Blues fest celebrates past, looks to future with summer lineup
Milestone anniversaries are usually about celebrating the past.
The year after? Well, usually about the past, present and very much the future.
So it is on many levels with the Calgary International Blues Festival as it heads toward its 11th year of providing the city and its music lovers with some of the finest acts in every variation of the genre from around the world.
On a financial level it is, presently, in a good spot moving forward, as it has now put past woes behind it according to producer and local dynamo Cindy McLeod.
“In it’s really nice to be at the point where we’re just free, liberated to carry on now,” McLeod says.
Artistically, well, this year’s event, which takes place July 27 to Aug. 2 at various venues around the city, culminating in the four-day showcase at Shaw Millennium Park, is also a mix of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Headliners for the fest include veterans of the blues such as: Curtis Salgado, who, as the frontman for the Nighthawks, inspired John Belushi to create the Blues Brothers, and went on to play in the Robert Cray Band, Roomful of Blues and Santana; Grammy-winning “harp hero” Sugar Blue, who has played with the Rolling Stones and can be heard on several of their recordings including Miss You; the duo well-known to these parts of Geoff Muldaur and Amos Garrett; New Orleans funk and R&B man Walter “Wolfman” Washington; and fellow Louisiana hot saucer Bobby Rush.
“He’s an icon in the biz,” she says of Rush. “He has a really interesting crossover sound that he’s dubbed ‘folk-funk.’
“And it’s really born of the chitlin circuit, which is a very important aspect of the southern States and a whole thing unto itself. It’s very grassroots, it’s very homey, for lack of a better term. And then he moved to Chicago and really became quite a phenomenon there.”
If we’re looking to the now and tomorrow of the music, there’s a healthy helping of that via: 30-year-old award-winner Jarekus Singleton, who mixes blues, hip-hop, rock and R&B together; quirky, New York artist Tas Cru, the 2014 recipient of the Keeping the Blues Alive Award; vocalist Alexis P. Suter, who began her life as a dance diva before changing her sound and hitting the road for a lengthy period of time opening for the late Levon Helm; and rising Vancouverbased duo The Harpoonist and The Axe Murderer.
“These guys are really taking over the scene,” she says of the pairing of Shawn Hall and Matthew Rogers. “And that’s North American-wide, not just in Canada …
“For two guys, they make a lot of (sound).”
And finally, if we’re looking towards blues in its embryonic state, McLeod reveals that at this year’s Millennium Park weekend happenings there will be a youth component, showcasing the younger movement of local musicians who are embracing the blues and making it their own.
“The future of it is reliant upon the youth being turned onto the music,” she says.
“And I’m seeing results of that, I’m seeing some of the kids that we introduced the blues to when they were 15 that now have their own bands and are starting to record and create a scene for themselves.
“So it’s a beautiful thing watching it evolve like that and that is a really important aspect,” McLeod says before adding, “The future, the past and the present are all very important to me and the growth of the idiom, itself.”
Here’s to all three. Here’s to the Calgary International Blues Festival.