Music preview: Elvin Bishop's blues roll on at Sierra Nevada Big Room

Music preview: Elvin Bishop's blues roll on at Sierra Nevada Big Room
June 25, 2009
By JAIME O'NEILL
CicoER.com

CHICO -- If you've reached a certain age, you might recall the first time you laid eyes on Elvin Bishop's picture adorning that landmark 1965 album with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, a legendary assemblage of talent that included Butterfield and the extraordinary Michael Bloomfield.

Sadly, Butterfield and Bloomfield have long since moved on to that big blues jam in the sky, but Elvin Bishop is still with us, making music 'til the cows come home, and playing even better than he did back in the day when he provided electric guitar backup for Bob Dylan at that watershed moment in rock history when Dylan transformed himself from folk icon to rock 'n' roll troubadour and nearly got booed off the stage at the Newport Folk Festival. When the definitive history of mid-to-late 20th century blues gets written, Elvin Bishop's name will figure prominently in that story.

He's older now, and he looks a little like Harpo Marx these days, which is rather fitting since no one in the blues field brings more raucous good humor to his music than Bishop does. That spirit of fun has probably kept Bishop from receiving his props as one of the best and most serious blues guitarists around -- then or now. He's got chops to spare.

Age hasn't slowed him down much, and he still brings the party wherever he goes, which is certain to be the case on July 6 when he plays the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. Big Room. Dancing will not be mandatory, but few will be able to resist getting up in pursuit of
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getting down. Tickets for the show are available for $30 at 345-2739.

If you're coming late to the almost five-decade-long party Elvin Bishop has been throwing, you can help bring yourself up to speed by checking out "The Blues Rolls On," his Grammy-nominated album from last year. "Oklahoma," a song Bishop penned for that album, provides a capsule musical biography, tracing his journey from Tulsa to today. It's a fine album, easily among his best, and testimony to his stature in the blues community can be found in the peers who support him on that effort, from B.B. King to George Thorogood, and from James Cotton to Kim Wilson.

The title track from that recent CD can provide all kinds of reasons for going to see Elvin get it on at the Sierra Nevada. As he says in that song, "Blues is just a blessing from a long time ago & when I was just a young boy I went crazy for the sound, I'll keep on diggin' the blues 'til my mustache drag the ground."

No one, no one at all, has done more to keep the blues rollin' on than Elvin Bishop, one of a generation of young white cats who went to Chicago a long time back, sat at the feet of seminal players like Muddy Waters, Little Walter, and Howlin' Wolf, and have been carrying that blue flame ever since.