Are you a band, traveler, artist, participant, parent, or interested party to those going to the International Blues Challenge (IBC) in Memphis? We’d like to keep track of what you are doing to get ready, the anticipation, the good, the bad, the great, the ugly, whatever – those of you who are viewing, feel free to ask questions too! This is a great opportunity to get a glimpse (maybe some pics as they happen!) of what IBC is all about.
IBC Videos will appear here:
Getting excited now. Only a coupla days from departure. Got the oil changed in anticipation of the trip.
[...] entrant, Kalamazoo’s own: Crossroads-The Resurrection. We will try to keep up with posting IBC info (maybe even some rough videos) during our time in [...]
Left 6am from Kalamazoo (Thursday) arrived Memphis 4:15 pm (Kalamazoo time). Weather is verrrry nice; sunshine, nearly 60 degrees. Chris Canas starts at 6pm haven’t found Doug in the schedule yet….some rain on the way…nothin major. Lookin’ forward to hittin the street – BEALE STREET that is!
Videos and words simply are incapable of describing the incredible vibe that all this blues talent gathered together in one place generates. The mood is great, spirits are high and some are high on spirits! Youth showcase is next on the list (after breakfast and coffee). Videos are uploading as of now and will be available soon.
It has been an amazing couple of days. Weather has been great and everyone seems to have their blues flag flyin! The acts appearing at the finals today, sadly, do not include any of our Kalamazoo entries, but the field is full of immensely talented musicians. One we in Kalamazoo might recall from her solo performance a couple of years ago – Kristine Jackson. Originally from Cleveland OH, she and her band are representing West Virginia Blues Society at the finals. We send best wishes to her and all the finalists. According to the Blues Foundation web site, the judges “never had it tougher.”
Well! What a blast we had! I am Kevin Schoepke, also known as “Shep,” the bassist with Chris Canas. I want to take this opportunity to first thank all of you with the KVBA for your support and well wishes for the trip. I can’t possibly remember all the names to go with your faces, I meet a lot of blues lovers in this business, and I am getting old (44), so please, you all know who you are, and our gratitude is eternal.
I have had the privilege of going to the IBC three times now, twice with this band, once with a band called the Whoodoo Band, and this was by far the best trip of them all. I’m going to try and post up 2010 memories here over the next few days or weeks, so bear with me while I get to it all. I had originally planned to post updates as the trip neared, unfortunately that didn’t happen, my day job suddenly got busy, among other things, and I just didn’t get to it. Then, I didn’t get to packing my laptop for the trip, so I just gave up and decided to post after the trip.
So, let’s start by going back a few weeks. Some of you may be wondering why we have a different drummer than the one we had when we won the KVBA competition.
Ringer? Dramatic firing?
Nope. Nothing juicy or controversial there. Frank, the drummer at the 411 that day, had been our drummer for about 4 and a half years. He had been planning to move out of Michigan for years; this past December, he finally made it happen. He’s a native Californian, and also spent years in Arizona, and he HATES winter weather. We miss him a lot, both as a musician and bandmate, and especially as a good friend. My wife, Tracy, and I held a going away party for him at our house the week before he left, and a lot of musician friends showed up and jammed and drank and toasted the good times.
Our new drummer, Mickey Coleman, has been in and around the Detroit scene for many years, and most recently played with Sweet Claudette. He had subbed for us a couple times, so we knew him well, and knew his playing style would fit in. His transition into the band has been seamless and enjoyable. He’s a nice guy, easy to get along with, and a good musician. As the bassist, I have to have a good rapport with the drummer; if we don’t work well together, the band will, well, in a word, suck. Really bad. You can have all the guitar chops in the world, and they won’t amount to anything better than nails on a chalkboard without a good foundation to stand on. The rhythm section is that foundation, and I take my role as one of the bricks in that foundation seriously. (Go ahead, insert joke about bassists being blockheads here. You know you want to.)
