Bumbershoot Blues Block: A Pictorial

Thanks to Tim and Michelle Burge who captured all these great shots for us at the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival, where we curated a blues block on the Starbucks Mural Ampitheater stage. It was a special day and a real highlight for everyone involved. The production crew, security, and everyone at One Reel really know how to throw a first-class affair. The Ty Curtis Band kicked things off, followed by the Karen Lovely Band featuring special guests Peter Dammann (guitar) and Hank Shreve (harp). The block culminated with the Harmonica House Party starring the Lee Oskar Orchestra complete with a four-piece strings section and a 2-piece percussion section, in addition to his core band of Andrew Cloutier (drums), Tim Lerch (guitar), Scotty Harris (sax), Lissa Ramaglia (bass) and Ron Weinstein (Hammond B-3). Also part of the House Party, the legendary Magic Dick, a founding and still member of the J. Geils Band who kicked things off with his "Pontiac Blues" and a few others before joining Lee & the orchestra for his classic "Whammer Jammer" and a grand finale, an extended jam of "Low Rider" with Hank also sitting in. Here, we'll let the pictures to do the talking. TY CURTIS BAND

KAREN LOVELY BAND

HARMONICA HOUSE PARTY

MISC.

SOME SHOTS WE TOOK WITH OUR LITTLE DIGITAL CAMERA: Jillian, Karen, Hank, Ed

Lee and Magic with Ian Hunter (Mott the Hoople)

This is a cello case.

The King on a unicycle, gonna juggle those bowling pin-looking things. What's not to like?

Behold the enormity of the Space Needle...

We embedded the video of Magic doing "Whammer Jammer" below but in case it's not working on your browser and you see a black box instead of the YouTube frame... Click here to dig on Whammer Jammer in a new window

We Heart Bumbershoot

Bumbershoot is America's best festival. That's right. We said it. We are honored to have teamed up with the fine folks at One Reel to curate a Blues Block on the Mural Ampitheater stage on Sunday, Sept. 2, at Seattle's Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival. Our stuff: The Harmonica House Party starring the Lee Oskar Orchestra & Magic Dick, the Karen Lovely Band, and the Ty Curtis Band play on the Mural Ampitheater Stage. Among the other great stuff happening at the festival that same day: Tony Bennett, Wanda Jackson & the Dusty 45's, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Ian Hunter, Fruit Bats, Lee Fields & the Expressions, Mudhoney, former Highway 99 resident artist Eldridge Gravy & the Court Supreme; comedy with Fred Armisen, Janeane Garofalo, Brian Posehn, Laff Hole, SketchFest Seattle, and the Vancouver ComedyFest's Illegal Aliens; the writers of Futurama, Seattle Symphony "Untuxed" - and that's just some of the highlights on Sunday, only one of Bumbershoot's three great days of arts and culture. Any Seattle music lover has got to be proud that our fair city hosts one of the nation's handful of first-rate annual music and arts festivals. What separates ours from the rest, among other things, is that Bumbershoot offers a line-up as great as any other but for a fraction of any other major festival's price, with far greater musical diversity, much more expansive non-musical art and culture than the normally gratuitous quota found at most other festivals, including comedy, the 1 Reel Film Festival, theatre including sketch comedy and improv, literary lectures, visual and performing arts and installations, the Youngershoot kids zone which is a family festival within the festival... and... the food & beverage is way better than the standard festival fare you're stuck with elsewhere.

Cheaper than the rest. A line-up with as much star power that's also more interesting and diverse than the rest. More varied food and beverage options than the rest. More family-friendly than the rest. Better than the rest.

Cab Calloway, way ahead of his time

Done in '34.

Jimi Statue

Our friend and awesome singer-songwriter Brian Fitzpatrick from Jersey, is in Dublin where he posted a photo of the Phil Lynott statue (Thin Lizzy), wondering why more artists are not celebrated in statue form stateside, specifically mentioning the absence of a Joey Ramone statue in NYC. We agree with Brian: Europe seems to celebrate its artists more than we do here in the U.S. and we wonder why? Do they value the arts more across the pond? Without getting into the related political issues, lack of funding for the National Endowment of the Arts or even wondering why, at such a relatively low cost, there aren't more saucy gents out there who'd be willing to commission such landmarks celebrating the artists who were so (pun, comin' atcha) instrumental in putting our municipalities on the larger map. The Jimi Hendrix statue proudly sits on Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, at Broadway and Pine, right across from Seattle Central Community College. So we looked online for some photos of it, in the handful of ways we've seen it over the years, to celebrate it here. Okay, that's it. How many ways can one statue be shown? Jimi was a local boy done good, we celebrate him, the brilliant and prolific catalog of music he gave us in such a short time, and appreciate that the world was fortunate enough to have him at all. Naturally, we wonder what might have been. Ultimately, rather than speculate what Jimi may have given us in these last 40 years, we celebrate the amazing stuff he gave us in just four. Oh - here's Brian with the Phil Lynott statue, the original inspiration for this goofy post. Thanks, buddy!