When I first got to town out of California, the Spiritfest just jumped up and bit me big time, never seen anything like it. Downtown then, Barney Allis Plaza, music going on every nook and cranny. Since then I have been a regular, logging miles on my sneakers listening to the music, just gravitating back and forth among all the different venues, all the different genres, all the different performs.

The big type in the print media, on the web (www.spiritfest.org), and everywhere else tells me that Saturday night is the party night for the blue tinged, and it plays like this: Storyville, Dr. John, the Neville Brothers, and B.B. King.

B. B. King has been coming back to Kansas City annually it seems for this show, and there’s nothing more to say about this father figure of the modern electric blues. When I was a kid everyone said, "Play like B.B., he’s the best!" But the more listened, the more I liked his singing. The years have changed all of us, but listening to B.B. is the same as it ever was. And if you got time after the show to visit, you might find him hanging around talking to folk.

One night one year I was living in Fog City, free form radio started playing some sort of voodoo thing, "Walk on Gilded Splinters". It was a time when anyone was taking something onto themselves and becoming something different, sorta like Emmet Grogan and the Diggers. So at first it was hard for me to get a fix on this Dr. John character, was he for real or just some quasi-academic forming a concept music out of obscure study. Time has proven me weird for thinking anything else but that Dr. John is the real deal, a man of music through and through, that unique kind that boils up out of New Orleans and just simmers and percolates with a touch of everything you ever heard, cause that’s New Orleans and Mac Rebennac is one of the oracles. Fess, second line, Congo Square, Dr. John carries it on. Even more, he’s embraced the song stylings of all American pop music and is a classy interpreter in his gravel edged voice.

Which brings us to the Neville Brothers who, if Dr. John is oracular, are the omphalos of that Crescent City from which so much other worldly exotic has flowed into the mainstream. Since 1954 when Art Neville cut "Mardi Gra Mambo" with his high school band the Hawketts the first family of New Orleans music has been bringing it to the people for the people. They deliver a strong message rooted in family, relationship, and consciousness of the world around them, e.g. their song celebrating Ms. Rosa Parks, their chilling interpretation of "Hollis Brown". Arthur, Charles, Aaron and Cyril will teach you, please you, love you, caress you and leave you thankful for spending quality time with them. But you all know all that to begin with, I’m just preaching to the choir, amen?

I did not catch Storyville when they last passed through town so I’m looking forward to seeing this group. The Ultimate Band List (www.ubl.com) website notes the following: "Veterans from dozens of blues jam-sessions and all-star backing bands, the members of Storyville -- all native Texans -- gelled at just such a jam, in 1994 at the Austin club known as Antone's. Bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton had played in Stevie Ray Vaughan's Double Trouble for ten years before the bluesman's death in 1990, and both moved on to the Arc Angels before meeting the other members of Storyville. Lead guitarist David Holt played on the Mavericks' debut album, and appeared with rhythm guitarist David Grissom in Joe Ely's backing band. Grissom had gained his early experience touring with John Mellencamp and the Allman Brothers. The only member of the band with less than ten sideman credits, vocalist Malford Milligan, sang with the Austin band Stick People before the formation of Storyville -- named, of course, in honor of New Orleans' historic red-light district." So once again we got the gumbo in the pot and on the hot!

[KCBS HOME PAGE]

Webmaster: Gil T. Wilson

Last Modified 16 August '98