So that’s the story about the drummer switch. Hopefully, my rudimentary writing skills willing, that will serve as a setup for what will soon follow.
More later!
Kalamazoo acts received an extremely enthusiastic response from the blues fans in Memphis.
They deserved it. They played their hearts out and laid it all on the line. Chris Canas said it best: “this isn’t really a competition it is a celebration of the blues.”
We are proud of their efforts and their devotion to the art. Make sure to let all of the acts who made this fantastic journey how proud you are of them.
Read Tail Hawk count southbound = 3. Read Tail Hawk count northbound = 48. There is not a lot to do while driving through Illinois aside from hoping it will be over. We were worried about “our birds.”
Much drizzle, rain, and wind attempted to slow our trip home, but despite horrible windshield wipers, we prevailed over nature and got back home from a most memorable event.
Matt Anderson from the Harvest Jazz & Blues Society took top prize in the solo/duo finals.
Grady Champion (Mississippi Delta Blues Society) took top place in the band category; Karen Lovely Band (Cascade Blues) took second; Cheryl Renee and Them Bones (Cincinatti)wrapped up in third. The Albert King Award went to Matt Kelly of Big Boy Little Band (DC Blues Society).
What a fine venue the Orpheum Theatre is. Memphis is truly blessed by having this gem and the Blues Foundation is fortunate that they turn over this beautiful place to us blues lovers for a day to enjoy the music we love the best.
Like the Kalamazoo Blues Festival, this International Blues Challenge is quite the event filled with hundreds of volunteers, judges, printing, publishing, coordinating, sound technicians, runners, taking care of bands, taking care of fans, selling memberships, selling merchandise, etc., etc.
Wow! That sums it up.
Moving on…..
The last three or four weeks before the trip were a flurry of preparations, arranging, and rehearsals. We really tried to tighten up the set as much as possible. I don’t know how much you all have noticed, but this band likes to play loose; that is, we don’t rehearse the sets down to the tiniest of details. It’s far more enjoyable to leave some room for improvisation or allow the band to run off in different directions during a song than to just play it the same exact way each time you play it. Chris gives us the freedom to try new things with his music, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. This looseness can be a good or bad thing—when it works…..wow. When it doesn’t….eeeewwww. But that’s a risk you take when you play this way.
Unfortunately, this looseness can be a detriment to playing in musical contests. Judges tend to like tight arrangements, they’ll mark you down if you train wreck an ending, for example. The band is accustomed to constantly experimenting with different things to see what works and what doesn’t, and has to adjust their normal way of approaching the songs in order to play tighter. It’s a bit of an adjustment, but not so bad it can’t be done.
So anyway, we rehearsed the 5 songs we played to get them a bit tighter, and I think they came out pretty good. We even rehearsed on Monday night, two days before departing. All this had the additional benefit of giving Mickey and I time to learn how to groove with each other, and I’m glad we did. He and I are getting better each time at playing off each other, adjusting the groove as we go along to support the soloists, and making the song feel right.
Not all music fans understand how important the rhythm section is to a song, but we sure do. I can make a guitarist look stupid in one note—no kidding. The audience will think the guitarist can’t play very well when in reality the bassist just doesn’t know how to support his playing. And I’m not saying I’m an expert at it, mind you, but I do try.
Next—the trip down.
There may have been some impression that videos of the finals were coming…well they *were* but the sound and video quality is so bad (zooming in from the balcony does not help) that it just does not do any of these fine acts justice. I have videos of all the solo/duo and band finalists for those that might be interested..if you are leave a note here on the blog and I will make the effort to spin some of them together. Otherwise, I think they will have to live on in memory. I would encourage you to check the videos above as they are much better quality (closer to both the band and their sound sources) even though they are not professional, they do give an idea of the wealth of talent you can find at IBC.
Well, back for more…..
