Beaches Jazz fest

I've got to get two newsletters to the printer on Monday, a FACTOR

application due at the end of the month (and I'm hardly clear on how I

want to spend the money), I've got to remix the track to be included on

the NorthernBlues sampler (being mastered next week)...and what have I

been doing today? Yardwork, gardening...then a little time at the

office with JH scanning some pics for both newsletters...and now

writing my blog. Work avoidance, but as always lots going on. And it

seems very hot, though it's not even 30c.



last night I had a peek at the Beaches Streetfest after a screening of

that great jazz film classic "A Great Day in Harlem". The street was

crowde but not the crush they had tonight, I bet. Last night RK was in

town and we jammed away the night. I must have bored him with my

repeating pattern but I was trying out some changes for a new tune - as

of tonite, I've abandoned those changes in favour of a slow blues

approach. Just what we need for a sure chart success, a slow blues!

Anyway I laid down some ideas on the micro-cassette recorder. Can you

believe I'm sitting next to a condensor mike with a good preamp plugged

into a dual processor Mac and it's still easier to capture ideas on

this little hand-held, low-fi, micro-cassette.



TIPS OF THE DAY

(overheard at the Beaches International Jazz Festival)



"They won't dance if they don't know the words"



and if you're going to be playing a showcase at one of those music

conferences, tell them the only night you have available is the last

night - that way, you'll have time to schmooze up an audience for your

showcase





The Toronto Bluesfest may have been cancelled, but we sure had that

festival spirit at the Beaches today and especially at the Silver

Dollar afterwards. I hope I absorbed a few tips from the amazing guitar

playing I heard. Kid Ramos was at the beaches mainstage and I must say

it doesn't get much better than that. I was pretty tired and should

have stayed home after supper, but I knew he'd be heading over to the

Silver Dollar to sit in with Little Charlie and the Nightcats and sure

enough he was there and he played great again - but the tone was not

quite the same as he got through his Fender Reverb Unit and two Vox AC

30 amps. Talk about *driving*!



Little Charlie played great too. And Rick Estrin is one of the most

colourful bluesmen anywhere. He was hilarious and what a great singer.

On the break it was like a bunch of long lost brothers from California

who found each other in some far-away land (our far-away land).



Shortly after the second show started, Little Charlie took off his

guitar in the middle of a slow blues and said "we have a great blues

guitarist in the house tonight" and Kid Ramos, sitting just in front of

me, started to get up But Charlie said..."Rick Estrin!" and handed Rick

the guitar. Rick proceeded to play some respectable guitar, and Charlie

even blew some harp - a little role reversal. Then they invited up a

bunch of the Ottawa crew that was in attendance, Roxanne Potvin,

Southside Steve and J-W Jones all got to play with their West Coast

guitar hero.



Note to self: Have a tune prepared for situations when you might be

called up to do a tune and there's no guitar to play. Something I could

just sing. A tune that everybody knows. I also have to work up

something on bass - at The Porquis Blues Festival, I got up and did

Born Under a Bad Sign on bass but I need something a little more peppy.

Sorry that I let June go by without any posts about all the exciting stuff that was going on in Toronto. Day after day...one fabulous musician after another - I have to say there were moments when I just felt like putting my guitar away for good, but then there were other moments where I was inspired to go back home and do a little writing. I need to, I've promised three new tunes to spruce up the new album - these I want to record in a context that will be a "bookable" unit for festivals next year. An acoustic trio, I guess - and I'm still looking for a fiddler that can dig in and play the blues. They're not a dime a dozen.

Yesterday I got back from playing Porquis Fest (a slightly rocky flight in a Dash 8) and I went straight to the computer to re-mix the track that I had to hand-off to NorthernBlues for their next sampler - that's surely shows faith that they will eventually receive a finished album from me. Early 2005, I promise. The track is Saab Story.

Porquis was a chance for me to play two of the three songs I've just written for the album. They seem to go over great though, out in Northern Ontarion like this, I wondered about these lyrics like "making quorum" and other inside stuff (wtrite what you know). Jack de Keyzer closed out the festival and it doesn't get much better than that. Then it was tiime for the all-star jam and my guitar was back at the motel, so I ended up with a bass guitar and the only song I could think of that I could sing and play bass was "Born under a Bad Sign" so I did it - even though Jack had done a great version in his set. I could have just started into some funky jam groove, but that's a risky proposition in front of a big crowd. Note to self: have a few more blues standards you can sing & play on bass. Hell I need blues standards I can play on guitar - I realize I don't know all the words to hardly any blues standards - I've played the songs, but never sung them. I have trouble enough remembering the words to my own compositions.

So now I'm back into working on my music schedule (so why am I sitting here typing this blog?), but let me collect my musical highlights from the blur that was the Downtown Jazz Festival and other great stuff in June. On the world music front, I saw Yousoo N'Door (sp?) , a ska-group from Mexico called Los de Abajo and Guinea's Bembeya Jazz featuring the legendary guitar hero Sekou "Diamond Fingers" Diabaté. Interesting to see one of this city's most sophisticated jazz guitarists (and fellow blogger) Reg Schwager enraptured by "Diamond Fingers"

OK, my faves for the jazz fest were John Scofield, Jean-Luc Ponty and the Blind Boys of Alabama. Oscar Petrerson was no slouch either - he played a very blues set - no piano histrionics here, just some bluesy jazz with big, beautiful chords. DD Jackson opened the evening concert for the first night and he gave that Yamaha piano a good taste of what was to come - the tuner was kept pretty busy with the likes of Michel Camilo and Hilton Ruiz. Ron davis played some fine stride too.

Sorry that I didn't get out to the after-hours jams - especially sorry that I wasn't there the night Wynton Marsalis and his band closed the place at 4 am. Apparently the Montreal Jazz fest is pretty upset with us because Wynton had to cancel his appearance at their festival the next day - his lip was too swolen. At Grossman's that night, I saw the amazing youg guitarist Jordan Cook sitting in with Jerome Godboo, Al Webster and Alec Fraser.

At the hotel, I had a chance to chat with Jay McShann, who moved very slow but was not fuzzy about where he was going next and what gigs were coming up. He played with Junior Mance at the bistro - two pianos. Last time I saw that set up at the Bistro the players were Ralph Sutton and Dick Hyman. Sutton is gone now - I'll always remember shaking that huge hand. Jay also had a big hand, but softer and just his handshake enveloped you like a big hug.

The day before the jazz fest I went to a big party for publicist Richard Flohil's 70th birthday. The room was filled with music industry - musicians and behind the scenes types - lots of media guys, including your truly. There were some fine musical performances, but in true fashion, the audience refused to move down close to the stage - so there were these great performers, some of who had written songs specially for the occasion, and yet the entire crowd was way at the back of the room talking up a storm. Somebody should write a song about that!

I missed the first night of the Toronto Blues Society bTalent Search Finals and must apologize to Julian Fauth and Doc Mclean, two musical buddies that I would have been out supporting if I hadn't had a gig myself (see previous post).



I did get to the second night of the finals and was surprised to find an old Montreal bluesman I knew in the winning band, Bharath and the Catfish - guitarist extraordinaire Andrew Cowan of the Stephen Barry Blues Band. I was doubly surprised that he was playing the same model of Harmony archtop guitar that I just received as a gift out of the blue. It's not in very playable shape but you can tell it sounds great - I think I'm now motivated to get it in good working order. Andrew had a great sound - through a small ampeg amp. I think I'm inspired.



Kudos to Julian Fauth for winning the runner-up prize. Julian *is* a prize on the Toronto blues scene.



Also sorry to see Calgary lose that hockey game...

Orangeville Blues & Jazz Festival

Hey, Larry, sorry I wasn't able to stick around to to hear more than a
couple of Trouble & Strife tunes at the Winchester - I stopped in on the
way out of town but the place was filled to capacity and they wouldn't let
us in. I did peek around the door long enough to see the lovely and
talented Maureen Brown in full flight with you guys.

We couldn't stick around. My friend Jacquie, who got off work early and
drove me all the way up there, was fading fast. The band sounded great and
it was a treat having you sit on with me at the Coffee House stage. This
was my first outdoor show this year and isn't it great to play under the
wide open sky - even when the sun is coming straight at you.

We had an attentive audience and a happy venue. Here's hoping the
Orangeville Blues & Jazz fest continues to provide a great kick-off of the
Southern Ontario blues festival season.

cancellation

If you were planning on dropping in on my gig at Ziggy's on Saturday afternoon, forget it. Ziggy has decided to discontinue live music...effective immediately (and that means me) ...and Butch Coulter (all the way from Germany) was going to sit in...Brian Monty was coming up from Van Kleek Hill. It would have been a rocking good time - an Eastern Townships reunion. Oh well, I guess we'll have to go to the Eastern Townships for an Eastern Townships reunion.



I got a feeling these Saturday afternoons at Ziggy's were not going great. And now with the new smoking bylaw, he claimed business was down. I suppose he lost a few regulars - I seem to recall there were a lot of smokers around the bar. But it's an uphill battle for the club owners that are booking blues. Expect to see more tribute bands and less blues bands in some of our favourite clubs.



Anyway my gig at the Orangeville Blues & Jazz Festival is *STILL ON* for Friday (tomorrow) night (I checked). 7PM - 10PM at the Village Coffee House, I guess you know where it is if you live out that way.



Drop in and say hello - I was interested to read Sluggo's comment about how few people from the blues lists came out for his gigs - I think he counted one. I've had a few more than that over the years, but I'm always astounded to see almost no response from a big email blast but then you run into somebody on the day of the gig and you mention it to them and they show up with a bunch of friends - I guess it's that human touch. Anyway, I can't get worked up about this when I see that many established artists go through the same thing. They could be the biggest thing out east or out west and they come here and play for...nobody. Next week it will be NXNE and some bands will drive a thousand miles to play for half an hour to a handful of people. I hope it's worth it for them. Last week I went to a big preview showcase for a hot new artist, Matt Andersen. It was an open invitation posted on this list with free booze and free food...and still they could not pack the joint. That's Toronto for ya.



