Between heaven and hell

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Between heaven and hell
August 27, 2009
by Jeremy Loome
Edmonton Sun

Historically speaking, the blues was the devil's music, the party alternative to gospel music -- and just as much a comfort to so many in the days of U.S. segregation.

So when thousands descend on Hawrelak Park every year for the Edmonton Labatt Blues Festival, they come respecting that, and to party.

It never disappoints.

Having said that, if you're a hardcore blues fan, blues festivals can be equal slices heaven and hell. The crowd is made up largely of people who seem to love blues music enough to listen to three straight days of it, but who get most of it off the radio, because they don't like to go to bars anymore.

Given that young, dynamic blues bands spend most of their time playing original, often killer material almost exclusively in bars because of how few commercial radio outlets they have, it's tough for them to build an audience.

You end up with two types of blues: festival blues, which panders to audience favourites in the set lists and shuffles -- songs with a beat like Sweet Home Chicago -- dominate, because most of the fans there will only do it once a year and they're there to dance. Most of the songs are covers, many have been done a million times and rarely is anything new added.

And then there's blues, the living, breathing craft that thousands of people still love and follow.

Yesterday was heavy on the former, a little lighter on the latter. And there were little slices of heaven and hell all over the place.

Heaven: Listening to young Kansas bluesmen Dustin Arbuckle and Aaron Moreland rip through a killer version of R.L. Burnside's Jumper on the Line, with the ensuing repeating chord boogie line enthralling a crowd that, until that point, seemed to be more interested in the usual Chicago shuffle fare.

The opening duo didn't seem any luckier than other festival openers in engaging the crowds, which were still filing in, until that song. They briefly lost that sway over the audience again and the dance floor was drifting away when Arbuckle, who wails vocally and plays some mean, mean harmonica, sagely invited Deanna Bogart onstage to join on piano and fill out a shuffle.

Hell: Realizing that, as much as I love them, too many shuffles are too many shuffles. And Lord, there were a lot for a four-hour show. For the uninitiated, a shuffle is that dum-de-dum-de-dum beat you always hear behind Sweet Home Chicago, Let the Good Times Roll, Bright Lights, Big City and other classics.

As good as second act Magic Slim can be-- particularly outdoors and on a shorter set list, where his presence is really dominating -- he didn't pull out one of his deadlier guitar cuts like Wake Me Up Early or Jealous Man, but instead was going to get a crowd version of The Blues is Alright going around the room for about nine minutes.

Heaven: Looking around the Hawrelak amphitheatre bowl and seeing heads bobbing to Slim's funky What Can We Do Later On?, then realizing the age diversity ranged from about six to 96.

Hell: Finding somewhere to park. It's like a caravan of lost souls, drifting about aimlessly. If any of the hundreds of cars that don't arrive early ever found a crossroads in Hawrelak, they'd block it so thoroughly the devil himself couldn't get through.

Roomful of Blues closed out the night, proving that organizer Cam Hayden knows how to stack a lineup. The festival has taken on an international reputation as a place where artists will get an amazing reception, and that proved true once again.

Heaven: Getting a chance to talk blues with innumerable people; as someone who fronts a blues band and listens to about two hours or three hours of it daily, it's a little slice of blues geek heaven.

Hell: The blues fashions. Lord spare me the fedoras, tube tops, bullet bras, English cabbie caps and hairy-chested tank tops. If you're all so badass, why are you scared of bars?

The festival continues today with Arsen Shomkhov, Mark Hummel, Chubby Carrier, The Juke Joint Duo: Cedric Burnside and Lightning Malcolm, and the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Review, fronted by soulman extraordinaire Tommy Castro.

The day's first performance is at 2:30 p.m. The gate opens at 1 p.m.