The drive down to Memphis was mostly uneventful. Good weather, no drama from breakdowns, etc. My wife, Tracy and I drove ourselves; Shane rode with his parents, who stayed for the weekend and continued on to Florida; everyone else rode in Angie’s old motorhome. That gang had left sometime around midnight Wednesday morning, we followed around 5am, Shane and his parents at 7. Sometime in the early afternoon Wednesday, I called to see where they all were, and we had somehow passed them! Angie had missed and exit in Ohio and lost an hour or so, and then they were further held up by driving at a slower pace and having to stop more often than we did. But everyone arrived safe and sound and in plenty of time to get a good night’s sleep before the big event started on Thursday.
Trace and I even arrived in time to get dinner at the Rendezvous Restaurant in downtown Memphis. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a barbecue joint situated in an alley off Union Street, and it’s a pretty legendary place. Large, wood-fired, slow cooked goodness. Wonderful ribs and brisket, to be sure.
Thursday started off with breakfast in the hotel (continental, but it was okay) and a trolley ride down to the hotel where the sign in was being held. Met up with bandmates and friends from other bands there, exchanged road stories and distributed passes. Found out our venue: The New Daisy Theater. Not the best place to draw, not that I’m complaining, although probably the largest. It’s hampered by being at the far East end of Beale Street, and lots of people just stay up at the West end because there’s a more tightly concentrated group of clubs there. We also were the opening act on Thursday. Some people think this is a severe handicap, but I’ve never fully understood why. The only possible advantage to playing later that I can think of is the level of inebriation of the crowd; that is, the harder they’re partying the more energy you might have to feed off. This can affect your performance, but not always to your advantage, either.
No worries, though. We played a pretty good set, I think. Chris was on fire, full of energy, and when he’s like that the rest of us just fall in line and crank ourselves up a notch. We set a fairly high bar for the acts to follow, I think.
Trace and I stuck around for a couple of the acts after us, then headed off in search of others. You understand that you can carry your drink along with you to all the other venues, and your performer pass (or wristband, as was Trace’s case) earned you entry into all the participating venues? We took full advantage of this opportunity to wander all about, sticking our heads into this club or that, seeing if we’d like to stick around for more or just move on to the next. We stopped to watch the group of gymnasts doing tumbling runs down the middle of Beale. We made new friends and reacquainted ourselves with others we’ve seen there in years past. We got to know the doormen by name.
It’s an overwhelming feeling to have all that wonderful musical energy so highly concentrated in one small place like that. It just makes you want to move. Makes you want to break out your instrument and brush up on something that needed work. Makes you think, “Oh, yes. I want to cover THAT song!”
We made sure to catch, among others, Johnny Reed and the Houserockers, at the Superior, and Thornetta Davis at Alfred’s. I’ve seen Thornetta before, and Chris has actually played in her band at times, so I knew what to expect. Holy crap—what a performance. Word must have gotten out that hers was a show to see, because the place filled up quickly. I wound up watching her set while sitting ON THE BAR! It was just too packed to be anywhere else. She absolutely tore the place up.
Around 2am we finally fell into bed in the hotel. Happy, exhausted, and looking forward to doing it again.
That about sums up Thursday. More later!
Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to this. Just been too darn busy with other things right now.
Anyway….
Trace and I woke up Friday with a mission in mind: see the National Civil Rights Museum, finally. The Museum is the former Lorraine Motel—site of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. We’ve been to Memphis twice before, and saw the other must-see attractions: Stax, Rock and Soul Museum, Sun Records Studio. We had wanted to see the NCRM every time, but hadn’t been able to make it happen. We wouldn’t be denied this time.
We hopped on the trolley and rode all the way down to the Museum. The trolley travels on Main Street, the Museum is one block to the East. You don’t realize it until later, but just before you reach the Museum stop, you first pass the boarding house where James Earl Ray stayed and carried out his crime.