Even if you don't want to see Ole Colorblind, try to give this new festival some support. They've got a good team behind it, but if people don't come out, they're going to be ziggied.

One more weasel

Look out, I've written another "insider" song about the dark underbelly of the music industry. This one refers to "One of those weasels, talking at the back of the room" and I'll apologize in advance to all my media pals some of whom may raise an eyebrow, but most will realize it's all in good fun and if anybody feels slandered, I will gladly retract any reference to them. I'll post the lyrics later (I wrote it sitting at a table in The Rivoli at the CD launch for John and the Sisters. There was an opening set by a hot young singer-songwriter and there he was playing for a dream audience of music industry honchos and media types...most of whom were at the back of the room chatting. I've always thought these gigs were a thankless job. I hope he got noticed by at least one important music industry honcho. I didn't get his name, myself.

Photo Credits

A big "excuse me" to photographer Eddy B for using one of his pics in MapleBlues without his permission. I have already apologised to Eddy in person but I need to tell the public at large (that huge public that reads my blog religiously!) that I am the only one responsible for putting that picture of Raoul in the ad for the Porquis Blues festival - It's a great pic and I had previously used it in MapleBlues (with permission). But this time, the Porquis folks (one of the few festivals that had the foresight to include Ole' Colorblind in their programming)sent me the ad but asked me to drop in pics of Jack de Keyzer and Raoul Bhaneja. I just did a search on my computer, found the best pics I could and dropped them into the ad. It's a great pic of Raoul by Eddy, who has terrific site himself.

While I'm at it, let me acknowledge that Don Vickery was the photographer who took the pic of the presentation of the Ron Collier Memorial Scholarship that I used in this month's Downtown Jazz newsletter. And there was no computer cop-out excuse for that one! He brought me the print and I scanned it myself. Both Eddy and Don have done photo shoots for me and they're both friends - "You always hurt the one you love" or should I say "You always take for granted the one you love."

Furthermore, I should give myself a kick in the ass because I took the cover pic and, of course, no credit. And let me include a big sorry to photographer Barry Thompson, whom I've done this to more times than I can remember (and when I did put his name, it was often mispelled...) What are we going to do with me?

Eddie Baltimore R.I.P.

Eddie Baltimore R.I.P My sympathies to Eddie's partner Patricia and hundreds of friends - mostly musicians. There have been tributes all over the radio today - what a great impact he had on the Toronto music community. Zoe Chilco has started working on a story for the next MapleBlues. I only met Eddie a few times, and I was looking forward to playing with him at a guitar workshop I was hosting at this year's Winterfolk. Eddie didn't make it to that gig and now I know why... he was deathly ill.

Sorry I didn't make it to his funeral -I'm told there was a couple of hundred players there. I would have been too, even had my suit on, but a computer crisis at the jazz festival office walayed me. I was moved to tears reading the tribute Lance Anderson posted on the Irridescent Music site. Lance said "Even the angels are crying" and Eddie looks positively angelic in that photo with Garth Hudson. Gentle heart, indeed. That's what I'll always remember about Eddie Baltimore.

Next time I'll keep my mouth shut department

Maybe it's because I just went to this native style pipe circle evening
that I'm being a little hard on myself but I had one of those little
reminders that one should avoid tooting one's own horn. I'm often in a
position to recommend an artist for a gig - sometimes a high profile gig,
after all I work for a big jazz festival and I've been a Juno judge, even
chair for jazz & blues at the Indie Awards, and every summer I help select
the Subway Musicians - (did I say I was going to avoid tooting my own
horn?). Anyway, I'm talking to RC and we're talking about the election
being called on the 28th and I'm wodering out loud if it will hurt the big
blues show that night. Then I mention casually that that I had suggested
her to open the show and the Artistic Director thought it would be a great
idea until he looked up her itinerary on the web and said she's not
available. Oh well, next...But now she asks me what was the date and I tell
her the 28th and she says "I available on the 28th of June, it's the 28th
of July I'm working!" It seems the tour dates on her website went June 24,
Jun 25, Jun 26, Jun 27, Jul 28 so JG misread. I'm sorry that I didn't check
it myself...I'm sorry I even suggested he check the tour dates on the web
(I should have just let him make the call)...and really, I'm sorry that I
got sucked in to that process. I've been reminded more than once to leave
the programming to the experts.

Anyway, I should be more concerned about programming *myself* into a few
festivals. Tomorrow the Colorblind Support Committee will meet to make a
strategy and timeline to unleash this talent on the world. (meanwhile I
have to find a way to hand over my (desktop) publishing empire to my son
who's not really into it - yet! so that I can plan a full touring schedule).

I've got three brand new tunes to regale them with - the one I wrote
tonight goes like this:

What will they say when I'm gone?
Will they just recall what I did wrong?
Some have their perception - some just don't see.
What will they say about me?

Other CD launches and showcases - John and The Sisters (April 20) at the Rivoli. Phenomenal playing _ I like the ironing board routine though I hear others were not impressed.



Last Saturday, it was Paul James's 26th Anniversary and he gave a great show at Hugh's Room. A much bigger crowd than Big Bill Morganfield (son of Muddy Waters) two nights before.





Afterwords I headed over to the Dior Lounge for their big final blues blowout. No more fri night blues shows. After this, they're going to have DJs.



I missed the Jaymz Bee CD Launch at the Senator, now I bet that was a great party!

Yes, I do get out and play once in a while. If you're near Orangeville

(hmmmm, don't think I know anybody near Orangeville) I'm playing Friday

Night, June 4 at the Village Coffee House from 7-10pm as part of the Orangeville Blues & Jazz festival



Saturday, June 5 I'm playing the matinee at Ziggy's and I'll be sharing the

stage (or patio, however it works out) with that fantastic harmonica player

Butch Coulter. Butch is coming over from Europe for some family matters and

the timing just worked out. Butch and I toured the Czech Republic in 2002

as a duo and had a great time. It'll be a real treat playing with him again

I did not get any packages out to festivals this year - actually I dropped
off some for various folk festival directors at the OCFF Conference - but
never heard from one of them. (I'm not so good at follow up - I figure if
they like what they hear, they'll get back to me). Anyway, as it turned out
I got a last minute call from a festival that never got a package - the
Orangeville Jazz & Blues Festival and I'm playing it June 4. A couple of
days before that, in the parking lot at Dior Lounge, I ran into Sab, who
puts on the annual Porquis Junction Blues Festival, and he invited me to do
it again - last minute again, but I don't mind. And I just got some
second-hand confirmation I'll be back at the Markham Jazzfest. That's how
festival gigs happen for me. The ones I try don't even get back to me. The
ones that heard me play call me back.

May 12 - No, the CD is not finished yet...and it looks like the release has
been delayed again. But I haven't been thrown to the wolves yet. FM, as a
form of encouragement, said he'd like to get me up into his studio for a
couple of days to lay down some blues standards with MF and a legendary
rock guitarist, DW, but when I added up the $$$ it didn't seem so practical
and I had to say "later". Still have to find a way to lay down some
hi-energy acoustic tracks. If not solo, then a small combo. I was thinking
resonator guitar, upright piano and fiddle.

May 9 Wasn't able to schedule a gig with the first Sunday of May and make
it my annual Mothers' day show, but this year, the best I could do was get
my ancient recording of "Don't Forget Your Mother" played on Steve
Fruitman's radio show Back To The Sugar Camp on CIUT-FM. That recording has
been geeting a lot of attention lately - an American author who is working
on a biography of drummer Jim Gordon (who played on it) was in touch with
me asking for anecdotes about the recording sessions. Jim, for those who
don't know, killed his own mother and was committed to an institution for
the criminally insane as far as we know. Frazier Mohawk, who produced the
session, seems to think we might have put him over the edge. (I've since
found out that it was years after our recording that he committed the
crime, so I don't feel so bad) (and thanks to FM for pointing out that I
was wrong in my previous posting claiming that Gordon died in an
institution for the criminally insane - he is indeed still living) ((I hAte
it when I publish the deaths of people who are not - I remember a few
months after Sandy Denny died I, I referred to the "late" Tracy Nelson.))

May 8 - Tonight I was among a large audience in a beautiful theatre
listening to HM with his new band and it was phenomenal. He made a nig
impact as a solo artist and he'll do it again as a band. These are the kind
of venues I want to play! Big (Green) Room to hang out with friends
afterwards

Just in from Healeys. Eddy B called to tell me Kenny Neal was a last-minute special guest at Jeff Healey's regular Thursday gig. He was in town because his daughter had a CD launch at the club the night before so they asked him to sit in with them. Dave Murphy was probably the previously scheduled guest and he did a stand-up job backing up Kenny and when he sang a couple of tunes in the next set, he rocked. So as I'm watching this go down, I'm trying to analyze what makes this work. When you're a "special guest" like this, there's no rehearsal, no charts...you're lucky if the key get's announced. So the seasoned veterans would not pull out an original tune that no-one has heard (which is what I've often done). No, they play the most obvious blues standards they can think of. Two that Kenny did, Bad Sign and Big Boss Man, are tunes that I could pull out and play, except anytime I've tried somebody would groan "I can't possible play that song one more time" Well I'm going to run over those two and maybe a couple more standards and have them ready for the day that I'm invited to come up and do a couple of tunes.



Kenny pulled it off great - his whole set was predictable, easy to follow-along songs (there was even a sing-a-long song). He's a great performer - I learned a lot watching him. When he wanted the band to come down in volume, he looked back to Al (Webster, the drummer) and then bent down a bit to signal that the volume was about to drop. The Al gave the snare a little snap - I love that!. Al is an amazing drummer - so relaxed. Alec Fraser was playing bass - a rock - and there was a fiddler doing a blues tune when I came in. A young guy...I want to meet him. Apparently he plays with Jefff healey's Jazz Wizards. I also heard of a great fiddler who plays with Grand Bouche. I'm going to get me a fiddler that wail the blues and we could have a real high-energy duo.



