GARY CLARK,JR.

personal and moving tribute to his roots. The band, led by producer
and harp virtuoso Matthew Skoller, with Bill Sims, Jr., on slide guitar,
vocals, and keyboard, performed as tightly as any band of seasoned
bluesmen this side of the Muddy Waters Band. The rest of the band
featured a tight, nearly symbiotic percussion section with Andy Hess
on bass and Barry Harrison on drums.
The set led off with “Swing Low (Sweet Chariot)” a gospel
standard, with Bell on acoustic guitar and only minimal backing from
Harrison and Sims. Audience members not familiar with Bell jumped
when they heard the first notes of his resonant voice, full of twists and
turns, as he drove the song deep into the city night.
Other highlights included a close rendering of Mississippi Fred
McDowell’s “It’s A Blessing,” the great gospel composer Thomas A.
WATERMELON SLIM
& LIGHTNIN’ MALCOLM
Coahoma to Sonoma County
Blues Festival
Lagunitas Brewing Company
Petaluma, California
August 20, 2012
The blues is two men telling it like it is. Or so it was on a
summer evening in Petaluma, under a sun receding behind thin
clouds and a few lone trees. Bill Bowker, the decades-long voice
of the blues in Sonoma County, via his radio shows and event
organizing, conceived of and produced this alliteratively-titled
festival to bring the Delta blues sounds of Coahoma County,
Mississippi, to a local stage, so different and so far away.
Coahoma, where musicians like John Lee Hooker, Sam Cooke,
and Ike Turner first saw the light of day, is commonly accepted
as the “birthplace of the blues.”
WILBURN, SLIM, AND MALCOLM
36 BLUES REVUE
Dorsey’s “Search Me, Lord,” Albert Collins’s “Cold Cold Feeling,”
James Peterson’s “Don’t Let the Devil Ride,” Bell's own “Devil Ain’t Got
No Music,” (with an anecdote about “all music is God’s music, therefore
it can’t be the devil’s music”), and a passionate and rousing “Trouble In
My Way.” At the end of the set, the audience stood and applauded
wildly. The shy and self-effacing Bell grinned widely and bowed from
the hip, as reverently as he had played just moments before.
The band played a second set, and rather than repeat the first
set list, Bell opened with a different tune from Devil Ain’t Got No
Music, demonstrating how seriously Lurrie Bell takes his music,
keeping it fresh in the way it was played and how it was presented to
a grateful audience.
– Michael Cala
Watermelon Slim,
SLIM
with two Blues Music
Awards from 17 nominations,
whose resume
includes gigs as a
watermelon farmer,
truckdriver, sawyer
(where he lost part of a
finger), collection
agent, funeral officiator,
and small-time criminal,
presented a set
somewhat akin to a
three-ring circus. Wearing
a maroon silk shirt,
derby hat, gray chinos,
and white shoes,
clothes he said he purchased
at the Super
Soul Shop in his current home, Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Slim, performing solo, has a story to tell about his life, and
he tells it loud, shouting over his lapsteel guitar,
gliding through his composition “The Last Blues,”
using the head of a socket wrench as a slide, and
then Sleepy John Estes’ “Goin’ to Brownsville,” on
which he used a drumstick as a capo. For “Truck
Holler,” one of several workingman’s blues, he
donned a baseball cap while seated and used a
microphone as a makeshift gearshift. “Seems like
that old road don’t never unwind,” he sang,
a cappella.
Joined by co-headliner Lightnin’ Malcolm,
with Jason Wilburn drumming, and Slim back on
lapsteel, the trio rocked their way through
Fred McDowell’s “You Ain’t Gonna Worry,” and
“Highway 61.”
Calling it an existential song, Slim performed
Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die” as a harmonica
solo, before diving into Sonny Boy Williamson’s “I
Don’t Care No More,” in which “the woman wanted
PHOTOGRAPHY © ROBERT FEUER
PHOTOGRAPHY © ROBERT FEUER