Vanessa Collier at Bayfront Blues Fest. Photos by Jill Fisher.

The 35th annual Bayfront Blues Festival has come and gone and with it the short-lived feeling that the blues are here to stay. 

I say this because this year’s lineup revealed how the blues seems to be morphing more and more into rock, rhythm and blues and jazz! 

What a contrast from last year when we heard from the elder statemen of blues blasting out the classics. Now this doesn’t mean I didn’t thoroughly enjoy what was on offer this year. On the contrary, I enjoyed nearly every minute each day.

Day One: Breezy Rodio kicked off BBF’s first day promptly at noon on Friday, Aug. 9, with two backup musicians. On his electric guitar, he calls “Olivia,” he played us both hot and smooth numbers, with a little soul music and Motown sound in the mix. And then there was some Latin tinge happening with his number, “Mexico Calling.” He had some longer instrumentals in there too. My favorite was the one with the line: “Sometimes I got the blues and sometimes the blues got me.” The trio got nice and bluesy on its final number.

Kat Riggins

Amongst the six acts on this first day, I do believe Kat Riggins & Her Blues Revival, was the all round favorite, according to my unscientific poll. Talk about a versatile voice! She wailed like Janis Joplin, nailed a cover of a Tina Turner tune and then turned down the volume to give us a sultry rendition of “Bring It On Home To Me.”

Bernard Allison (left)

Bernard Allison, son of blues legend Luther Allison, was one of the performers many came to hear. He covered several of his father’s blues numbers to appropriately commemorate Luther’s appearance at the first BBF in 1989. 

After Allison came GA-20, a trio from Boston, that was quite energizing with some David Byrne-like moments. Though I didn’t know most of these songs, I wrote “now THIS is the Blues” in my notebook. 

To wrap up the first day the headliner Devon Allman Project came on like gangbusters in all white attire under bright white lights with extremely loud amplification. (I was forced to wear earplugs!) Devon is the son of Gregg Allman and, as one would imagine, Allman Brothers’ tunes were amply covered. There was a lot of rock and roll in this set. 

Devon Allman Project

Devon (who’s 52nd birthday happened to be the next day) had a voice reminiscent of Joe Cocker. Unfortunately, the temperature dropped and wind gusts made it feel like the low 50s. Thus much of the audience dissipated before the concert ended.

Day Two: The weather was still iffy, with cool breezes and rain threatened so only the die-hard blues fans were there to welcome Ben Levin with his trio from Cincinnati to the stage. He is a vocalist who plays keys and on this day the Hammond organ, an instrument I have never really associated with the blues. (The Curmudgeon claims it isn’t new in the genre.) 

One of the trio was his father, Aron Levin, who played bass guitar; Cole Baker played drums. Though only 24 years old, Ben is developing a real blues voice. It was a good set to get the second day started. 
It was interesting that the first three acts were all male, while the second three were female led. 

Shemekia Copeland, daughter of Texas blues guitarist Johnny Copeland, was the headliner on this day. (See Jim Lundstrom’s interview with her in the Aug. 8 Reader.) However, I do believe it was a toss-up between Vanessa Collier (vocalist, alto saxophone and electric guitar) and Joanne Shaw Taylor (electric guitar) whose acts preceded Copeland’s that drew the most raves. 

Collier has been playing saxophone since age 9! Her versatility was on display as she sang some numbers, played guitar on others and keened on sax for most. The tunes were mostly her own compositions from her 2020 album, Heart on the Line. Backing her up were Chris Vitarello (electric guitar), Scot Sutherland (bass) and Byron Cage (drums). There was a spectacular back-and-forth between Collier on sax and Vitarello on guitar.  

My only gripe was her rendition of the Chris Smither tune “Love Me Like A Man” (a hit for Bonnie Raitt), which inserted an unneeded guitar solo and jam into the song. But she ended with a cover of a James Brown number that left me completely satisfied. 

Joanne Shaw Taylor

Joanne Shaw Taylor was equally fabulous with her rockin’ blues set, heavy on the rock and roll. Her British accent revealed her home base and background. She had four musicians backing her —three men plus Sara Tomak on drums. Keyboardist Phil Whitfield made the organ sound like bagpipes on a Celtic-sounding number, which demonstrates how much fusion there is with the blues these days. Taylor’s voice is earthy and she can shred the guitar like the best them. The audience responded enthusiastically to her rendition of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and demanded an encore. 

