Deep Blues Festival: Making it safe for the blues to be dangerous again

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Deep Blues Festival: Making it safe for the blues to be dangerous again
July 14, 2009
by Christopher Bahn, J. Diers
Decider Twin Cities

It's fitting that the Deep Blues Festival began three years ago on the far fringes of the metro area, in River Falls, Wis., considering that it celebrates musicians on the fringes of the blues genre. Not the smooth, safe, mainstream stuff, the B.B. Kings and the Robert Crays, but the raw, howling grizzle of old-school artists like T-Model Ford, or younger punk-blues cross-pollinators like Black Diamond Heavies. The 2009 edition is much larger and more centrally located, with more than 70 artists throwing down at the festival's five-day run July 15-19, starting with a free show at 331 Club on Wednesday, after which the festival moves to the Cabooze on Thursday, ramping up with two stages on Friday and Saturday, and wrapping up with a gospel brunch on Sunday. Despite the growth, Deep Blues' wild-eyed aesthetic hasn't changed. Besides Ford and the Heavies, headliners include veterans Hezekiah Early and Elmo Williams and new blood like Reverend Deadeye, Radio Moscow, and Left Lane Cruiser. (For more, see the official festival site at deepbluesfestival.com.) Decider talked to Deep Blues Festival organizer Chris Johnson about the origins, tribulations, and value of his hard-stompin' creation.

Black Diamond HeaviesDecider: The term "blues" usually conjures up images of more accessible artists. The Deep Blues Festival aesthetic is obviously different and more specific.

Chris Johnson: It is specific, but it's also quite diverse. Whether it's considered "roots" or "Americana" or whatever retro genre it's defined as, it's very raw. It's very real. There's a truth to it. It doesn't have the phony image stuff associated with [more mainstream] blues. Whether it's Chris Cotton with a Piedmont fingerpicking style—I don't even think he likes to call it blues—or the Roe Family Singers with a saw and fiddle and mandolin, or the kind of '70s psychedelic sound of Radio Moscow, they've all put their own twist on blues-influenced music. I think it covers a whole lot of ground, but they're all being very true to themselves, and also honoring their heroes. … There are bands that are a little more country, or bluegrass, or rock 'n' roll, people influenced by Gun Club, Flat Duo Jets, and The White Stripes. A lot of it flows back to R.L. Burnside and other stuff that Fat Possum has done.

D: Is the festival named after Robert Palmer's Deep Blues book?

CJ: Yeah. It's also a nod to the 1981 film. Robert Palmer was in there, and it was produced by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. It was kind of the first look by anybody into that area of music, guys like CeDell Davis, these guys down [in the South] who were totally obscure and overlooked and ignored by the mainstream. It's not smooth. It's not Chicago. There's a thousand different blues festivals out there, and essentially none of them would have anything to do with any of these people. That's changing a little bit.

Italian blues duo Dirty TrainloadD: What possessed you to start up your own festival?

CJ: Well, I'm 46, and I've been a music fan all my life. Several years back I saw a Johnny Winter show and T-Model Ford opened up for him. By learning about T-Model Ford I got into Fat Possum, and through those artists I found Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside and the whole North Mississippi thing that's been going on. That's how I got really interested in this really rough and punk blues, and also how I became a fan of a lot of bands influenced by these people. The Black Keys, Scott Biram, Black Diamond Heavies—I'd go out to see these bands when they came through the Twin Cities, and a lot of them were playing to very small audiences of 20, maybe 50 people. I just thought they deserved a bigger audience and that there should be more people exposed to this music.

D: How has the festival grown?

CJ: The first year, three years ago, it was 18 bands in a one-day event. Now it's 70-plus bands from eight different countries in a five-day event. We also added the film festival last year. It's the largest gathering of this type of music anywhere. There are a lot of people interested, but unfortunately it's little pockets of people around the world. Maybe Minneapolis is the wrong place to have [the festival], but it's just because I'm here and I'm doing it. They're really spreading around the world. Lots and lots of people are moved by this music. I turned away 200 bands that wanted to travel here on their own dime to play.

D: Compared to the young and hungry bands, is it difficult to get more veteran players to travel up here?

CJ: To book guys like Robert Cage, Elmo Williams, CeDell Davis, I look at it as a level of respect. I'm paying them a guarantee, buying their airfare, trying to show them that they still have fans out there. It's my desire to introduce them to a new audience and also to give the older fans a chance to see them again. I actually went down to Mississippi in April to help get CeDell to play the Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale. He hadn't been onstage in years; some people said they never expected to see him perform again. I think he's 82 now. This is a guy who had malaria as a young child, then had polio, was trampled in a club riot, lost the use of his legs—he's been through tremendous physical challenges, but he can still sing. To get CeDell Davis out of his nursing home, there are releases, I've got to have a nurse, handicap transportation—it's a struggle but it's worth it. I take some pride in giving the world a chance to see these guys because I don't know whether anybody else will do it again.