Last night I went to hear African superstar Baaba Maal. That was amazing. The stage was laid out beautifully and the lighting just right. There was lots of dancing (even some Senegales audience members climbed up and did that Senegalese two-step. The vocals were the thing, with backing from two percussionists and 3 acoustic guitarists and one playing the "Senegalese guitar" ..a simply strung instrument with maybe 3 strings. He was a true virtyuoso on that instrumen. One of the guitarists, the one who was sitting down at the back of the stage, turns out to be a legend himself...and mentor to Baaba Maal. He played great.



I'm going to try to come up with a tune that uses that afro-groove. Yes...I'm still here wrriting songs when I should be wrapping up my album. Well, no regrets - the thrill of coming up with a good tune is amazing...even if the tune is eventually discarded, at that moment of creating, it's cloud nine.



When somebody asked about my album tonite I said well. there's a pro and a con to recording at home. You can take your time and you *do* take your time

Good Friday! This was a first for me. I've played in churches before but never as part of the religious service. But the good folks at St. Timothy's Anglican Church wanted to integrate some blues into their Good Friday service an I got the call.



I just went up to Itunes and dialed up Rev Gary Davis, listened to the short samples of many of his blues/gospel tunes and found a few that I knew instinctively, though I hardly remember ever playing them. It was a very moving service, with the readings from the bible interspressed with short "tableaus" of scenes from the Passion of Christ and my bluesy tunes. I wish I had let the audience know ahead of time that they were welcome to sing and clap - but alas, no one did.



Last week, they were talking about the passing of Mitchell Sharpe, a very influential minister in the time of Pierre Trudeau. Many reports related his passion for classical music and I was remembering playing a gig at "The Bay" department store - I think it was with Terry Wilkins on bass and Carrie Chesnutt on sax. We were jammin' away at the foot of the escalator, right by the shoe department, and there was this older gentleman sitting off to the side taking in a large part of our set, and then he showed up again later. Terry though he was Roland Mitchener, former Governor General, but when the gent came up to say thanks for the music, we realized it was Mitchell Sharpe himself - and now we know that he was a blues-lover, too.



My friend R who works at the Canada Council, dispensing grants mostly to classical musicians but spreading it around a little more, recently, came to town with his guitar and recorded a demo of some great new songs - right in my kitchen. We got Paul to come over with his Neumann mic and his big ears and we got a great sound. I'm sure those songs are going to travel well and I hope he can give them a good shot even though he's got a very demanding day gig. And I think I've noticed that it's harder to be accepted as an artist if you're working behind the scenes in the music industry, though I'm sure there are exceptions. The music scene is not much of a support system, even for those that work in it - some would say they "eat their young", even.



After the recording session, we headed out to hear Lance Anderson & Mike Sloski's gig at the Dollar. Not a great turnout but fabulous music. Lance is a master of the organ "footwork" - ie bass pedals. Looking forward to playing with him and his full rig sometime. Nick Blagona, who recorded their album, was there and I asked him if he might have a good copy of "Dont Forget Your Mother" the recording I made in 1973 - because he was the engineer on the session. Frazier Mohawk, who produced that session, thought I should dig up that old chesnutt and send it to the Radio stations for Mothers Day play. I was hoping to get a Mother's Day gig - I want to call it Brian Blain's "Don't Forget Your Mother" music and craft show. If it doesn't come through, I'm going to find a way to do this myself, some other year...Meanwhile, I'll send out a few CD's and we'll see if anybody plays that crazy track. It might even get me a little press - it's worth noting that I've recently been contacted by someone who working on a biography of world-renowned drummer Jim Gordon, who played on the session and later killed his own mother.



My very patient record company president, Fred, had asked me a couple of times if I had noticed that I got a thank you on the new Taxi Chain album and I finally pulled out that booklet to take a look and I went through a long list of thank-yous but I did not know what he was talking about because my name was not there. And I wondered why it ever would be, because the only person I knew in the band was the bass player, Joe Burns. Anyway, as I thumbed through the booklet I saw in the liner notes that Fred had written an introduction where he referred to me insisting that he come with me to hear this band at the Rivoli which is where he "discovered" them and ultimately, signed them. It makes me sound like some super-fan, but I had only seen them play once or twice and I didn't even meet the leader, Grier Coppins, until later that year at the Maple Blues Awards. So now, I'm waiting for the stampede of up & coming blues bands to beat a path to my door so that I can use my influence to get them signed...



Aplogy of the month: To the House of Blues for screwing up their listing. After they went and bought a full-page ad in MapleBlues for the Blues Tour at Hummingbird Centre, I listed it as Massey Hall. What was I thinking? Now I'm never going to get on the list for that show!

Monday, March 29 - Today, I'm free of my media mooch duties and can spend a few days in music mode. The MapleBlues newsletter is at the printer and I've got that happy, tingly feeling that I get when I've just written a great tune. Of course, they all seem great at the moment of writing - sometimes they don't seem to retain the greatness after the initial glow wears off... I'm not sure about this one...David Baxter told me once that what I had going for me was a "point of view" and I guess it is a relatively unique point of view. People who know me realize I don't take myself too seriously and they shouldn't either. I think that may explain why I'm not taken seriously as an artist in the industry where I'm better known behind the scenes. Anyway, let me bounce these lyrics off you:



Dear songwriter, were you talking to me?

I missed that lyric, can you send a CD?

Sorry that I had to leave your party so soon

From one of those weasels, talking at the back of the room.



Your CD launch was a great success

Except for that racket from the VIPs and press

No one at the bar could hardly hear you at all

Not one of them weasels, talking at the back of the hall



You needn't have worried that someone might have heard

When you messed up the second verse

Flo had a story bout the blues in its glory

And he had us all so immersed



"No flash photography after the second song"

They want me to leave but I still don't have a picture to run

Allright I'll go to the back at the end of this tune, you'll have

One more weasel, talking at the back of the room



One More Weasel ©Blainco Music 2004



It's got a nice bluesy groove - skips right along. I worried that the melody was too familiar...but whadaya expect from an old blues guy? I've bounced the lyrics off a couple of people but the only person who was gung ho about it is my ex-wife and she doesn't care how much trouble I get into.



Last Sat - I'm Brian the Bassman again. I did spend half of the seventies on the road continuous - playing bass with all kinds of different bands. Never had a fixed address, which is why Long & McQuade's collection department would harass poor Tom Kelly, a country singer I toured with who had signed the rental contract as guarantor of sorts. He was not too happy to see me five years later and related all the late night calls he had received on my behalf.



I've had this great Fender Precision bass for a long time but didn't get many chances to use it lately, but this time I was asked to play with my Blues Society work-mate Matt Masters. He does that cowboy country thang and I was sure I'd be able to follow along. As it was, there probably wasn't a single tune where there wasn't a moment somewhere where I made a wrong move, and It's hard to recover gracefully when you're playing bass...but we had a real good time.



On the way to the gig, I made a real commitment to bass - I bought a bass amp. Despite several bass players' litany that to have a good bass sound you have to have a "the weight", I defied them all and picked up a lightweight Fender "Rumble" amp and it was perfect for that sort of gig. All I really wanted was an amp that would be as close as possible to the sound of a string bass - only a little louder. I think we've got it with this one. It must be the port that did the trick - and a little thought put into the design of the EQ.



And what a nice surprise to open Josie Miner's Talkin Music newsletter and see a picture of "moi" - and a nice quote "always a treat for the ears"...I'm going to use that! What a switch ..now I have more of a perspective for the musicians that read their names in my newsletters (or not)... oh...I think I just had a pang of stress. It'll pass. I'm just waiting to see who I screwed up in this issue. It's at the printer now, and of course there was no proofreading, not even another set of eyes to go over it. And me wrapping it up at 4 am...



Last month I published two different dates for the big Blues Society event. The month before that in the jazz newsletter, I neglected to announce the new CD (and release party) of my own boss, Jim Galloway. In the Musicians' Association newsletter last time, there was some other screw up...It never ends. And one day last week, the jazz festival website displayed all the performances in the database as Sat, Dec 30th!



I swear, one of these days when I screw up *real bad* on all three at the same time, they're going to run me out of town on a rail. Then I can be a real "full time" musician!



The Saturday Before - Had a great gig with Mark "Bird "Stafford at Ziggys. A new place in my part of town. I'll be back on June 5, though Mark can't make it for that one. Of course, once I took the date, I found out about all kinds of cool music happening the same night, for example James Brown!



I remember getting a call one Tuesday afternoon telling me that the James Brown Band would be playing unannounced at the Silver Dollar that evening. James was in town shooting the second Blues Brothers movie and the band had not played with him for a while so they needed a run-through before the big shoot. It was amazing to watch. They went through the whole show - like clockwork - with all the chorographed moves and antics. Different members of the band and crew covered the vocals - some better than others. It was Ultimate Karaoke. I was rivited for the whole set (and they got an encore!)



OK, for any stakeholders reading this, I'm off to work on my album now (editing and exporting tracks - the dark and dirty job). A Bientot

Saturday Night. First I head down to the Rivoli with Jacquie to see Taxi Chain - their CD release looked like a regular Taxi Chain gig - but a helluva show it was. The two-bagpipe thing is invaluable. I overheard more than one person asking at the door "This is the band with the bagpipes, isn't it???". That's good branding.



The guitar player was amazing, close to over-the-top. What you could call that "Kevin Breit" style of playing on the edge of a slippery slope. I meant to suggest to young Roxanne Potvin, who I saw later in the evening, that she should crank up the reverb too, and throw caution to the wind. Roxanne cut a fine figure on stage at the Silver Dollar. elegant black cocktail dress and high heel shoes. She played a lot of fine guitar too, digging in to the solos. Harrison Kennedy had a real "take charge" presence. He played after Roxanne and I like the way he just weaves a mood and just entices you into his space. Powerful.



A couple of days later I'm at a CD launch for Michael Kaeshammer, which must have cost 5000 times as much as Taxi Chain's (5000 times nothing!). This event was celebrating a new alliance - Alma Records and Universal. And Michael Kaeshammer is one of three new releases. Michael played a few tunes for the assembled media and "music industry" folk. I saw KD, a well-known music writer and recited to him the words of a song I wrote the night before:



"Hey Songwriter, are you talking to me

I missed that lyric, can you send a CD?