Day Three: Only five acts made up the final day of the festival, but what a lineup it was. Maurice Jacox & We Still R from Brooklyn Park was first up. Straight away the eight-piece band got the crowd good and warmed up. Vocalist Maurice could wail; at one point he sounded like one of the trumpets in his five-piece horn section, or perhaps it was the trumpet that sounded like him! 

The second act was Mick Sterling & The Stud Brothers. The Stud Brothers comprised the horn section with two saxophones, two trumpets (maybe one was a cornet?) and a trombone. There’s no wonder why they’ve played at BBF 10 times in its 35-year history — what a show! “Let’s Do Things To Each Other” was one of their oldies, recorded in 1992 at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minn. That Mick really struts his stuff, and rightly so.

J. P. Soars Gypsy Blue Revue took the stage at 3:30 on this final afternoon and if anything, they upped the ante for getting the audience engaged – they was rockin’!

J.P. Soars with Anne Harris

Soars, who sings, plays guitar and shekere (a beaded gord shaker) also performed on a 2-string cigar box guitar with slide. Anne Harris on fiddle (on some numbers more like classic violin) was showcased. Her solo on the 1948 Muddy Waters tune, “Gypsy Woman,” was a stunning interlude to Soars’ vocals. This band had a real country blues sound. 

Further pushing the boundaries of what we think of as blues was a drum solo that included congas and shekere. 

Soars with shekere and cigar box guitar

The following fourth act was Yates McKendree, who is based in Nashville. His three backup musicians included an electric guitarist, drummer and his father Kevin on the organ! He was terrific playing a cover of the classic blues number “Baby Please Don’t Go” along with nearly all the songs from his 2022 album Buchanan Lane. It was impressive enough for me to actually purchase this CD. 

As in years past, zydeco sounds wrapped up the three-day festival. This year it was Buckwheat Zydeco Jr. & The Legendary Ils Sont Partis Band doing the honors. 

The leader and accordionist Sir Reginald Masters Dural (Buckwheat Zydeco Jr.) is the son of Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural. The third generation of the family was represented by his son Kai Dural who plays rubboard (a breast-covering metal washboard ). This is the group that got the most folks up & dancing of all the acts. 

While zydeco can’t technically be called blues (way too upbeat for that category) it is something we seldom get to hear in the Northland so I say who cares? It’s become a tradition that is anticipated and enjoyed by nearly all the remaining concert goers, me especially. 

One observation I took away from this year’s festival was that the headliner acts on the first two days suffered a bit by comparison with the really great acts that preceded them, which isn’t to say they were bad. 

Rather, the older crowd, the late hour and jam-packed day resulted in a smaller audience sticking around to  hear their complete set. Although I was considering not buying the three-day pass to next year’s BBF, this event changed my mind and convinced me that the $135 cost is certainly worth it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the two evening concerts at the Lincoln Park pavilion (in the neighborhood formerly known as West End) in the days before BBF. It was the City Parks and Rec program that brought the Mac and Cheese band from St. Paul for its regular Tuesday evening concert in the park, with Minneapolis folk musician, Matt Hannah, opening on Aug. 6. It was a pleasant evening that brought both low-key ballads by Hannah and rousing jigs and Celtic fare by the duo Pete McCauley and Tim Cheesebrow. The last names provided these two with their obvious band name. Hopefully the Mac and Cheese moniker won’t put people off from hearing them because they provided some sweet sounds and hopefully they’ll get back up our way in the future. 

Two evenings later, on Thursday, Aug. 15, we got to enjoy the second (annual?) Shiprock Community Concert in Lincoln Park. It featured three bands: Feeding Leroy (always a favorite), Boxcar (fabulous and fun with Blake Shippee in lead vocals and great musicians backing him up) and Dead Horses from Milwaukee (new to me, but reportedly having played in Duluth for many years). 

There is one last concert in the park scheduled for Aug. 27, with Born Too Late as the band was rescheduled from its rained out June 18 gig. I’ll see you there!