by Peter Gammons... ESPN baseball correspondent ("The Commissioner"), who came out with Red Sox GM Theo Epstein to welcome us to the venue and then did his own 30-minute rock set (with Theo sitting in on a couple of songs.)

Buddy hasn't lost a step, he looks unbelievable for his age and didn't slow down. Most of our photos came out horrible (they're up on my Flickr site), but a couple came out nice:



As always Buddy went for a walk around the entire venue, playing a 15-minute guitar solo the whole time, here he is as he passed by our aisle (though his attention was elsewhere... as was mine!):



He did quite a few songs from his new CD ("Skin Deep") and was plugging it heavily, the material he played was all great. He also invited up Quinn Sullivan for a couple of songs, a local, 9-year-old guitar prodigy who blew everyone away, truly phenomenal! (Quinn appears on the CD as well for one song.)

Thorogood was also great as always, and had everyone on their feet (including Buster, who's a big Thorogood fan and knows most all his songs) dancing through his whole show.

A lot of folks were yelling for Buddy to come back out with George at the end, but no luck. I suspect that Buddy wanted to pour everything into his set and then be done.

We were exhausted by the time we left but yeah, a great great night.

Been To The Mountain!

Saturday night, I finally saw The Blues Brothers perform live. After almost 30 years! Buster and I went to the Foxwoods resort in Connecticut for the show, to see Elwood and Zee Blues (Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi) performing in front of the Sacred Hearts Band.

The show was electric. The moment the curtains went up the band blasted into a "Soul Finger" instrumental, the band members all lined up side by side at the front of the stage forming a wall of power pushing out into the audience, horns blaring. Wow! Elwood and Zee came out afterwards to a boogying John Lee Hooker-like riff, and broke into "Sweet Home Chicago". The show was powerful and relentless, it kept coming at you song after song, all great fun and fantastic music.

The Brothers did what they're known for... provided a fun-spirited, high energy package showcasing great music performed by an incredibly strong band. They covered the Blues Brothers "era" front to back, from the first "Briefcase Full of Blues" album ("Messin' With the Kid", "Almost", "Rubber Biscuit" and of course "Soul Man") through Dan and Jim's own "Have Love Will Travel" album from a few years back ("Have Love Will Travel", "300 Pounds of Joy", "Swinging Party" and "Driving Wheel", amongst others), and much from in between. Judy Salgado did a great rendition of "Natural Woman", that woman's got a voice on her! They closed by dedicating to "She Caught the Katy" to "Joliet" Jake (John Belushi), and finishing with "Soul Man". They encored with "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love/Love Light".

Though Elwood doesn't move quite as well as he used to (much like myself!), the choreography, while less manic than Back In The Day, was fun and well-suited to their abilities. Zee also spent quite a bit of time during numerous songs roaming the audience, and inviting others to dance... mostly the hot ladies, of course! (Excepting on "300 Pounds", where he was belly-wumping with a few other larger gentlemen from the crowd.)

Another special treat for me was the inclusion of James Montgomery playing harp with the band (instead of Jimmie Wood). James is a very dynamic harp player and a New England blues institution, I've seen him play many times over the past 20+ years and on several occasions have shared beers with him. (He actually used one of my harps in a show he did in Cambridge once... I swear I didn't think it could do the things he was doing with it!)

Buster loved the whole show and was dancing to many of the songs... dancing is his thing. He was the hit of the resort, too... though we'd hemmed and hawed about it we did end up going to the show in full Blues regalia, Elwood and Buster side-by-side, with the Bluesmobile in the garage.

We got so many compliments and were so comfortable in the suits (which I haven't often worn in public since Jake joined the Marines way back then) we were wondering, Why did we hesitate? It may be time to let Buster and Elwood Blues become more commonly known around New England. Let's see, we're going to a Buddy Guy/George Thorogood show in two weeks... and rumors persist about a possible return to the area by my own Joliet Jake within a couple of years....

After the show Jim Belushi, still in uniform, signed autographs in the lobby. I got a new copy of "Have Love Will Travel" autographed for Jake, and for myself asked him to autograph a clear peel-off mailing label that I then put on the Bluesmobile's dashboard. It'll do until I get a chance to get the car itself autographed one of these years... Buster also got an autograph and he's quite proud of that. Here's Zee autographing Jake's CD:


All in all a fantastic night. The concert itself, so long looked forward to, was so emotionally powerful to me that it was hard to recall specific sights and sounds even an hour afterwards... just the emotional high.

We also hooked up with a couple of friends we've met through the online Blues Brothers forums, and that was great... Marc "Stein529" from New Hampshire, and Adam "ElwoodJones" from Connecticut. Below Buster and I are pictured with EJ in front of the Bluesmobile after the show:


It was great seeing them (I'd met Marc once before, and regret I didn't catch up with him again after the show) and it's fun having a circle of Brothers in the area.

Now the next goal: to get to see a Blues Brothers show together with Jake! We had an extra ticket for him but he wasn't able to make the trip up from Missouri this time. But with the new House of Blues being built in Boston, we're hoping the Brothers will perform there when it opens and we'll be trying hard to score seats to that one. Keep the Faith.....


(Below, I couldn't bring myself to put "ELWOOD" on the knuckles for this show; there was only one Elwood in the house that night in my mind! So I tried something different:)

(There's also a few additional photos on my Flickr page, links at right.)