Sorry that I had to leave your party so soon

From one of those weasels, talking at the back of the room"



He said "The songwriters will get a kick out of it"...but maybe I'm alienating people that could help me advance my career! Oh well, I've been doing that all along.



Still trying to get a promo pak together - some festivals apparently don't want to visit websites to hear mp3's. I guess their computers got locked up one time too many, but now with faster connections and more powerful computers, it shouldn't be such a worry. Still, I've said it many times myself... there's no substitute for a hard copy.

Tragic Drummer Story

Just got forwarded an email from someone who's working on a biography of the legendary drummer, Jim Gordon. Legendary because he co-wrote Layla with Eric Clapton and was the drummer in Derek and the Dominoes...but then the dark side, the drummer who murdered his own mother and (I think) died in an institution for the criminally insane.



Frazier wrote:

I'll forward this to someone who remembers everything. I do remember

that Jim forgot his drums and used an old junk set made up of assorted

drums and cymbals we found around the studio. He made them sound great.

The tunes...can be heard. Perhaps Brian remembers the url where some

live. BTW: One of the songs is called "Don't Forget Your

Mother"(somewhat ironic considering Jim's later actions) we beleive this

to be the last recording Jim has played on.



My response:

*****could that be? I just did a little web search myself and discovered that Jim was in Montreal playing with Frank Zappa (informally known as the "Petit Wazoo" Tour) October 27, 1972. It looks like that was the first date of the tour. As I recall, they arrived at the studio after that gig, Jim and Tom Malone (on bass) cut the rhythm tracks with me and I remember Jim as a rather dashing, clean-cut fellow who fit my pre-conceived idea of an L.A. session guy. He was very businesslike, but seemed a bit remote. I don't think he "got" the humour/tongue-in-cheek pathos of "Don't Forget Your Mother" - you don't suppose that's what put him over the edge, do you? I'd be interested to know the actual date of the crime. You can hear an mp3 of that tune at www.brian.blain.com. BrianB



A few months back there was a discussion on the folk listserve when Canadian folksinger James Gordon got confused with drummer Jim Gordon and I jumped in with my story. James Gordon is a busy touring artist and prolific writer - I finally got to hear him play at Winterfolk.

Janis Ian's Recording Diary

Here I am, in work avoidance mode again. I'm actually out of the publishing blitz so this is music time, but I've got a cold, I feel like shit and I just can't get motivated to send out promo packs to festivals that aren't going to hire me anyway.



I just came upon another reference to the Janis Ian site, www.janisian.com, and decided to stop what I was doing and finally check it out. Well in addition to her famous internet tirade, there is a very detailed diary on the recording of her last album. Fascinating. I've just spent the last couple of hours going through it and I'm sure picked up a few useful tips. Moreover, I felt a little sense of vindication for some of the battles that I've gone through on the making of my record. And continue to go through, we've still got to mix the sucker and I still hope and pray that one more tune will appear - maybe a solo guitar piece.



Just tonite we've been doing a major computer upgrade (upgrading to Panther for those who care about these things). It has no effect on my existing tracks because those still require the earlier system 9, but after this album is done, I'm into OSX and never looking back. I'm never the first to leap into a new system, but I recognize when it's time. Joel called me in to try the guitar synth with a new plug-in, a re-creation of the Mini-Moog. I was telling him how Robert Moog himself once came to Toronto in the late 60s and did a presentation for a bunch of ad-agency producers - showing us how great this new invention called the synthesizer could work great in commercials, I guess. At that time, the only synthesizer music I was aware of was the album Switched on Bach by Walter (later, Wendy) Carlos. I remember Moog played some tracks from an album that was to be called "Switched on Bacharach" but I don't know if it ever saw the light of day.

My Canadian Music Week

Music Week is over and I think this year, I've set an attendance record of sorts. I, who used to media mooch my way through every panel discussion, two or three events and at least 6 or 8 showcases a night...this year I got to exactly ONE show...and it wasn't a showcase, it was Byther Smith's show at the Silver Dollar which somehow got wrapped into Music Week but was his usual 2 x 70 min shows. Even though Byther said "Now it's time to go home" after every tune, he just kept playing, even after promoter Rico ferrara walked right in front of the stage making hand signals for "just one more". Two songs later, he walks up at the end of the tune putting a stop to the set ...even as Byther is being tempted into an encore by some noisy patrons.



This was the only Music Week even t I got to in the whole week. Thursday night I had my whole team scrambling to meet a deadline (which, as it turned out was for naught). And Friday night there was some great stuff, in addition to a CD launch for Rita Chiarelli at Hugh's room but I was not feeling that great and knowing I had to be playing the next afternoon, I decide to stay home and change my strings and make a set list and get to bed early (and I did two out of those three things).



Before Byther, I was at the Montreal Bistro listening to Jay McShann. Eighty-eight years old and 88 ought to be his middle name because his large, supple fingers danced beautifully over the piano keyboard. T.O. said Jay wasn't wearing his hearing aid which means he's not hearing very much of the band as he's playing. The rhythm section, Don Vickery and Rosemary Galloway have to keep a real close ear on Jay, becasue they can't get a groove of their own going because it might drift from Jay and he wouldn't hear it. I think it hurt his singing a bit when he was doing the more delicate things. But who cares, he has the groove. (As I write this, I'm listening to a tape recorded earlier this evening of the Saturday Night Blues radio show with Holger Peterson. Holger's announcing a concert by Duke Robillard but I think the tape will have run out by then. But ironic that I'm missing the radio concert because I'm attending the live concert of Jay McShann, Duke's favourite frequent collaborator these days.



T.O.s Quote of the day: The Blues has been hijacked by guitar players and jazz has been hijacked by girl singers.



I skipped out of Jay to hear Byther Smith and it was admitedly rougher, but if I'm going to benefit from all these media passes and freebies, I should focus on the ones that can help with my own show, and there were several things I picked up in Byther's show, in particular, being more confident in the endings of my tunes.



Oh, did I mention I did a gig of my own this afternoon. What a pleasure to get together again with Rod Phillips and Mike Fitrzpatrick again. We had a hot little organ trio going a few years back. Larry goodhand was playing guitar, and I had never played with him before. I enjoyed having another guitar player there even though I'm always claiming that I want to be the only guitar player in my band. The fact is, I played far fewer solos than I normally would but I didn't mind at all. It was fun playing more rythm - I'd have as much (or more) fun playing bass. The audience in Brantford was so much more appreciative than the Toronto crowd. Clapping after the solos - shouting out your name, even. Then two noisy encore demands.



This is how I want to spend every day. Playing a little music, then hearing some more...I can't believe my luck having this media job so I can just walk into clubs like the Dollar or the Bistro and not have to pay the exorbitant cover and sometimes even get my Coke for free. I even know the secret parking spots that are close by so it's so transpartent. I musn't take this all for granted, because it could end "just like that". (I've often thought if I ever had major screw-ups in all my publications the same month I'd be run out of town on a rail" ...and maybe that's what it'll take for me to put the music carreer into full gear).



Oh, Grandfather, the music business has changed considerably since you were playing in the pit accompanying silent movies in the 20s. Music notation, still exists, you'll be glad to know. And just tonbite my friend Terry Wilkins was describing some of the subtleties of these musical "maps." Terry was subbing for Byther Smith's bass player at the Silver Dollar. The Byther show is the closest to any Music Week event. These last few days are what's known as Canadian Music Week when hundreds of bands come from all over the country to play for a measly hundred bucks and the off chance that someone may attend their showcase and give them some work. In truth, it's all pre-ordained and the only bands who benefit from these events are those who've arranged in advance for whatever buyers/agents they want to showcase for. And, I suppose for every 20 promises to attend you get 2 or three that show up.



I shouldn't be going on about Music Week and similar events because I can't say I've ever been selected to showcase because I've never applied. I did play North by Northeast a couple of years back - only because they were desparate to put together a blues evening and I think I gave Yvonne some numbers. I did the gig with Paul Reddick on harmonica but, as I recall, there was hardly anybody in the audience, and I think the only industry honcho that was there was the one that came with me, Rounder Founder Ken Irwin.



Anyway, I've yet to do a "showcase" . And I remember being told a long time ago that the best showcase was a festival appearance". I haven't been very aggressive about getting some festival gigs. I'm too laid back to worry about becoming a nuisance. . Once again, I will be entering the Song from the Heart contest - and I'm entering the same song for the third year. Until I write another song that is as much "from the heart" as that one, I'm going to keep entering it until I win.



Oops, Fred Litwin is about to be interviewed by Holger on the radio, so I think I'll stop now and listen to that. Betcha ten bucks he doesn't mention my eventual upcoming release on Northern Blues. I think at this point, he'll believe it when he sees it".

Sunday - Well that was a great way to say goodbye to February - The Toronto Blues Society Guitar Workshop was held on Sunday afternoon, the 29th (yeah, Leap Day!) I was the host with the most and my guest were formidable guitar players, Michael Jerome Browne, Adam Solomon and Teddy Leonard and Norm Robinson doing a fascinating demo on amps & tubes & bias...



Because we did it like a country-style "guitar pull" it was very different than previous workshops, which were more like showcases with 4 short sets. It was a beautiful, warm Sunday afternoon and I bet a lot of folks would have rather been outdoors than a basement blues bar but we had a good turnout.



By the end of the workshop, probably getting the Afro vibe from Adam, we were all doing songs with one chord. I always said I needed a change from thaose same old 3-chord blues so it was great fun to explore the possibilities one *one* chord.



Friday Night was a night of many chords - first from legendary jazz guitarist Marty Grosz who was playing at the Downtown Jazz Party, a gathering of swing-meisters from the old days...some of them in their nineties. Jake Hanna was there playing drums, he's played with all the greats.



