The Battle of the Burge

Our friends, regulars, blues enthusiasts, and nifty photographers Tim Burge and Michelle Castro Orebia Burge are the best kind of people. They frequent our club as well as all the other clubs in the area that put rhythm & blues music on their fine stages, truly supporting live music and the folks who play it. Here are some photos they took at the club earlier this year:

Son Jack Jr. & Michael Wilde


John Nemeth


Robin Moxey & Eddie "Devil Boy" Turner


Ed Maloney and Harper, expressing their mutual affection


Handful of Luvin'

Awards

We just won this thing for the second consecutive year. They sent us the html code to post the banner and link above. It's strange, these things that involve voting, contests, declarations of "best" and such. We've enjoyed many decorations of success via awards and nominations, including the highest in our field. Our official response is the same as the one expressed within our walls at staff meetings... something along the line of, "aw, shucks, thanks for noticing!" There are a lot of good joints out there and we are but one of them. We don't compete with other venues, we only compete with ourselves; that is to say, we can only do the best we can, whether it's booking the shows, staffing, menu-planning, execution from the kitchen to the front of the house, marketing, advertising, promotion, branding... all the things any business must address if it wishes to exist next week. Sometimes we lose a good show to another venue and that's okay because other times another venue loses a show to us, and over time it's a wash, we get some good ones, they get some good ones, there's room for all of us, we're all friends and we're all part of the Seattle music community. All we know is, we work hard to provide the best experience for the music fan and the musician alike. We like to think that we do pretty well there, we know the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement. While nobody can please all the people all the time, we tend to be proud of what and how we do, while always working to do better. Anyway... when we get noticed in the form of an award for doing well, we're willing to take a moment - just a moment, too much work to do! - to say "aaaah..." and enjoy one of the many tasty fruits of our labor.

We Love Uncle Bobby

We love Bob Dylan. We love his new album, and that he's gone in a decidedly blues-oriented direction during the last 15 years or so. We loved his show at the Moore Theatre last week. When the Seattle Times ran Jonathan Zwickel's concert review, we were pleasantly surprised to see our name in print. Here's the mention:

"Backed by a crack quintet, including Texas-born ace guitarist Charlie Sexton, he spent the next half-hour doling out rote boogie blues jams - tight, sure, but the Highway 99 Blues Club is equally so on any given Tuesday."
Is this a compliment for us and the Tuesday night Scarlet Tree All Stars series? Is it a mild slight toward Dylan? A little bit of both? Who knows. Overall, the review was positive. All we can say is, it's quite an honor to be mentioned in the same breath as Bob Dylan. Click here for the full Seattle Times review

Our comments on the show:
We (the Maloney Brothers, Eric and Ed) have been huge Dylan fans all our lives and have seen dozens of his shows. Boston, Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, Minnesota, Wisonsin, Seattle... We were at the Moore and while the show was at times simply awesome and at times kind of mundane, overall we were happy for its favorable balance of strong points. Rarely played chestnuts like "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking" and "Shooting Star" plus inspired takes on "Ballad of a Thin Man", "Don't Think Twice" and "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" outweighed our opinion that he ignored the true gems of the new album (we wanted to hear "My Wife's Home Town" and "It's All Good").

As we talked about the show over slices at Belltown Pizza that night, we discussed the idea of "What would be your ideal Dylan show?" Tough question, even when you limit the answer to current realities and avails (he can't reunite with the Hawks, for example). Some nights, Dylan is "on." Other nights, not so much. The set list is always different. You never know what you're gonna get. It's not as simple as an artist favoring the new album - we've seen him play a lot of brand new stuff and then very little brand new stuff, within the same tour. At the Moore, he played two songs from the new album, four from Modern Times (2006), three from Love & Theft (2001), one each from the late 70s gospel period and the 80s, and five from the 60s. Nothing from the albums many argue as his career best, Blood on the Tracks and Blonde On Blonde. The following night, a mile down the road at Wamu Theatre, Dylan's set list comprised not even half of the songs we saw and heard at the Moore. The following night, exactly half the songs had been played at either of the two Seattle shows. The night after that in Eugene, same deal, half the set list had anything in common with the prior two nights. As we watch these set lists from town the town, there's not even a formula, as in, "he always opens with a song from Album X, the first song of the encore is always something from Album Y, there's a 3-song piece in the middle that's always the same" and so on. There is no apparent structure or architecture. Dylan plays a song one night as the opener, he may not play it again for 20 years, or he may play it again a few days later but it's done mid-show, or in the encore; one night, he may favor his newest material; another night, he may favor something from the previous album (as he did at the Moore); yet another night, he may favor any particularly identifying slice of his career, be it a period, an album, a subject matter, a style or genre, or none at all. It could be seemingly random. As Jonathan Zwickel so thoughtfully wrote in his Seattle Times review, It's Dylan being Dylan. You don't get the Dylan you want. You get the Dylan you get.

