This came in from Ken late last nightThere are 16 venues presenting 160+ Blues Acts on Beale St, Memphis. We were at a new venue to the event, The Double Deuce, a country bar. We played second to last-9th out of ten bands. Each band(all American bands, no overseas ensembles) played a 25 minute set for 3 judges and tomorow we return to the same locale where we play 4th for three DIFFERENT judges and then the points from both nights are totalled to determine the Saturday finalist from the Double Deuce. So we will find out late tomorrow night if we made it to the Saturday finals which wil be held at the historic Orpheum Theatre.
The house bass amp started to break down so luckily they brought another in for Bud to use during our set. I had brought some duct tape with me which proved INVALUABLE to tape Dean's and Mike's microphones to their microphone stands because the microphone clips broke! There certainly were all KINDS of bands playing everythig from all covers to all originals. Most acts, like us, had more than one lead singer. Our set was Tobacco Road You Got No Business(original) Back In Idaho(original) Soothe Me Phone Booth(original) Roberta
Tomorrow night we will keep songs 1, 2, 4, 5 and add "Jaguar Blues(original)," "You Got Me Hummin'" and "Ain't No Rockin' No More." There are bands from all over the world so you can imagine how much money the band from, say, Sydney Austrailia, had to raise. Memphis is the Mecca/Jerusalem of Blues music so coming here is truly a pilgrimage as WC Handy discovered an elderly man playing strange music with a knife sliding over the guitar strings in the Memphis train station about 1912 or so. Pre-Blues music forms such as jug band music date back to Memphis in the later 1800's and you can see/hear/feel HISTORY all around. Carmel and I ate today at the Arcade, Memphis's longest continuously operating cafe(1919)where I ate Fried Okra and Purple Hulled Peas, among other things. Tomorrow we visit the Stax Records Museum(Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Booker T and the MG's etc)and perhaps take the trolley that goes alongside the Mississippi River which helped bring Blues north to such places as Chicago.....talk to you tomorrow!