Blues Boss In The UK
The second article from Honorary member and friend Dennis (Blues Boss) Dudley from Seattle, Washington
Then it was off to Edinburgh by train (yes, I’m a tourist and old enough to love trains). Spent a day and a half in Edinburgh and was mesmerized by its’ beauty, although it was during their big Festival of the summer and the crowds were enormous.
You may recall that I wrote an article once before for the Nottingham Blues Society about Ian Siegal’s visit to the Pacific NW back in 2006. Well, here is the “follow-up” to that….my trip to the U.K.
Last summer (August of ’09) I finally got around to visiting the U.K (and, with a surname of Dudley I should have done it long ago). I had been talking of making such a sojourn for a couple of years (with all my U.K. friends on the Blindman’s Blues Forum), and then everything sort of fell in place to make it happen. So, I put together a 12 day visit to the U.K. ----- with help from my friends.
I landed @ Heathrow (ok, so I don’t plan that well) on a Sunday and Tim Aves (Automatic Slim / The Rockin’ Armadillos) picked me up and whisked me out to Burnham-on-Crouch. That evening I was his “guest” on his Saint FM radio show, where we played nothing but Pacific NW Blues and I got to ramble on and on about all my Seattle blues musician friends and chat a bit about Ian’s visit in ’06.
The next couple of days were spent doing the “tourist thing” by day and checking out a couple blues clubs at night ( “Ain’t Nothing But The Blues” and “Charlotte St. Blues”. At the first I got to meet Sam Hare and at the later I saw “Big Momma’s Door” and ran into my blues friend Big Joe Louis).
From Edinburgh it was another train “hop” to Carnoustie for the Smokie Blues Festival. This event is what made the trip a reality. At the Smokie Blues Festival I was able to meet 15-20 people that I had been communicating with over the internet (Blindman’s Blues Forum), catch some good music………and ,catch up with Ian Siegal again ----- he was the headliner on Sunday.
I have enclosed several photographs from the Smokie Blues Festival that I hope will get “sprinkled” throughout this article. Highlights for me? Getting to meet the Blindman himself (Billy Allardyce – drummer for the Papa Mojo Band) and hearing their band ….hearing Gypsy Dave solo ….getting several opportunities to chat with John O’Leary (one of the founders of Savoy Brown – which takes me way, way back to my youth!) …meeting the enthusiastic (for lack of a better word) Dave Arcari….catching the Nimmo Brothers, Hokie Joint and my internet friends The Stumble….and, of course, getting to spend some time with Ian and see his outstanding solo performance. The guy just keeps getting better and better. We (meaning the USA) need to get him back over here again----and I’m working on that.
The last two days of my trip to the U.K. were spent in the serenity of the Aberdeen Scotland area with another good friend and his family (Dave Blair – bassist for Papa Mojo). Just decompressing from a whirlwind trip to that point, and enjoying the scenery.
From there it was a train trip back to London…a long flight home….back to work…and four or five days of sever “jet lag”. But, it was well worth it.
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