There have been a lot of options for local blues fans this summer, but this week was even more packed with free blues events than I can ever remember.
Thursday, Thief River Falls blues band Little Bobby & The Storm had a DVD release party for its live video recorded at the Empire Arts Center earlier this year. I wrote about that on Valley Sound a while ago and hope they had a good turnout to celebrate another step for a local group that is getting a little bigger all the time.
And Saturday, there are two more blues events that will feature live music at an unbeatable price – free! First up is the conclusion to the Blues on the Red series that has brought some great musicians to downtown Grand Forks over the summer. Tomorrow, two bands from the Minneapolis area will help close out the series with music from 5-10 p.m. at the town square, corner of 3rd Street South and DeMers Avenue.
Eddie Rickert and Blue Voodoo, Bloomington, Minn., will open the show, followed by headlining act Jimi "Prime Time" Smith and his band with guest artist Barbara LeShoure, Minneapolis. There will be food and refreshments for sale, and people are invited to bring lawn chairs to relax and have a good time enjoying what could be one of the last warm weekends of the year (let’s hope not, but it’s ND after all). Herald arts editor Paulette Tobin had a great question & answer segment with Jimi "Prime Time" Smith in Friday’s paper – check it out here.
The other Saturday event is a little bit of a drive for GF residents, but it’s well worth the time if you are looking for something to do. The Last Ride Blues Festival is happening once again at the Seven Clans Casino near Thief River Falls. Music starts at 2 p.m. and I’m guessing will go until at least 11 p.m., and the lineup is pretty stacked for a free festival. Here’s who’s playing:
- Bluedog Band, 2 p.m.
- Little Bobby & The Storm, 3:30 p.m.
- Ana Popovic, 5 p.m.
- Walter Trout and the Radicals, 7 p.m.
- Robert Cray, 9 p.m.
I got the chance to talk with Walter Trout last week and he seemed like a very nice, down-to-earth kind of guy. I felt a little bad because there were so many interesting parts of our conversation, but because of space limits, the story I wrote for Friday’s Herald had to leave out some of the cool details. So I’ll try to add a little more here to help give some more background to Trout’s career and how he became a solo musician.
He started off as a trumpet player in his school’s band, eventually picking up guitar during the wave of prominent folk bands in the early 1960s. But once he discovered the Beatles and heard how powerful the electric guitar could be, he switched instruments again and went down a road that would ultimately lead to him being a solo blues musician.
Trout played with a number of blues bands when he first started, and ended up as a sideman to John Mayall in a gig that lasted for 5 years. He said the job was "an incredible experience" that he wouldn’t have traded for anything, which made it hard to walk away from it.
But all along, his dream was to front his own band and be the lead singer/guitarist for his own music. He got to do that at a young age while living in New Jersey, where he had his own band and wrote all the songs for a couple of years. But the band couldn’t get anywhere, he said, and he eventually started getting gigs in California as a sideman. "The whole time I was doing that, my dream was to do this, to front to my own band and write the songs," he said.
He got his chance eventually – Mayall was sick one night while the band was in Denmark, and Trout substituted for the performance, fronting the band and singing all the songs. That one show got him an offer for a record deal from a Scandanavian record company, and he spent the next several days considering the offer. Two weeks later, on Trout’s 38th birthday, he thought about the chance and said he realized "if I don’t go for this now, I’m going to find myself in my 50s still being a sideman." He went to Mayall’s hotel room and told him that he had to quit the band.
He said it was very difficult to work up the courage to quit – the gig was pretty good, and Mayall had become "kind of like a surrogate dad to me," he said. They both cried a bit but Trout also said he knew right away that he had made the right choice. He finished up the tour with Mayall, and two weeks later was hard at work on his first record in a recording studio in Stockholm. "Right after I made that album, I began touring in Europe with my own band," he said. "I knew right away that I had to take that shot and see what would happen."
Now, more than 20 years after that big gamble, Trout’s shot at his own band has proven to be a good decision. He still plays more than 200 shows a year, traveling all over the world and earning acclaim along the way. It was really cool to talk with Walter – it’s a strange feeling to know that a few years ago, I was working at Budget Music and selling Walter Trout CDs to customers. Now, I get to talk with some amazing musicians from time to time and ask them whatever I can think up – it’s a pretty cool gig to have for someone that is obsessed with music!