I snuck out of the jazz party to catch Robben Ford at the Horsheshoe - He played a phenomenal set. I was knocked out. A perfect example of how every tune is a showcase and takes you on a little trip - even songs that were nothing more than R&B standards, but he tore them inside out. He was hot and I found out later he was hot off a long tour, so that might explain it. After Robben, I slipped over to Healeys to hear Tinsley Ellis, who hasn't been in Toronto for nine years. I only caught the last few tunesm but he was on fire too - more predictable than Robben, though.



On Thursday, I did a live radio show on CIUT with Steve Fruitman. That was a gas - I used up the whole hour myself, rambling on about my musical life. I even brought steve an old 45 I recorded in 1972 - he got a kick out of that.



Wednedsday I got a call from Fred, the president of my label NorthernBlues. I've delayed my CD so much that I thought this was it - he's going to tell me that it's over and he's found some other great blues artists with finished CDs, but no, he was patient and committed. It will be worth the wait.



Tuesday was the National Jazz Awards - big gala evening. Here was Ole Colorblind starring at a pair of socks trying to figure out if they are black or brown. This is a dressy affair and I want to have black socks with my black (or are they blue) pants. I see lots of familiar faces at the awards evening and there was some great music played, a beautiful guitar trio tribute to Ed Bickert who received a special award. The CBC was broadcasting live so they kept things moving along at quite a clip but the minute their broadcast was over, the whole thing fell apart - there was a long gap and half the audience cleared out, most thinking that it was over. I think they better put the off air stuff on *before* the broadcast next time - that is, if they're still speaking to the CBC

This week was the last gasp for getting out my pitch to festivals so that I might have a little work this summer and maybe see a bit of the country. But wouldn't you know, everything went wrong. Alyson, who was helping to pitch me took a fall and broke her arm (her typing/pitching arm, of course)



What a week - crazy life & death computer adventures, hi stress but adrenalin flowing. Lots of slippery driving, too. That could be life and death on the country roads I used to travel. The sloped on either side so if you got too close to the edge of a slippery road you might slide right off the side. Last night I missed Robert Randolph. That is one act I wanted to see again - even though I did plan ofn earplugs. I was going to take the repaired computer to the office, reconfigure it on the network then catch the tail end of the show, but my car wouldn't budge. It was parked on glare ice pointed downhill and well wedged between two cars. I know when to "pack it in" (hey, that's the theme of the new song).



I feel good writing to you at this moment though because tonight after this intense period of no guitar playing I came up with a new tune tonight. I wrote the idea on a napkin at the greasy spoon where I had breakfast, then I came home, watched part of a movie then went downstairs and wrote a song. I wish I had the disciplin to stay down there till it was written, but I'm going to bed. Tomorrow I'll mess with it - I'm hoping I can use this tune with this new hyper-instrument I've been working on with Joel. And maybe I finally have a solo tune for the album that demonstrates my guitar style (it's all in the right hand, my producer tells me).



Monday night was Lance Anderson's CD launch at the Orbit Room. I was so broke I had to borrow a few bucks from my son to motivate me to get to Lance's event. He laughed and said "you never have to pay, dad...ha ha", but the time I'm made to pay will be the time I won't have enough $$$. As it turns out Lance was thoughtful enough to leave my name at the door (as well as a CD and a beer ticket - who could ask for more?)



It was a delight to see Lance's organ pedal work - It brought back some long-forgotten childhood memories - I remembered seeing a black organist named Gene something, I think, who played every summer at a lakeside resort on Little Lake Magog.



Later in the evening it was time for "Sisters Euclid", Kevin Breit's band and who should be in the audience but his main employer, Norah Jones. At 10:30 and we noticed the bar was staring to fill music industry scene-makers, Scott Morin, Sam Feldman, and then I heard the buzz..."Norah Jone is in the house" RF tells me Norah is sitting in the front row but I'm staring at a short gal at the bar looking more like a U of T student with thick-rim glasses and...by gawd....it's Norah! I looked at the front table again. I had been talking with CB, a gal who is close to some of the biggest stars in the business, and she ends up talking to Norah's road crew. At the same time, I hear that there is going to be an exclusive showcase at the Lula Lounge the next night and whispered it in CB's ear, and I guess after that she got invited. She even sent me a note the next day saying I could come, but I didn't really get it till too late. Anyway, that night we dropped in to see the North-Mississippi All Stars at the Horseshoe and and an ambient electronic music double-bill at C'est What. Lots of music. The ambient stuff was surprisingly interesting. The NMAS were surprisingly "normal" What happened to that youthful energy they had the first time I saw them? I think the problem is that the drummer has learned how to play and we've lost that Missisippi hill "thrashing around". Maybe it got wilder as the night went on, but by then I was listening to ambient pop. It's nice to have a change once in a while. G'night gramps.

Dear Grandfather, it's Sunday morning and I woke up to a radio broadcast of a documentary on an American GI called Mike Boranowski who brought a reel-to-reel tape recorder with him to Viet Nam and sent home tapes he made - trying to sound like a war correspondent though he was probably just a kid with a dream. He never made it back, but in 1997 the tapes were discovered by one of his war buddies who created this award winning documentary. Very moving.



I got my first reel-to-reel tape recorder about the same time he was recording his war stories. My mom bought this bulky Phillips tape recorder from a guy she met at A.A. Yes, your daughter went to A.A. after you were long gone. I never thought she or my dad were very supportive of my musical ambitions but that machine certainly was life altering for me. For one thing, I must have been one of the few kids in Sherbrooke who had a tape recorder and I think it's one of the reasons I got to know Allan Fraser when he moved to town - that, and his interest in my sister.



Allan and I started a little folk trio with my cousin Karolyn - we called it Trio BAK (Brian, Allan, Karo...get it?) In 1963 or so a local entrepreneur heard us and brought us up to the big city (Montreal) for a recording session. The session was its own reward, as it were, along with the trip and the steak dinnner in a fancy restaurant. We recorded our 3-part harmonies on a bandtrack that had been recorded in France. The song was in French, of course ("moi, je construis des marionettes...") and was part of a series of 45s that were given out as premiums by the local bread delivery man. Now *that's* distribution - everybody needs bread.



One other story about the tape recorder came back to me lately and I'll relate it before I get down to my current adventures. I had been studying classical string bass for about six months with Mr. Horace Boux, who was the first violinist for the Sherbrooke Symphony Orchestra. I always brag that I've never had a guitar lesson in my life nor did I practice but I certainly practiced that bass and as a reward for my diligent practice I was invited to sit in with the bass section of the Symphony for their annual performance of Medellsohn's Midsummer Night Dream. The symphony always broughy it some ringers from the Montreal and Quebec City orchestras and at the first rehearsal I found myself playing bass next to the first black person I'd ever met in my life. Wish I could remember his name - I think he had a long illustrious carrer in classical music. He was very friendly and giving me some bow-handling tips and when the lunch break came I invited him to come over to my folks house for lunch.



He was happy to oblige and we had a nice dinner and afterwards I invited him upstairs to see my new tape recorder. The only tape I had that wasn't just me fooling around was a recording of Rev Gary Davis so I played that for him. You could tell he'd never heard anything quite like that in his life. It was pretty raw and might have offended his sensibilities and trained ear at first but at the same time it was quite a revelation for him. I'll never forget that moment - a 15 year-old white kid in a small town introducing a French-speaking classically trained black musician to the blues. Look at that! Even then, I was promoting and preserving the blues.



Enough about the tape recorder (well, one more thing I just thought of - I still have a box of tapes from those days...hmm, maybe someday someone will make a radio documentary out of them - or not!)



Let me try to recall what's been happening since my last post. I did a couple of gigs at the Winterfolk festival. What a treat to play two days in a row - I should do that more often. The first was a Delta Guitar Workshop with Mo Kauffey, who has just been forced to move back to the US even though he married a Canadian gal), Rick Zolkower and a guy I just heard fro the first time, Manitoba Hal. I met him at the OCFF conference in October but didn't get to hear his showcase. He even gave me a CD but when I went looking for it the other day, I saw that I had filed it and the shrink wrap was still on it. Shameful. I'm as bad - worse, really - than all the other media mooches who get all kinds of CDs and never even give them a listen. I must try to be more conscientious but I can't be blamed for trying to use what little music time I have to make my own CD. Anyway, I was very impressed with Manitoba Hal and disappointed to find that he didn't have a showcase set in the whole festival. I would have been so there!



On Wednesday I got to play with Lance Anderson at a meet & greet party for the Jazz festival. He provided the backgroud piano sounds on the old upright in the office - it was like a New Orleans rent party. I got up and did a few tunes with him then got Jim Galloway to join me on Saab Story, a tune that Jim plays on on my upcoming CD (....yes, the ever-upcoming CD). That was a real treat!



Anyway the CD is progressing. On Monday I'm heading up to Inception Sound, on of the best studios in the city, to do some mixing with engineer Mike Haas. It was quite reassuring when I was at the announcements of the JUNO nominees and saw his name flash by on the big screen as a nominee for Engineer of the Year.



Enough chit chat. I think I better get back to exporting the tracks off my computer so that I have something to bring him on Monday. Lots of other stuff happened in the last week, but I'll have to relate it another time.

Winterfolk week-end and other stuff

Hello Grandfather. I've been putting off this update because every night more interesting stuff is happening - nothing that speeds along my own recording project. But it's good for me to write up my progress, even when it's slow, to reassure myself that I am moving forward in one general direction. I picked up a carved turtle at the Pow-Wow and I've nbeen wearing it. I actually had a vision of myself as a turtle and you would probably agree that it's a good fit for my personality.



The new album is underway. Now we're making plans for mixing and renowned mixer MH came to the house the other day and listened to some of the tracks on my computer. He showed me how he wants the files exported and we're going to do a dry run. At least that's the plan.



