Vacaville Represents at Sac IBC
Northern California Blues Festival
Fair Oaks, CA
Okay, so it’s about noon on Saturday, June 21, the first day of summer, and we are driving through Sacramento, headed for the Northern California Blues Festival. As we get closer I notice the reading for the outside temperature has reached a blistering 108 degrees. The blues girl looks at me like I’m crazy, (questionable, at best), and says, “Are we really going to this thing”? “No problem”, I say, “there’s lot’s of shade at Fair Oaks Park”. Unfortunately, most of the landscape under the trees had already been homesteaded though we did manage to find a nice spot under a tree with a great vantage point and set up a home base. Did I mention that it was 108 degrees? Shade doesn’t come with air conditioning I found out. Long story short, it was HOT! But hey, so was the music so it all worked out.
Leo Boots and the South Side Shuffle took off right as we arrived. I run into Leo quite a bit as we run with a few of the same people but it was nice to see the boys up there again, cranking out their eclectic versions of the blues. I enjoy Leo’s off beat style and Mike Farrell’s guitar work so it was a fun time. After Leo came the Steve Foster Band, right about the time the heat was at it’s fullest. Steve made the place even hotter with his gutsy guitar work and stage antics. This is a great group of three and they really know how to work a crowd. After Steve, the Delta Wires took over and played a fantastic set. This is a great blues party band with a great sound. The boys were smokin’ and the horn section was as tight and as exciting as always. It was nice to see Danny Sandoval of Nitecry up there playing Sax and dancing all over the place. If you’ve ever seen Danny play, you know that he is an amazing talent and has enough energy to run the lights.
Right after the Delta Wires set, the shade made it down in front of the stage and many folks started moving down towards the front in anticipation of the top bill acts. Mighty Mike Schermer and his band were up next and put on a great show. Mike is very contemporary in his blues work, has a lot of original music and is an impressive guitar man. His performance had the newly shade energized crowd up and dancing. Mike Emerson on keyboards was excellent, as always. It was a very nice set and a great opener for the night’s headliner, Elvin Bishop. Now, what can I say that hasn’t been said about Elvin? Since the 1960’s and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Elvin has been churning and burning. He hasn’t lost a step along the way either. He opened with “Stealing Watermelons” and rolled through all the great Bishop tunes, including “My Dog”, “Goin’ Fishing” and a cool mostly instrumental version of “Fooled Around and Fell in Love”. Mike Schermer stayed on stage and played the set, Ed Early was off the hook on trombone, heck, even Rich Kirch, of the late John Lee Hooker’s band took a few riffs on the old red axe. Yes the same old red Gibson axe Elvin’s been playing for over forty years.
The cool thing about a great blues festival is that you can pretty much have some access to the artists as they hang around all day enjoying the music like we do. My son Jacob is a little blues guitar talent at twelve and all the guitar players took the time to encourage him to keep it up and keep practicing. We talked backstage with Elvin Bishop and before the show Rich Kirch took him over to check out Elvin’s guitars and give him some personalized picks. He also got to talk to Leo, Mike Farrell, Steve Foster and Mike Schermer. It’s great to see these guys take the time to encourage youngsters to follow a musical path.
To my dismay, I had a previous engagement and wasn’t able to attend on Sunday but heard it was fantastic, with the Sacramento Blues Revue, Mick Martin and the Blues Rockers and Maria Muldaur. I hope you all got to see some of it. We are so lucky to have such great blues talent’s available in this area and to see many of them together at festivals like this is always a treat. Once again, northern California outdid itself with a great blues festival.
This tears festival was to benefit “Through the Mind”, providing free alternative mental health care to war veterans. Besides the music there was a fun kid’s play area, a car show, jewelry, shirt and merchandise vendors, great food and drinks as well as a chance to visit old friends and make some new ones. It doesn’t get much better, does it? A big thanks to all the NCBF staff, the Sacramento Blues Society and all the volunteers!
“Keep your eyes and ears open, the Blues are alive in northern California!”
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Mr. December at Constable Jack's - 5/9/08
Cole Fonseca at the Torch Club - 3/28/08
Blues Blowout at Cache Creek - 2/1/08
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