Walking down to the museum, we came upon a stand where, we later learned, a lone protester keeps a vigil trying to get people to boycott the Museum. Her signs were leaned against a small table—they said things like “Stop Living in the Past” and “Welcome to the $5 Million tribute to James Earl Ray.” This protester is rumored to have been an employee of the Lorraine who lost her job after the assassination and subsequent closing of the Motel, and has concluded that Dr. King would have preferred the motel be converted to a homeless shelter instead of the Museum. She wasn’t at her stand when we arrived, and she wouldn’t have succeeded in keeping us out, anyway.
In we went. Please bear with me and my grade-school level writing skills as I try to draw a picture of what you’ll find in that museum. And also understand that what I’m describing only scratches the surface—you simply cannot take it all in in one visit.
The museum is a walk-through timeline of the plight of black people in America, starting with their enslavement and moving on through everything you can imagine and then some more that you never knew. Artifacts abound. Reproductions of newspaper stories chronicling the whole thing, lynchings, trials, you name it. There’s the bus upon which Rosa Parks helped start a movement. There’s a garbage truck representing the sanitation workers strike that brought King to Memphis. And then there’s the room where Dr. King spent the last night of his life. They’ve set up the area so you can pass through a glassed-in room 306, and walk right up to the window and look out onto the balcony where he died. You can see the partially opened window across the street from where the fatal shot was fired.
If seeing this doesn’t have an effect on you, you aren’t thinking.
From there, you go across the street to the boarding house, and see the dirty room where Ray stayed, and the bathroom at the end of the hall where he fired the shot. You’ll also see a timeline of the civil rights movement superimposed with a timeline of the crime. It’s no wonder so many people think there may have been some kind of government conspiracy involved—the FBI was tailing King all over the country, and had two agents atop the firehouse next to the boarding house when the shot was fired.
Now, you might read this and wonder why I would include it on a blog about music. The answer is simple—Blues is black man’s music. It came about in large part because of the oppression black folks endured for so long. I have long considered myself lucky to be allowed to play blues—how can a white guy like me truly understand the plight of the oppressed?
So it was important to me to try and understand as much as I can about what it’s like to actually be discriminated against. I have no illusions about this. I can’t truly know what it’s like. But I can try as hard as I can.
I hope you understand. More later!
A question:
Is anyone reading this? I won’t bother updating if no one is reading. Otherwise, I’ll continue.
I am reading them. We’re gathering stats but I think this page is getting hits – just probably no comments. I always wonder the same thing!
All right. I’ll try to put up some more this weekend!
Sorry I’ve been so lazy about this..I’ve really just been busy with my day job and other things.
According to our stats on the site this page continues to be in the top 25 pages viewed. So thanks for writing!
Okay then, I’m finally back. I’m so sorry about screwing around and not getting back to this sooner.
After we left the NCRM, we walked back to Beale Street for lunch at Blues City Cafe. For a tourist trap place, their food is pretty good, and the atmosphere is great. The youth band competition was going on, so we wandered down Beale for a listen. We didn’t have the time to hang around, as I had to get back to the hotel and get ready for our set later on, but we did get to hear a few bands, and I was truly impressed. And also heartened at the thought that the Blues is in good hands for the future.
Back to the hotel, clean up, get ready, head back to Beale. Stopped in for Eric ‘Guitar’ Davis’ set—he’s someone we have a history with. A couple years ago, he played at the now-closed BLUEStage Club in Napoleon. He likes to wander off the stage and through the crowd while playing his guitar–he’s quite a showman. That night at the BLUEStage, he was in the crowd looking for “a victim.” I volunteered my tipsy spouse and before she could say “NOOOO,” Davis hauled her off to the dance floor, set his guitar on her shoulder, and proceeded to play it from behind her, in, let’s say, a flirtatious way. It was priceless. On her way off the floor, she swiped his hat, which we still have. And I still have a picture from that night—I’ll never lose that one!