Meanwhile, last night - just when I was about to start exporting a tune, I was checking email and found a message from TQ telling me he was backing up a great singer at the Senator and this would be the last night to check it out. His initials are DK. He sang some pretty bluesy stuff and he really pulled off Etta James' "At Last" with just the piano accompanyment (but why he didn't use the whole band on that one is a mystery to me). He's planning a release in May, the same time as me, so it will be interesting to watch his progress. He's got the big push happening - and some serious $$$ behind him (I only hope I will have some serious $$$ *ahead* of me)



The night before that, my buddy RK was in town and we did a little jammin' and also had a night out at the Lula Lounge - a venue he'd never seen and it was a good night to get a feeling for the place - the big stage was filled to capacity with a Cuban-style "Orchestre" - strings, flute and three male singer/perccussionists out front.



But back to Winterfolk, grandfather. This was the second year for this festival and they did it again without any private or public support. BG risks his fortune every time - but then he gets to play as much as he wants. Not a bad trade off, because lots of other people get to play.



Some joked that this was the folk festival for artists who can't get booked at the major Ontario folk festivals. Well I haven't played too many folk fetivals, and none last season so I guess I qualify. But there was a good mix of talent, forks who've played hundreds of festivals, and others who haven't played a single one - many of them were the winners of the showcase slots and some travelled from quite far (Colorado?).



If the best showcase is a festival apperance, I hope I'll be able to snag one or two this summer. I did not send out a single package this year but I've still got a few days to get through to someone. The shows at Winterfolk went great - good audiences for both.



I didn't have a watch so some people around might have thought I was being a little niggly, always asking the time and fretting. Well, no wonder! The festival turnaround times had been calculated from the time it took to swith from one guitar player to another. Essentially no changeover time. When the changes started taking half-an-hour, things got backed up. But when the stage manager said to me "we're running late" I was a bit shocked. I work for the jazz festival, and you live by the clock. If for some reason your start time is delayed you do not under any circumstance run into the next artists's performnace time.



That's kind of what happened to me. I was hosting a Delta Blues Guitar Workshop and we were to come on at 11pm. Well, at 10:30, the previous band should have been winding down, but they played right up to 11 and beyond. (Mind you MR & TB were great!) Still, I knew I'd try to be off in time for the headliner to start at his appointed time. JdeK arrived at the club just as we were going on. He thought he had timed it so he would walk in at just the right moment to set up but I told one of his guys that we'd be doing two songs each and then they could have the stage. He seemed quite relieved and as it turned out we finished just after midnight. It was probably another half hour before he started...probably closer to one, when I thought it would be closed down. It would not be a good thing to be the artist that went overtime and caused a very short set by the headliner.



On the second night I did a feature set (also at the Dollar) and it went great considering I decided to play without getting smashed. The Friday night I was smashed (well, not smashed but not sharp, either). I forgot the second verse to Girlfriend Blues, one of my oldest and most popular songs. Then to add insult to injury, I came back at the second verse again after the guitar solo thinking I can't possibly blank out again...and I did! So the second night I play it straight and I had as much fun as you can imagine, but wouldn't you know, I still forgot some words. That was my lesson of the day.



What do you think of that radio station that fired their program director because of improprieties only to have him proven innocent by a forensic audit. Then he fires all the staff that "conspired" to remove him. Then...are you following this??? he's proven guilty of something or other and fired and the fired people are brought back. And as far as I know, the station is still rudderless.

Brian's Maple Blues Awards Diary

Here's what it looked like from the podium at the Maple Blues Awards last Monday. No, I didn't get any awards (my album's almost done, though) but I was asked to pick up the award if my friend Harry Manx won...and what do you know...CONGRATULATIONS HARRY! Acoustic Guitarist of the Year! (for the second year running)



It was a great week-end of Maple Blues activities, too. On Friday night I went to Raoul & the Big Time's CD launch at the Silver Dollar. Great turnout and the band was in fine form. Raoul had a great approach to making his album, he waited until one of his musical heroes was coming to town and he would arrange for a recording session while they were here. He pieced the album together that way over the course of a year and now he's got something really special.



The night after was a special showcase with Adam Solomon, Doc McLean and David Owen and I really wanted to go but I decided I better stay home and work on my own tracks. I happen to know all three of these players and I'm sure they would encourage me to get my own album finished. I had to export the tracks off my computer into a format that can be re-mixed at the studio. The record company has strongly suggested a re-mixer who's good at dealing with tracks in different formats and I have a lot of preparation to do.



The awards evening was a great affair. As usual, now I realize all the folks who were there that I never got to chat with, but the last couple of years I've changed my attitude about all these schmooze events. Instead of trying to shake hands with everybody, I consider it a successful evening if I met one or two interesting new people (and I did), or finally put a face to a name I knew only from the emails. After being told I was the "designated hitter" for Harry Manx (I got the call from his publicist Anya Wilson who tracked me down at the Delta Chelsea Hotel in the middle of the afternoon meeting), I was glad I took a quick look at the programme to see where I might be called because I saw the Acoustic Guitarist of the Year was the first award to be presented. I had just enough time to collect myself when they announced Harry's name and I rose confidently to walk to the podium. I got there way too soon - the band had these great "stings" arranged for each presentation and seasoned award-getters knew to walk slowly or stand by the side for a little bit so folks could enjoy the band. Anyway, I get to the podium and the presenter, musicologist Rob Bowman, is looking a little surprised and we're both standing there waiting for the music to stop. Then he starts to speak and I wonder for a moment "does he know my last name?" but of course he did and I gave a little spiel about how at the last Toronto Blues Society board meeting I had predicted that one day I'd be up there getting an award for "artist most likely to put aside his own career so that he can make newsletters that will promote other people's careers" or something like that. It was just a big whine after I had been called upon to put together the programme book for the event - even though I thought I had found a designer to do it for us. I stood my ground at that meeting - I told them I had an album to mix and there was no time for me to make that book. Then the big freeze...everybody staring me down. Finally Gary Kendall spoke up and jokingly offered to mix the album...that broke the ice and I relented. So the programme book got made and the album still isn't mixed. Woe is me.



On the afternoon of the awards gala, there was a "round-table" session of music industry types and we heard updates from the leading blues labels in the country. Not very encouraging news, mostly. Over the holidays I was sitting across the table with the founder of one of the most successful independent labels in the States (and one of the few profitable labels last year). Established blues artists who were selling 30,000 albums can't even make 10,000 on current releases. And then there's downloading....cutting record company sales expectations by half. Tough times to be a record label, but thanks to a couple of very successful tribute albums (Johnny Cash and Gordon Lightfoot), my label, NorthernBlues, had an excellent year. Now if I can just deliver them an album without too much more undue delay, maybe they won't give up on me.



Actually, it's a good thing that I didn't just take what we had recorded and released it right away - as my engineer and producer pleaded. Since the initial recording I've had a chance to record a couple more tunes, one with the boys from Downchild and another with Harry Manx, and we're going to have a stronger album. And now I've been collaborating with my son, Joel the jungle music guy, to do a remix of the title track of my first CD, Who Paid You To Give Me The Blues. And now I have resurrected a project that I started before I ever got to Toronto - I call it the Robot Johnson Project.



Way back in the 80s I realized that those 41 songs of Robert Johnson contained the seminal guitar riffs and grooves that became the building blocks of Chicago blues and ultimately rock 'n roll. I disected those songs and pulled out the essential grooves that I could jam with - well, that's something that just about every blues guitarist does, consciously or subconsciously. I was playing around with computer music software and early MIDI programs but they just didn't have the horsepower to do what I wanted. Hell, I started with a MIDI card in an Apple IIe (the "e" was for "extended memory" extended to 16K!



The irony is that I don't know a single Robert Johnson song all the way through, in fact, I know very few blues standards. That's why I've never felt comfortable in the local blues jam scene (in this town there must be a blues jam every night of the week if you know where to look). I would just get up and start playing one of my own tunes which would inevitably have a little twist or turn or mystery chord and somebody would always have a hard time following. I didn't help that I would usually end up on stage with some of the less experienced jammers...



I'm determined to put together a small repertoire of songs that everybody knows for such occasions, but even the ones I do know already are not straight-ahead 12-bar blues... St James Infirmary, Love the Life I Live and several others. Today I was trying to learn the third verse of Key To The Highway - Now there's one that everybody should know, even though it's an 8-bar blues.



So now I've announced that I will be previewing Robot Johnson at the Toronto Blues Society Guitar Workshop in exactly one month. It won't be the full blown program, but I hope it will give folks a taste of what's to come. It's not so much about Robert Johnson's music, but he was a perfect candidate to develop this program because there's not an overwhelming amount of material to analyze - 41 songs, his entire recorded output, and half of those are slide tunes in open tuning which did not work for this (but which could be the basis of a second project). Ultimately, this is about creating a library of loops and riffs of my own creation and being able to use them to jam and write. It starts out as nothing more than an echo (the ghostly echo of Robert Johnson) which is timed to the beat and it can build up to a more elaborate accompanyment with keyboard, bass and drum sounds. Just a little something to provide some company for a poor lonely guitarist like myself. Lots to do on this, and finish my album as well...but if I could just record one more track, a killer solo track to kick off the album. The only problem is I haven't written it yet. Maybe I should stop yapping and get to work!



Worse yet, I've got two gigs this week-end and I've hardly touched my guitar. I can always tell it's been too long when the nails on my left hand have grown so long that I can't get a good cotact when I press the strings to the frets.

Grandfather, I bow my head in shame.



If I was to do the honourable thing I would offer my resignation to the jazz festival. How could I be so incompetent as to leave out mention of the gig & new CD of our own artistic director in our newsletter. That after having edited together a short blurb on the release (even though I haven't heard it yet). I just brought the newsletters from the printer and it must have been the first thing he noticed but he didn't say a word - he was probably so angry he couldn't speak! How could I do this to the nicest guy...and it's not the first time. And it's no consolation that I often forget to include my own gigs. I may be able to fix it on the last batch to be printed but they don't call me the (barely)managing editor for nothing.



