SEPTEMBER 2, 2010 ISSUE
Cool Mountain Temps, Hot Blues
8th Annual New River Blues Festival Sunday
From deep in Florida, Ike and Val Woods both grew up in the church and bring a righteous power to their blues. Ike's guitar playing is incendiary and passionate. They have traveled all over Europe, Mexico and the Caribbean with their joyous brand of blues.
Growing up in Georgia, Sammy Blue learned from legends Curley Weaver and Buddy Moss. He later moved to Chicago to learn from all the Windy City greats, including Muddy Waters. A member of the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, Blue can beautifully perform deep acoustic blues or slashing electric blues. Taj Mahal calls him "one of the best-kept secrets in roots music.”
Known as the “Patriarch of South Carolina Blues,” Drink Small began recording in 1956 and has been going strong ever since. His guitar playing is masterful, and his storytelling is hilarious. An inductee of the South Carolina Music Hall of Fame, Small has performed at the New Orleans Jazz Heritage Festival, The Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, The Chicago Blues Festival and many other major events.
The King Bees have been stingin' and swingin' since 1987. Hound Dog Baskerville and Queen Bee Zamagni spent years in the Deep South learning from real-deal blues folks. They have taken their blues and roots music all over this country and many others, performing at clubs and major festivals, and today they produce and host the New River Blues Festival, bringing authentic blues masters and legends to Appalachia. “Probably one of the best-kept secrets on the East Coast,” the eighth annual New River Blues Festival will take place in the High Country this Sunday, September 5, said Donovan Murray, festival producer and promoter.
Doors open at noon, and the festival runs from 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. Advance tickets for the five-act festival are $12, and tickets the day of the event are $15.
“We feel like we give people a really good value for their dollar,” Murray said, adding that advance ticket sales stop at midnight this Thursday, September 2.
Children 12 and under are free, “but we tend to have more of a mature audience,” he said.
Although it started in Todd and enjoyed several other venues due to various circumstances, the festival is slated to take place this year at the River House Country Inn and Restaurant in Grassy Creek, located just off Highway 16, north of Jefferson.
One of the only blues festivals in the area, the event brings in renowned talent in a genre not quite as prominent locally as some others.
“We’ve got some of the best bluegrass players in the world who live up here,” Murray said, and to whom the community has “access to all the time,” but blues musicians are not typically as easy to find in the High Country.
Rob Baskerville started the festival along with his wife Penny Zamagni because “I have been a working blues musician for years and years and love the music, [but] there was virtually no real authentic blues music in the High Country,” he said.
He thought the area would provide a quality backdrop, and people were interested in the music, so he began bringing in traditional African American artists from the Deep South, said Baskerville, guitarist and keys player for The King Bees, who coordinates the festival along with Zamagni—singer and bassist in The King Bees—and Murray.
They created the festival as a way to give back to both the musicians who mentored The King Bees and to the group’s fans, Baskerville said.
“We really concentrate on bringing in classic blues musicians,” Murray said, adding that some performers are in their 70s; Drink Small, 77, has been honored in the South Carolina Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame.
Headlining the event along with Small—“Patriarch of South Carolina Blues” according to the event’s Myspace page—are Sammy Blue, a Georgia musician whom Taj Mahal praises as top-notch; The King Bees Revue—the High Country’s own group that has performed at major festivals around the world; Ike and Val Woods, a Florida-based couple on guitar and vocals, respectively; and Shrimp City Slim and Juke Joint Johnny, a duo from South Carolina’s Low Country.
The King Bees Blues Revue, as musical hosts and coordinators of the festival, will play a set of its own and back up all the featured artists, Baskerville explained.
This gives people “a chance to see something different than even if they saw [any of the featured groups perform] elsewhere,” Murray said.
The King Bees will be joined by Mike Kincaid on saxophone, Juke Joint Johnny on harmonica for a few songs and possibly a horn player for several songs, Baskerville said.
The band has known “harmonica virtuoso” Juke Joint Johnny, who performs at the New River Blues Festival for the first time this year, since the 1980s, he said.
Another first-time festival performer this year is Blue, whom members of The King Bees met through a mutual friend named Chicago Bob Nelson, Baskerville said, noting that Blue earned a place in the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.
The festival is noteworthy for its classic blues artists and its unique venue—“How many people can have a stage backing up to the second-oldest river in the world?” Murray said.
“We’ve had people come from as far away as Atlanta [and] Michigan in the past,” he said. “This year I believe we’re expecting people from [Washington,] D.C., and east of Raleigh. It’s pretty cool when you can draw folks into the High Country for an event like this, especially for a holiday weekend.”
Attendees should bring chairs or blankets and “maybe something to put over their heads in case it rains, [because] the event is rain or shine,” Murray said, adding that no coolers or pets are allowed onsite.
Food will be available onsite—“we have a great barbeque vendor this year”—and the inn will provide beverages, both alcoholic and nonalcoholic, he said.
The West Jefferson Lions Club will assist with event parking and at the ticketing gate, “so the local community is involved too,” Murray noted.
For more information or to purchase advance tickets that will be waiting at the gate on the day of the show, call 336-499-9733 or click to www.newriverbluesfestival.info and then to www.thecelticforce.com link on the page.
For more information about the festival's performers, click to www.myspace.com/newriverbluesfestival. To learn more about the festival location, click to www.riverhousenc.com.
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