New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
New Haven blues musician headed to international competition
NEW HAVEN — Connecticut blues musician James Limerick Kerr will be looking to make a broader impression when he represents the the state, and his hometown of New Haven, on the world stage in Memphis.
Kerr, 47, who plays the resonator guitar (often known by the brand name, Dobro) and is a big fan of the bottleneck slide, will be competing in the Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge, which runs Tuesday through Saturday on Beale Street in Memphis. He won the Connecticut Blues Society’s Solo-Duo Blues Challenge and is and one of Connecticut’s two representatives to the upcoming IBC competition.
He and Carl Ricci & 706 Union Ave., the Manchester-based band that won the CTBS’ Band Challenge, will compete in the IBC’s opening round, which will take place Jan. 25-26, on Beale Street. If they advance, the semifinals will be Friday and the finals will take place Saturday.
Kerr, a generally softspoken, divorced father of an 11-year-old son, lives in the city’s East Rock section. He will head down to Memphis Monday, he said.
“I’m definitely looking
forward to representing Connecticut down there and hopefully surprising some people,” Kerr said. “People may not think of Connecticut as a harbor of blues players,” he said, but he hopes to “find an audience of people that enjoy what I’m doing and my music.”
Beyond that, “I’m looking forward to hearing players from all over the world.”
Kerr grew up in New Haven, left to go to college at the University of Michigan, then lived a few years each in Chicago and New York, working odd jobs, playing music — including in jazz
bands — and “soaking up the music,” he said.
Now, after some time in Westchester County, N.Y., and western Connecticut, he’s back in New Haven. He teaches guitar two days a week in New York City at Columbia University and City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, as well as at Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury.
He also occasionally plays with bands, including sitting in with Deadgrass & Friends, and recently finished a guitar textbook that he’s been working on, he said.
Heading to Memphis is by no means the beginning of the journey for Kerr, who began playing classical guitar as a 6-year-old. Since then, “I’ve been lucky enough to study with a number of great teachers,” he said.
He was inspired to pick up the resonator guitar — the metal or wooden acoustic guitars with metal resonators embedded in their centers, often used by slide guitar players — by seeing the late Doc Watson and listening to the playing of Jerry Douglass.
While he studied guitar formally, “I’m really selftaught” on the resonator guitar, Kerr said.
His mother’s family was originally from New Orleans, he said.
He won the Connecticut
Blues Challenge in his first time entering it — something he had been planning to do for awhile, but “COVID kind of derailed it for a couple of years.”
Kerr said he wasn’t surprised that he won.
“I was feeling pretty confident about my solo thing, at this point,” he said. “I’ve got some original blues tunes” and when he performs, “I try to feature mostly my own stuff.”
Beyond his originals, he loves the music of Mississippi Fred McDowell, Charlie Patton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Robert Johnson, in addition to Blind Willie Johnson and Son House.
After hearing him play Jan. 15 at a fundraiser at the Pine Loft on the Berlin Turnpike to help raise money to defray Kerr’s expenses,
Connecticut Blues Society President Peter “River City Slim” Rost, who has competed at the IBC, said Kerr is likely to do well down there.
“I think he has the potential to reach the finals,” said Rost, who also played on the bill with duo Slim & St. George, along with “Ramblin’ Dan” Stevens and Frank Breen. “His playing ability is head and shoulders above most players.”
Bridgeport blues DJ Bill Nolan, who spotlighted blues from Connecticut and beyond for more than 50 years through his show on WPKN-FM, said Kerr “has got a lot of talent,” although “I think he’s going to have a hard time” making it through all the competition at the IBC.