In this month's blues newsletter I forgot about an ad that had been requested. It was a thank you to all their fans from Fathead, Toronto's busiest blues band (until now). They are calling it quits and so should I. Al Lerman, the leader, said "shit happens" and others mentioned Mercury retrograde...but I don't know. Maybe It's the Peter Priciple personified. My publishing career has risen to the point where I could really mess up several cultural institutions in this town if I had a bad week. A country-blues guitar player from the hills of the Eastern Townships should not be entrusted with the dissemination of important cultural information. Sometimes I end up writing the whole damn thing from cover to cover and nary a body to proofread or approve.



Why am I beating myself up in public, you ask? Well, if you don't hear from me again you'll know that I found an appropriate roof to jump from (just kidding - this is not an online suicide note).



This only encourages me further to develop a simple content management system to assemble and publish stories and event listings for these newsletters/websites. If you know anyone that would like to explore a wonderful business opportunity to bring to market the ultimate event listings and newsletters publishing engine, please pass along my coordinates. Any potential partners so far were a little put off when I said the program would be offered free to arts organizations like the Blues Society and the Jazz Society. Still there are many potential paying customers...



I've got to get something in place so that when I head out on the road to promote my new CD (yes, it's coming) that there will be a system in place where the newsletter/website contents can be viewed online and finally approved from a PDF. And the assembly will be so simple, that a couple of volunteers could handle it and I will have made myself redundant and can proceed to bring my life to a satifactory conclusion with a guitar in my lap (having pretty well abandoned the prospect of some sweet young thang in my lap).



Now I'm getting maudlin - I'm going to bed.







Well, nobody reads this anyway...

****this article reminded of my old stompin' grounds in the hills of Quebec's Eastern Towmships. Makes me positively homesick!









Delta Force



The dishevelled duo behind the Fat Possum label have fought to bring old bluesmen to a new, young audience. But it's even harder keeping their battle-scarred artists alive. Richard Grant reports from deepest Mississippi



Sunday November 16, 2003

The Observer



The offices of Fat Possum Records are located with wild incongruity between a police station and a Baptist church in the small, god- fearing town of Water Valley, Mississippi, where the lawns are deep and green and possession of beer is a criminal offence. I walk through the unmarked front door and past two weasel pelts on a hat rack and ask how things have been going. 'No worse than usual,' says Matthew Johnson, 34, the dishevelled, hard-drinking, fiercely iconoclastic founder of Fat Possum. He is limping around with two pins sticking out of his toes, having lost his temper, kicked a wall, broken two toes, ignored them as they healed crooked, then finally gone to hospital to have them re-broken and pinned, with little yellow plastic balls on the pinheads.



'We've signed this new guy Charles "Cadillac" Caldwell and we're real excited about him.' Trouble is, he's been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. 'A touch of the pancreatic,' is how he puts it. 'It's so fucking sad. He's only 60.'



Paul 'Wine' Jones, another of the ageing Mississippi bluesmen to whom Fat Possum's fortunes are tied, has been jailed for drunk driving again, halting the production of his new album. 'At least he didn't kill anybody,' says Bruce Watson, 39, the other half of Fat Possum, an irreverent preacher's son who produces most of the records and keeps a hand grenade by his desk. Two of Fat Possum's best-known artists, R.L. Burnside and T-Model Ford, have gone to prison for killing people and T-Model served his time on a chain gang.



Johnny Farmer killed his wife but that was an accident; he was trying to shoot a deer. He is refusing to record any more songs because blues is the devil's music. It brings a curse on everyone who plays it and then you burn in hell.



'T-Model Ford got robbed for 2,000 dollars the other day,' says Johnson. 'Then someone threw a brick through his window. Then the 88- year-old white woman who was teaching him how to read and write got raped and beaten to death. This all went down in Greenville (Mississippi), which is one of the worst shitholes in America for violence and crack and degenerate goddamn madness. We'd like to get T- Model out of there but he won't leave.'



What about R.L. Burnside? From the very beginning, Fat Possum has operated amid chaos and disaster, racking up terrible debts, going through hideous legal wrangles and distribution nightmares, and all the while dealing with a troublesome, mutinous crew of musicians. R.L. Burnside is no slouch when it comes to trouble - Johnson has lost count of how many cars he has destroyed, for example, or the number of times he has failed to show up at the recording studio - but as their bestselling artist Burnside has done more than anyone to keep the leaky, listing vessel Fat Possum afloat.



Come On In, an album of Burnside's blues remixed with hip-hop beats, sold 180,000 worldwide and furnished a very lucrative song to The Sopranos soundtrack album. Ass Pocket of Whiskey, a Burnside collaboration with the young, punk-influenced rockers the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion sold more than 100,000 and opened up a whole new audience - young, white and hip - for the kind of raw, stomping, electrified Mississippi blues played by the old black men on Fat Possum. 'R.L. doesn't want to do any more tours, or learn any new songs, or write any new songs, or basically even pick up a guitar. But if I drive up to his house he might sing a few lines into a tape recorder,' says Watson. 'I can't blame him. He's 76 years old, he had a heart attack eight months ago and he's making good money just sitting on his front porch - way better money than he's ever made in his life.'



Nor is R.L. Burnside eager to talk to any more journalists, but Johnson and Watson have considered my request and come up with a plan. They hand me an envelope containing $2,000 in cash and a map to Burnside's house. 'This is his latest royalty payment,' says Watson. 'I'll call him and say you're going to deliver it and you'd like to talk to him. He may talk, he may not, but whatever you do, make sure you give him the money personally. If any of his kids say they'll give it to him, you hold on to the money and find R.L. In fact, I wouldn't even mention to any of his kids that you've got two grand in your pocket.'



R.L. Burnside's total earnings were in the low six figures last year. In the past 10 years he has earned well over half a million dollars. The entrance to his property is marked by two 50-gallon oil drums spilling over with rubbish and forming a small lake of rubbish about 10 feet wide. Elsewhere, in the front yard, there are stray beer cans and dirty nappies floating in mud puddles, mangy dogs and prowling cats, seven vehicles in various states of disrepair, and in the thick, steamy summer heat the whole place is buzzing with flies.



The Burnside clan, about 15 or 20 of them, and sometimes upwards of 25, live in two trailers on a quarter acre of weeds and bare, coppery earth in the backwoods hill country near Chulahoma, Mississippi. The larger trailer is grimy but sturdy-looking, with a solid wooden front porch. The smaller trailer is cracked, mouldering and swaybacked, connected for electricity by an orange extension cord snaking across the yard.



Leaning against one of the cars are three young men with jheri curls and baseball caps, drinking big 40-ounce bottles of Cobra malt liquor at 9.30 in the morning. I nod and say hello. They scowl back and say nothing. A little girl scampers up from under the porch and runs into the big trailer shouting, 'White man here!'



R.L. comes lumbering out onto the porch, looking old and tired, wearing mud-smeared trousers held up with braces and a checked shirt fraying at the collar. His eyes are bloodshot. The pupils have a thin outer rim of blue. Big, dark liver spots extend back from his cheekbones to his ears. 'Bruce called me,' he growls. 'Two thousand, right?' 'That's right. Have you got time to talk?' 'Little bit I reckon.'



I hand over the money and get him to sign a hand-written receipt. 'Has Fat Possum been paying you right?' I ask. 'Yeah, they done right by me, I reckon, but the money goes quick. I got 12 kids and you need a damn computer to count my grandkids. Then we got all these second cousins showing up and every one of them needs money.'



'Do any of your kids have jobs?'



'Ain't much work around here. One of my sons plays a little music.'



'Which one of these vehicles are you driving?'



'That van over there except it needs a new fuel pump. Only one of these that runs is my grandson's over there.'



>From inside the trailer comes a terrible racket of screaming

children, barking dogs, a man and a woman yelling at the children and each other, making liberal use of the oedipal noun, and a television game show turned up full blast. R.L. Burnside sits on his plastic porch chair as calm and motionless as a stone Buddha, then his hand flashes out to swat a fly on his leg. I remember something Bruce Watson told me about Burnside and lethal snakes. 'I heard you used to grab rattlesnakes and copperheads by the tail and snap them like a whip to break their necks.'



He brightens and smiles. 'Man, I was hell on them snakes,' he says. 'One time a copperhead got under my son's bed. I told him to go and grab it. He said, "Daddy, is it poisonous?" I told him, "No son, that's just an old blacksnake. He won't hurt you. You go in there and grab him behind the head." So he went on and grabbed up that snake and threw it out. Then I told him, "That was a copperhead!"' He laughs his deep, deep chuckle, heh heh heh, repeats the punchline and laughs some more.



How old was his son was at the time? 'Oh he was up around 13, 14 years old. I got him good with that one.'



I ask him about the man he killed and he gives a variation of his standard response: 'I didn't mean to kill nobody. I just meant to shoot the sonofabitch in the head and two times in the chest. Him dying was between him and the Lord.'



It happened at a dice game long ago; Burnside had beaten the man out of $400. In court he claimed self-defence, although one of the bullets entered the back of the victim's head. Burnside was working for a powerful white plantation owner at the time, driving a tractor. His boss wanted him back at work so he fixed things with the judge and R.L. ended up serving only six months.



As a young man, as part of the great black migration away from sharecropping, lynching parties and Jim Crow laws, Burnside went north to Chicago. Muddy Waters had married his first cousin and he would go over to their house two or three times a week and play the blues with Muddy. He left Chicago because five family members, including his father and two brothers, were murdered there in eight months. He came back down to Mississippi and worked various farm jobs for 40 years, playing the blues at house parties, juke joints and local festivals, until Matthew Johnson heard him one night and decided to record him.



Now he has toured all over America and the world, appeared on television, earned a small fortune, and none of it seems to have changed him in the slightest. Has he enjoyed his musical success? 'Well, there's a lot of travelling and fussing around but I can always use money around here.'



After his heart attack he gave up drinking on doctor's orders. At first he couldn't imagine life without alcohol but now he doesn't miss it. Nor does he miss playing music, an activity that was intimately connected with drinking. He tried playing a little recently, for the first time in more than a year, and it felt like he had to learn all over again. 'I'm getting too old for all that,' he says and gets to his feet, signalling that the interview is over.



One last question: how does he like the remixes of his music that Fat Possum has put out? 'At first I didn't like them too much,' he says. 'Then I saw how much money they were making and I got to liking them pretty well.'



