Last Week In Review

Kenny "Blues Boss" Wayne


Friday night, I caught Kenny "Blues Boss" Wayne and Hurricane Hoerl with the Steve Freund Band down at JJ's Blues Lounge. It was an awesome show. I talked to someone that was present at both shows and they said the one at JJ's was even better than the one at Biscuits.

I had the dates transposed and almost missed it. I thought that they were at JJ's on Saturday. I was really glad that I checked. You just don't see blues piano played like that too much anymore. Kenny "Blues Boss" Wayne was simply incredible. Hurricane Hoerl was sounding great and he sang an excellent version of the rarely heard Junior Wells chestnut, Thing's That I Would Do. There are very few living guitarists that can support a piano player like Steve Freund and he was spot on all night long. Robi Bean and Tim Wagar just laid down one fabulous groove after another. Sid Morris came down and sat in for a few numbers. It was amazing!

Tuesday night, I went down to the Mojo Lounge. That was a good night, too. RJ Mischo and Little Junior Crudup came down and sat in for a few numbers that rocked the house down to it's foundation. There were some new faces down there that I hadn't seen before. Someone was videotaping a portion of the evening's festivities, so one can expect that it will be released by some Japanese company in the near future.

Additionally, I got a call from the fine folks at Mountain Top Productions this week. The cover art (featuring some of my photos) for the third installment in the Blues Harp Meltdown series is being worked on. You can expect this two disc set in only the finest of stores where music is sold relatively soon. This one contains performances by: Steve Freund, Mark Hummel, John Cephas and Phil Wiggins, Lazy Lester, Willie "Big Eyes" Smith and Carey Bell. While visiting with the fine folks at Mountain Top Productions, I had the opportunity to play through several vintage microphones through a very nice reissue '59 Fender Bassman LTD. The sound was simply amazing when mated to an old Astatic crystal biscuit.

This past week was a pretty interesting week blues-wise.