So we get back to the New Daisy for our set, this time we’re not the opening act. I wanted to see more of the bands we were competing against, so we planned on staying there most of the night. I don’t remember all their names, but there was the band from Texas, whose bassist had a custom bass with a Texas-shaped pickguard. It was so cool in a kitschy way, I had to take a picture of it. I thought most of the bands I heard were pretty good, and didn’t envy the judges.
Weeks earlier, we had decided to play the same set both nights. Not because we didn’t have enough original material, but because with a new drummer in the mix, it was easier to focus on those five songs instead of throwing the new guy more curves to deal with. This night, I thought our set was better. We just played at better tempos and overall better feel. Chris was on fire again, too, I thought he lit the place up.
Right after us was a band out of Toronto called Scott McCord and the Bonafide Truth—an 8 piece band with a three-piece horn section. WOW—what a great band. I hung around for half their set before running across the street to the Old Daisy so I could catch some of Lansing’s Stan Budzinski and Third Degree. I really like this band, and was hopeful they would advance. They put on a great set, too.
I was so taken in by all the music, all the sights, all the wonderful vibe, that I forgot to eat. Suddenly noticing how hungry I was, and with Trace feeling the same way, we walked over to Dyer’s—a truly wonderful greasy diner. We hadn’t sampled this place the two previous times we’ve been to Memphis, so we decided to try it. Looking over the menu and thinking to ourselves that “it’s pretty hard to screw up chicken strips,” we ordered a plate of those deep-fried heart-attack inducers and fries to share. Holy cow! I don’t know what they did to the simple chicken strip, and I probably don’t want to know, but man, it was something else. I’m guessing that at the very least, they haven’t changed the oil in the deep fryer in at least 20 years.
Carrying our box of leftover strips back to the New Daisy, we rejoined my bandmates for the open mic jam, hosted by Candye Kayne, and the seemingly endless wait for the results announcement. I wasn’t for one minute thinking about signing up to play—there were so many people there, and being a veteran of many jams, I knew it was going to be a mess. It was. Right off the bat, someone onstage asked the assembled crowd if anyone had a bass to use. This nice lady named Zen, who plays bass and follows our band around at times and was in attendance hoping to get a chance to play herself, ran up to volunteer her instrument, a pricey Warwick. The jam went on, and the guy running it never called another bassist up to play. Not one. He should have at minimum called Zen up. But he didn’t. The entire jam session was held with only one bassist doing all the work, and he didn’t even have his own damn instrument!!! I was insulted for Zen. And like I said, what a mess. Too many guitarists in one room and the “jam” devolves into what is known in music circles as a “big dick contest.” I shouldn’t have to elaborate.
I was content to observe and munch leftover chicken strips. And drink beer. Can’t forget that. There was a lot of beer drinking going on there. It’s kinda required. Thornetta Davis and her band arrived and sat with us to await the announcement. This gave me a chance to hang with Chuck Bartels, the bassist, and Brett Lucas, the guitarist. Both of these guys are just great people–no egos at all, and both are far more accomplished than I am. We had a great time hanging out, telling tall tales, goofing on our bands’ keyboardist, Shane, who is way too easy to mess with, and commenting on the mess onstage in front of us. No, I’m not repeating any of it here.
Finally, the results were announced. You all know we didn’t advance. The winning band from our venue turned out to be the only band I didn’t get to see. Figures. Therefore, I don’t remember the name. Wait, now I do—The Karen Lovely Band. I heard she was quite good. Thornetta didn’t advance either. She was heartbroken. Tears and everything. I felt bad for her, but having been through it all before, I’ve learned to not get my hopes up too much. Anything can happen. It’s a music contest, and judging is subjective.
After the announcement, there were still a lot of musicians waiting to get a chance to play, but they ended the jam—right then and there! Apparently, the operators of the New Daisy weren’t interested in staying open and keeping all those happy heavily drinking people there for a while. Literally shut down and shoved everyone out the door. Sometimes, I just don’t get venue owners.
Okay, it’s late—I will finish this up soon!