Hello Blues Fans!
March!!!! Which means we will be at the Phoenix Blues Blast on March 10th selling Blues and Brews tickets! Looking forward to the lineup and a gloriously warm day in Phoenix! We’ve had a mild winter, however, I’ll take 75 over 50 any day of the week!!! Stop by and say hi! Jen and I love to see supporters of the festival!
Everyone knows that I love the Telluride Blues and Brews Festival and that was my inspiration for the Flagstaff Blues and Brews. I started attending in the early years, when it wasn’t that large, the festival was more of a beer fest, and the music wasn’t anywhere close to where it is today. I was there in year 10, when Steve got up on stage and announced they had sold out for the 1st time! I’m hoping we hit that mark by year 10 as well. I am still a huge fan of the festival and this year I thought it would be fun to take Jen and Jason and just hang and listen to music. March 1st I was 45 minutes late to buy my tickets for this year and they were sold out. I remember wondering 15 years ago if $120 was too much for a VIP ticket. And this year, I was willing to pay $625 per VIP ticket and they were sold out in 45 minutes without even knowing the lineup!!!! Goals. REALLY BIG goals. LOL
That year that Telluride filled, was also the year they had Robert Randolph and the Family Band on stage. From the minute he started playing that pedal guitar, I was hooked! I was blown away by the energy, the music, all of it. Through the years I’d watch him on David Letterman and other shows and each time I’d think of how I wanted to see him play again. Last year, Jen and I went to Mammoth and we saw Robert Randolph and the Family Band. Once again, I was blown away and when we returned to Flagstaff, I called his management company.
And in year 6, we have Robert Randolph and the Family Band headlining our festival! Many musicians claim that they “grew up in the church,” but for Robert Randolph that is literally the case. The renowned pedal steel guitarist, vocalist and songwriter led such a cloistered childhood and adolescence that he heard no secular music while growing up. If it wasn’t being played inside of the House of God Church in Orange, New Jersey—quite often by Robert and members of his own family, who upheld a long but little known gospel music tradition called sacred steel—Randolph simply didn’t know it existed.
“It was all church music. It was a movement within our church and that’s all we used to do,” says Randolph of the sacred steel music he played at the time, music whose association with his church stretches back to the 1920s. Once Randolph began to discover other forms of music, he saw how they were all connected, and was eager to find his own place. “All music is related. Gospel is the same as blues,” he says. “The only thing that changes is in hardcore gospel people are singing about God and Jesus and in the blues people are singing about ‘my baby left me’ and whiskey. When we first started out, guys really weren’t allowed to leave the church. I was the one that stepped out and started this thing. My dad would say, ‘Why do you come home smelling like beer and cigarettes?’ ‘Well, we just got done playing some smoky club till 2 a.m.!’ It was all foreign and different.”
I for one is happy he ventured out of the church and came home smelling like beer and cigarettes. His music always makes me happy. I hope everyone enjoys this year’s headliner, and like me, you become a fan!
