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I started a quest to find terrific blues music and incredible musicianship when I was just a little kid. I also have a tremendous appreciation of fine musical instruments and equipment. One of my greatest joys all of my life was sharing my finds with my friends. I'm now publishing my journey. I hope that you come along!


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Showing posts with label Blues Ace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blues Ace. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Chesepeake Bay Blues Fest - Blues Ace Reporting

Blues Aficionado Allen "Blues Ace" Anthony was on the scene for the festival as usual and brought us some great photos as well as short commentary. The picture of

Motor City Josh is of him (left) and his brother bringing the house down at the end of their set. What a pleasant surprise that band was! I had no idea how good that guy was.


Mac Arnold made his guitar out of a gas can. While it’s more of a guitar than many of Super Chikan’s glorified Diddley Bows, it also sounds it’s best when played with a slide rather than any primitive attempts at fretting notes or chords. (More to come on Mac Arnold). He spent a lot of time in the LA music scene for much of his career and has semi-retired back to South Carolina where he bases his band, Plateful of Blues. Another interesting thing about him is that he grew up with James Brown and played in high school bands with “The Godfather of Soul.”


John Mayall played a nice set. Did 3 songs off the Bluesbreakers “Beano” albums. Parchman Farm, and a few others. Also did a song, L&M Blues, aka Ridin’ On The L&M, which I know from other blues artists covers of it. But he introduced it as being a Lionel Hampton composition which I did not know.


Little Feat is always interesting every time I’ve seen them and this was no exception. They called out Nighthawks harpist Mark Wenner to play a couple songs, in particular Dixie Chicken, which is what they were playing when the photo was taken. First time I ever heard them play Dixie Chicken “stand-alone.” All of the half dozen times I’ve seen them they have morphed Dixie Chicken into a medley of some sort which almost always included Tripe Face Boogie. But this was about a 12-14 minute rendition of Dixie Chicken by itself. Their set was cut short by the demands that Kenny Wayne Shepherd take the stage at exactly his scheduled time. Fred Tackett looked like he was ready to break the band into Feats Don’t Fail Me Now as an encore, but they swept their carcases off the stage promptly. They even said, “We’d like to play one more but our time is up.” They were having fun and the crowd was heavily into it.

Then Kenny Wayne came on and played a standard set.


Ray Manzarek-Roy Rogers was very good by my estimation but I don’t think too many people got as excited by them as I did. Manzarek at one point played an instrumental solo of The Crystal Ship that was the highlight of their set. They also did Riders On the Storm where Manzarek sang and the crowd loved that but it was just OK. He also announced some kind of 40th anniversary of Jim Morrison’s death concert in Paris next month where they were going to play.

Roy Rogers did not have his guitar coming through the PA like it should have. It was weak so it’s hard to tell how good he was really. It was the only issue I had with the sound production for the whole two days of the festival.


Ronnie Baker Brooks damn near stole the whole show. He was terriffic! Way better than Lonnie Brooks was a couple years back. Looking forward to seeing him on the Cruise.


The Lee Boys were great. It’s a band of all family, either brothers or nephews, cousins, and uncles. They call their music “Sacred Steel” which is a base of gospel with generous portions of blues, jazz, mixed with part soul, r&b, and country. It’s is much like Robert Randolph. This band is basically a top notch rhythm section in support of their centerpiece, keystone, and focal point, Roosevelt “The Dr.” on pedal steel and lap slide guitar. I got to say, in a head-cuttin’ contest with the Devil on pedal steel, and my soul on the line, I might take Roosevelt over anybody alive including Robert Randolph! That dude was awesome.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Shoot That Thang


Photo of Blues Ace and Super Chikan on the Blues Cruise last year. This video features Super Chikan on Cigar Box Guitar. He spent his childhood moving from town to town in the Mississippi Delta and working on his family's farms. He was very fond of the chickens on the farm, and before he was old enough to work in the fields, he would walk around talking to them. This led his friends to give him the nickname "Chikan Boy". At an early age, Johnson got his first rudimentary musical instrument, a "diddley bow", which was simply a piece of wood with a piece of baling wire stretched from end to end. As he grew up, he came up with new ways to improve and vary the sounds he could make with it, and finally, in 1964, at the age of thirteen, he bought his first guitar, an acoustic model that had only two strings, from a Salvation Army store in Clarksdale.

As an adult, Super Chikan began driving a truck for a living. During the long stretches on the road, he began composing his own songs. When he showed some of the songs to his friends, they convinced him to go to a studio and record them. He then started playing with some renowned local musicians, but he decided he would rather perform on his own than try to conform his style to that of his bandmates. He did so, and in 1997 he released his debut album, Blues Come Home to Roost, influenced by such musicians as Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Chuck Berry. He went on to release What You See in 2000, Shoot That Thang in 2001, "Chikan Supe" in 2005, and "Sum' Mo' Chikan" in 2007. In the Clarksdale area, he is probably best-known for performing regularly at Morgan Freeman's Ground Zero blues club and for being Freeman's favorite blues performer. He also played support to Steven Seagal's band 'Thunderbox.'

Super Chikan's latest release was 'Chikadelic', and is distributed by BluesTown Records. It was recorded in Notodden, Norway's famed Juke Joint Studios, and was released at the 2009 Notodden Blues Festival. Super Chikan was backed by Norway's, Spoonful of Blues.