When The Devil Calls

Major announcement today!!!!  First, a few similarly related items:


-Alive Records have announced three upcoming records that y'all should be a-twitter about:  T-Model Ford and Gravel Road's "Taledragger",  Left Lane Cruiser's "Junkyard Speed Ball", and James Leg's (of Black Diamond Heavies) solo rekkid.    Man, 2011's already setting up to pretty keen.

-The new record by Black Pistol Fire is way, way better than anyone had any right to expect.  It's killer, no less.  Highly recommended.  

-The new Wanda Jackson record is terrible.  Embarrassing, even.   Just poorly executed, with bad choices made on instrumentation, arrangements, song selection, etc.  I blame Jack White, naturally.  He did a great job on the Loretta Lynn record, but this is just really undeserving of Wanda Jackson's great legacy.  Ugh.  Might get around to a proper review shortly (or not), but do yourselves a favor...Pick up Wanda's brilliant back catalog, and avoid this new travesty altogether.  Just sayin'...

Now then....the big announcement!  The Deep Blues Festival is Back!  

Yup, after a year off, the Deep Blues Festival is back in 2011.  It'll take place on July 16th, in Cleveland Ohio, at the great tavern,  The Beachland Ballroom.  It'll be at the obscenely low price of $20 for 12 (or more) great bands!  There's an Amtrak station in Cleveland, and hotel fare is cheap, cheap, cheap.

The Deep Blues Fest was the brainchild of his very godfatherliness, Chris Johnson, and enjoyed several years of amazing festivals in the Minneapolis/ St. Paul area.  We were lucky to have attended the last DBF, in which our minds were blown by such artists as T-Model Ford, Black Diamond Heavies, Left Lane Cruiser, Ten Foot Polecats, Pure Country Gold, Bloody Ol' Mule, Illinois John Fever, The Speaking Tongues, Reverend Deadeye, Robert Cage, Elmo Williams, CeDell Davis, Mississippi Gabe Carter, Jim Mize, Chooglin', and tons of others.  It was, as I've elucidated elsewhere, a glorious event.

And then...silence.  The event was not attended in numbers that could support the vision.  It was a shame.  To a fan such as I, it was depressing.  People would overpay for corporate events such as Lollapalooza and Coachella, but would ignore events that took us to our primal roots like the Deep Blues Fest.  What to do?

Chris Johnson went on to open up a BBQ and music joint, Bayport BBQ.  Which, frankly, sounds like a year-long Deep Blues party, and a place we are planning a road trip to this summer.  The Muddy Roots Festival stepped in and provided an amazing festival diversion, and did it very, very well.  But, and but...the tag "Deep Blues Festival" was missing from the radar...

And then came Jim Chilson of the Ten Foot Polecats and Ted Drozdowski of The Scissormen,  who banged their heads together and decided that it was time to revive the Deep Blues Festival, and take it into uncharted territory.  With Chris Johnson and Rick Saunders (the Jesus to Chris' God) assuming spiritual advisory status,  Jim and Ted have assembled a superb lineup of bands and artists, guaranteed to kick yr ass, and have forged ahead with the Deep Blues ecstasy.

We can't wait.  And there are more plans afoot after this...

We hope everyone stopping by here will consider attending The Deep Blues Festival 2011.  We're working on some special promo's for the show (free stuff!), but the music should be the primary focus.  This is a labour of love, consarnit, and a howl against the blandness of yr regularly scheduled "sponsored" music fest.  Tickets are cheap, and go directly to the bands, hotel lodging is cheap, transportation is cheap (if you take the train, which all Blues lovers should be keen to do), and the music and night will be priceless.

If you can't make the show, please consider making a donation to the Festival.  All money donated goes right to the bands...this is a "socialist" enterprise, of sorts.  No one is making money off this but the bands themselves.  So please..come and enjoy some great music...keep the movement (whatever that is) alive.  Donations can be sent here.

We're gonna be featuring each of the bands over the next many months as we work towards the Festival.  And we're gonna have some exclusive Big Rock Candy Mountain shit to give away to folks who attend or donate, so stay tuned. 

To start off, you can download some Ten Foot Polecats tunes from a previous post here.  As a bonus, here's a couple of tracks from The Scissormen. 

We're gonna have full posts and interviews with all the bands scheduled, over the next 6 months, so stay tuned...

The Scissormen: Whiskey and Maryjane (mp3)


The Scissormen: When The Devil Calls (mp3)

What more can we say?