Matthew Johnson is driving the country roads around Water Valley in his big, dented, Chevrolet pick-up truck, sipping on a cocktail, rolling through the woods and fields and swamps with no destination in mind and the stereo turned up loud. To really hear a piece of music he has to take it for a test drive. For the third time he plays a new song Fat Possum has been working on, a collaboration between R.L. Burnside and Kid Rock, the white hard-rock rapper from Detroit who has sold 17 million records in four years. Burnside's guitar and vocals have been sampled and mixed with a beat, some overdubs and a verse and chorus from Kid Rock. Neither artist gave them much to work with but the styles blend in an ear-catching way and song is full of energy and attitude. 'Fuck yeah,' says Johnson. 'It sounds good, doesn't it? Working with R.L. has taught us all about squeezing out the last piece of toothpaste from the tube.'



When Johnson and Watson first started doing rock and hip hop collaborations with Burnside they came under heavy attack from purists. It gave Johnson great pleasure to outrage the 'blues geeks', as he calls them, but that wasn't his motivation. For the label to survive it was essential to put out new music by its best-known artist, and R.L. was not learning or writing any new songs. Johnson was also looking for a way to make the blues relevant to a young audience, by framing its essential feeling in a modern context. 'I was never in this as an archivist or a folklorist, recording these guys for posterity. It was the energy and intensity that attracted me.'



In 1991 Matthew Johnson was 22 years old, drinking like a maniac, getting into crazy scrapes, doing a lot of hard drugs with loaded pistols and vodka bottles strewn across the table. He was also attending the University of Mississippi on an occasional basis and had written some reviews for a blues magazine - 'all these crappy bands from Sweden and New Jersey, doing covers of "Sweet Home Chicago".'



One Sunday he drove out to Junior Kimbrough's juke joint, a rough- hewn saloon and dance shack out in the woods, where R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough played the blues until dawn to a moonshine-swilling crowd. Johnson was blown away by the raw power of the music and decided immediately that it needed recording. He had a $400 student loan cheque coming in and that was how Fat Possum began.



Now he is 34 and looks closer to 43, with a weary, distracted, slightly deranged air and a deep, dark, razor-cutting sense of humour, although not half as dark as R.L. Burnside's. A sensible man would have given up long ago. A less scrappy, tenacious and resourceful one would have been put under by bankers and lawyers. By the mid-1990s Fat Possum was a million dollars in debt. One year Johnson's bank charged him $14,000 in bounced cheque fees alone, at $17 per cheque. For two years Fat Possum was unable to release any music because of a legal battle with its distributor, Capricorn Records.



Junior Kimbrough, perhaps Fat Possum's greatest discovery, a man who reconfigured the blues into a kind of lo-fi, backwoods trance music, was the first artist to die. He left 36 children, many of whom were convinced Fat Possum owed them money. Then Asie Payton died, after only one recording session, and Johnny Farmer quit, and R.L. Burnside went into retirement, and so on.



The only new discovery they've made in years is Charles 'Cadillac' Caldwell, a retired factory worker and hound breeder who still sings the rough, old-time blues, with a moaning, shouting, spine-chilling vocal style, but it looks as though his first album will be his last. 'Basically the blues was dying when we started and now it's over,' says Johnson. 'The only guy we've got who's still running strong is T-Model Ford. There's some weird Dorian Gray shit happening with him. He's 80 now and he just keeps getting stronger.'



Last year T-Model Ford recorded a new album and played 150 shows. Towards the end of the tour he was complaining of blood in his urine and everyone assumed it was prostate cancer. They took him to the doctor who made an inspection and announced that T-Model, at the age of 79, had managed to contract gonorrhea.



Walking with a cane and his tall, gap-toothed, mentally impaired drummer Spam following, T-Model Ford makes a grand entrance into the Fat Possum offices, flashing his false teeth in a big, charismatic smile.



'I'm the Taildragger from Greenville, Muz-sippi! Ooo-weee, I make the pretty womens jump and shout! They took my gun but I got my knife and I'll cut a motherfucker too. Can't read, can't write, I don't argue with folks about the Bible but I love the womens! I love 'em cause of that little split they got. I got three womens right now and they won't let ol' T-Model alone. I'm a bad man! I can't get around like I used to but if I can reach a motherfucker, look out! I knocked out that Winehead Jones with this.'



He raises up his clenched right fist and bicep, which look as though they belong to a strong man in his fifties. He did indeed knock Paul 'Wine' Jones unconscious with one blow, during a squabble over whose white woman belonged to whom. Tomorrow T-Model is scheduled to play at a festival in Canada, a country he pronounces variously as 'Canna', 'Canny' and 'Can'. Last time he went there, he got up on stage and said, 'Hey, it's great to be overseas in Germany. I love the womens over here.' He also speaks highly of 'the little white women from Jay-pan'. T-Model never went to school, can't read a map or a roadsign and has no geographical sense whatsoever.



Before Fat Possum found him, he had spent his life in Deep South logging camps and on the chain gang for killing a man with a 25-cent pocketknife in a bar-room altercation. He fathered 26 children and started playing the guitar on the night his fifth wife left him, at the age of 58.



I ask T-Model if I can hear him play. 'Let's go,' he says and we get into his big blue 1979 Lincoln Continental and drive across the railroad tracks to a corner house in a part of Water Valley I have never seen before. An old man with one eye and no teeth is in a wheelchair on a rotting front porch, trying to attach a prosthetic leg to his stump. 'Hey Pete!' yells T-Model. 'Y'all got any elec- quickery up in there? We fixin' to play a little music.'



'Hey bluesman, you come on. We got electric,' says Pete and then his leg falls off with a clatter. 'I ain't never gonna get used to this damn fool leg.'



T-Model gets out his guitar and amp and the bottle of Jack and sets himself up on a chair on the porch. The music and the whiskey soon draw a crowd of afternoon drunks and a few curious mothers and small children. T-Model is flashing his smile, playing his rough, eccentric blues with raucous exuberance: 'I wanna rock you baby, till I drop dead in your arms.' There is violence and strangeness in his music, but no hint of the sadness or pain traditional in the blues. Matthew Johnson describes him as 'a happy-go-lucky psychopath'.



T-Model's life reads like a horror story. At the age of eight, his father beat him so badly between the legs with a piece of firewood that he lost a testicle. His ankles are scarred from the chain gang. His neck is scarred where one of his wives slashed his throat. He has been shot, stabbed, pinned under a fallen tree with a broken ribcage, beaten unconscious with a metal chair. He watched his first wife go off with his own father, watched another die after she drank poison to try and induce a miscarriage. The only woman he ever really loved poisoned him at the breakfast table; he woke up in hospital that afternoon and never saw her again.



'I play the blues,' he says during a whiskey break. 'But I don't ever get the blues. After my sister died I prayed to God to please let me live like a tree. Tree don't care if them other trees is dyin'. Tree don't care about nothin'. When they raped and killed that white lady, I felt bad - she was a good old white lady - but I didn't let it get me down. I don't let nothin' get me down.' Most people can't do this - stay happy because they've decided to be happy, no matter what - but it seems to work for T-Model.



As the sun goes down, three men are inside T-Model's Lincoln, rifling it for something to steal. Vehicles are drawing up to buy crack from a young man in a 'Jesus' T-shirt. An old man with a bowler hat and mad yellow eyes is coming towards me, trying to polish a peach on his leg as if it were an apple and leaving long smears of juice on his red slacks. He grabs at my shirt and demands money for gin. Another man is threatening Spam with a wine bottle, and T-Model is yelling, 'Get your hand out my pocket, motherfucker, I already give you two dollar!'



I pack up the gear, get T-Model behind the wheel, Spam in the back and we scramble out of there with everyone yelling and grabbing at the car. 'Man, they some beggin' motherfuckers around here,' says T- Model. He drops me off at the Fat Possum offices and drives off towards the trailer at the recording studio, where he and Spam are staying.



An hour later, I recount this to Matthew Johnson and he says, 'So you don't know for sure that T-Model is in the trailer? We'd better drive out there and check.' There's no sign of T-Model at the trailer or at the Texaco station where he has been courting a woman.



'I can't believe he'd go back to that porch,' I say.



'Are you kidding?' says Johnson. 'That's his normal, everyday reality. I'll bet he's back there, happy as a clam.' And sure enough, there he is, about three-quarters drunk and playing to a bigger crowd.



What does a blues label do when the blues is over? With the help of parent company, Epitaph, who saved them from bankruptcy in 1996, Fat Possum managed to get Solomon Burke, the great deep soul singer, to record a collection of songs written for him by Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Van Morrison, Brian Wilson and others. The album, Don't Give up on Me , won a Grammy and has sold 300,000 worldwide.



Johnson also managed to sign The Black Keys, a lo-fi punk blues band, akin to The White Stripes. Last year was Fat Possum's most successful but it didn't furnish them with much confidence. Solomon Burke was a once-in-a-lifetime coup, they almost lost The Black Keys - and nothing else they released made any real money.



Matthew Johnson and Bruce Watson spend their days scrambling and hustling, trying to cook up new schemes to stay in business. Having released every scrap of music recorded by the late Junior Kimbrough, they are now trying to put together a Kimbrough tribute album. Johnson is trying to persuade the RZA, the hip hop producer from Wu- Tang Clan, to contribute to the new R.L. Burnside remix project, and coax a little more out of Kid Rock. Fat Possum has signed Grandpa Boy, a new band formed by Paul Westerberg from The Replacements. From a bankrupt record label, they have bought a vault of southern rural 1960s blues, so Fat Possum can keep putting out great blues.



'I saw a guy on TV juggling a meat cleaver, a tomato and a bowling ball,' says Johnson. 'That's how I feel most of the time but what else am I going to do? When I started out, I didn't know what I was doing. Now I don't know how to do anything else. I don't have any choice but to carry on and hope a meat cleaver doesn't slice off my toes.'



· While this issue was going to press, Charles 'Cadillac' Caldwell died.