We decided that we like it the way it is. If Dylan felt compelled to get on the nostalgia circuit and play a bunch of his major hits every night, he may as well take it to the casinos. He stopped having anything to prove a long time ago, yet from his late 50s to late 60s he's been putting out material that stands aside his classic stuff of three and four decades ago. The only artist who comes close to Dylan in terms of issuing artistically and musically endearing stuff in his 60s is Tom Waits. Springsteen just turned 60 and to qualify for the discussion, he'll have to do better than he did in his 40s and his 50s. We love Bruce and his output of the last 20 years, but in terms of rivaling the output of his 20s and 30s in his 60s, all signs point to No. Anyway, that's all we've got for now.

The moral to this story is that we are all very lucky to have Bob Dylan as an active, productive artist who tours as actively as he does. He is not just a great journeyman troubadour. He is the most prolific and profound recording artist we can think of, and he continues to create new music, albums, and plays about a hundred shows a year. Not bad for a 68 year-old guy. His legacy as a recording artist is far greater than any other. If anyone has massive laurels on which to rest, it his Bob Dylan. But while far lesser artists do that, he doesn't. Artistically, the guy has balls of steel and an ambitious output of work to back it up.

Redemption, Sanctification, Gospelization

The other night, we hosted the secular debut of a gospel band called Brothers of the Empty Tomb. What we did know: they're a very good band, a nine-piece whirlwind of rhythm & blues, gospel and soul music complete with horns, backing vocals, a dynamite organist, a hard-driving rhythm section, and what makes them truly dangerous are the soaring lead vocals of James Armstrong and the mind-boggling, filthy, nasty, furious guitar work of Gareth Best. What we didn't know: how many people would show up to see a band which has only played in its church, and on a Thursday night, never mind the matter of how nervous the band might be. The result? Totally sold out, and they blew the roof off the dump. They played traditional hymns re-worked as soul and r&b rave-ups, original gospel tunes, rhythm & blues covers by the likes of Sam & Dave and Freddie King. Here's some video of the song that closed their first set, a souped-up cover of Parliament's "Testify."

Photos by Bill Zude

There are some awfully nice folks who shoot marvelous photos at the club. If you're reading this, chances are you're familiar with the work of people like Jef Jaisun and Tom Hunnewell. Recently, another great shooter named Bill Zude gave us some of his work for display. We've uploaded a more expansive gallery on our website, but here's a sample of some of the stuff Bill so generously graced us with:
Leroy Thomas & the Zydeco Roadrunners, 8/14/09



Alice Stuart & the Formerlys, 8/15/09


Robbie Laws' Bigger Blues Band, 8/1/09




Thanks, Bill!

Harpmaster J

Let's cut to the chase. We love Jason Ricci. Whenever a young artist is knocking it out of the park on a nightly basis and shaking up the world of rhythm & blues in ways that are best described as good, ambitious, challenging, and artistically endearing, the blues community tends to call it "the future."

We can curse here, right? Shit, it's our blog. We own this. And so we say, Fuck That Shit.

This is the Present.
We see artists like Jason, Bob Log III, Nathan James, Ben Hernandez, the Black Keys, the Blues Explosion, the sadly gone Sean Costello, Eddie Turner, Reverend Dead Eye's No Man Gospel Band, Gravel Road, and a whole shit ton of others who are taking the traditional form and while keeping it as their musical center of gravity, blowing it to pieces and taking it to new and exciting places.

Jason Ricci, who is playing on our stage at this very moment, is playing rhythm & blues music. He is also playing American roots music, pop music, rock & roll music, he is playing live music. He is not only giving props to his band, he is featuring these musicians frequently throughout the course of the show. He is engaging the audience, through his on-stage actions reminding us that the word "concert" means that the audience is in concert with the band, part of what's going on. Jason's performance style recalls some blend of Howlin' Wolf and a young Bruce Springsteen: it is at once real, viral, organic, personal, combustible, musically impressive, engaging, professional show business.

Let's stop pontificating and start showing. Here's a clip we shot with our garden-variety digital camera from behind the bar earlier tonight - this may take a minute to load, but trust us, it's worth it. Ladies and Gents, we give you our brother in arms, Mr. Jason Ricci:

International Blues Challenge

Each year, the Blues Foundation hosts a battle-of-the-bands type event called the International Blues Challenge. It's a long-weekend-long festival in Memphis at which every state, province, and nation is represented by its rhythm & blues artists of choice, most of the artists having won qualifying competitions by their local and regional blues societies. Yesterday, we hosted the Washington Blues Society finals to determine which artists will travel to Memphis to represent the Great State of Washington to the blues world. We're not into music and the arts as a competitive landscape, but Mother Necessity says there must be a democratic way to determine which one gets the opportunity when far more than one would love it. All the bands were great, the turnout was fantastic, everyone had a blast, and here are some photos courtesy of Ricky Peto:

The Randy Oxford Band will represent Washington in Memphis next February:


Tony making sure everyone knows the dealyo:


Nick Vigarino brings the house down with some back porch blues:


The Mary McPage Band:


Jessica takes a breather from the floor to chat with our fearless doorman Carter:


The Jam Finale:


Jada Amy of the Randy Oxford Band:


People shaking a tail feather on the dance floor:


Chester Dennis Jones Band:


Chester takes his axe for a walk through the audience:


Say hello to Murph. She's a bartender, also a mathematics genius and a softspoken bad-ass. Trust us, you don't wanna mess with her. She's tougher than you, AND smarter than you:


Cee Cee James:


Mia Vermillion and Orville Johnson: