jonsparrow
439 posts
Jun 13, 2009
3:22 PM
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so my house is officially up for sale. gonna be movin soon hopefully. what are some good places to live with alot of blues music around? id like to live some with a decent population too. not where id have to drive 5 miles to the next house.
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tookatooka
239 posts
Jun 13, 2009
4:03 PM
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Hey jonsparrow, I'm puzzled. Isn't it usual to think about where you want to live before you put your house up for sale? I don't know where you are, but how far are you prepared to go to re-locate?
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When I'm not blowing, I'm drawing.
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scstrickland
86 posts
Jun 13, 2009
6:15 PM
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Sweet Home Chicago.
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djm3801
145 posts
Jun 13, 2009
7:07 PM
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Clarkesville, Miss.
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jonsparrow
440 posts
Jun 13, 2009
7:13 PM
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ill move any where in the country. an im movin cause we cant afford to live here any more not cause we want to move. clarkesville is a possibility. chicago would be cool but a little on the violent side.
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DanP
87 posts
Jun 13, 2009
7:58 PM
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Memphis is good city to hear live blues. Beale Street is a little bit touristy but the clubs there have a lot of good blues acts. Plus Memphis is fairly close to Clarksdale MS, another great place to hear live blues, and Helena AR which has a great blues festival every October-The Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival (formerly known as the King Buscuit Blues Festival).
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kudzurunner
509 posts
Jun 13, 2009
9:15 PM
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Both Clarksdale and Memphis have quite a bit of live blues action, and my town of Oxford MS now has a good club. The north-north Mississippi suburbs (Southaven) would put you proximate to all that. Memphis itself is dicey. I'm sure Brandon will agree with me that the local news can be pretty hair-raising. I thought I'd seen everything, living in NYC for 20 years, but the Memphis local news finds one atrocity after another. Still, I've visited Memphis dozens of times--run dozens of races there, gone to Beale Street many times--and have yet had a single negative occurence of ANY sort. Southaven, or Germantown (a Memphis suburb; really a part of greater Memphis) would be fine.
Austin is supposed to be a great blues town AND a great blues harmonica town. Or at least it was.
Doesn't the greater LA area have a lot of blues? Harvell's, stuff down in Long Beach?
Boston has a great blues scene.
Atlanta seems to have an amazing scene. google "atlanta blues" and the Atlanta Blues Society will come up. An incredible number of jams and clubs.
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Fredrider51
70 posts
Jun 13, 2009
9:48 PM
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The blues what is that. Who listens to the blues ..Nobody can make money from playing the blues .. Look at Jason he should be on the radio everyday with that last album..Even the town of oxford has a club .. Philly sucks no clubs .. Hey hey the blues are alright hey hey the blues are dead .. we do it because we love it harp on
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jonsparrow
441 posts
Jun 13, 2009
11:10 PM
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LA is out of the question. that probobly more expensive then jersey though i would simply love to live in cali. get me a prescription :) . boston is a nono. tryin to get away from the snow as well. i realy wanna check out north mississippi it seems.
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Patrick Barker
328 posts
Jun 13, 2009
11:28 PM
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I live in orange county, about an hour and a half away from LA... I haven't done a thorough investigation of LA's blues scene but it is definitely not overflowing with blues from what I've seen there. They may, however, have some blues clubs that I just haven't been in LA enough to know much about.
Long Beach is about a longer hour and a half from here, and I've been to a couple good blues festivals there but I know almost nothing else about it; its not exactly convenient getting there... But any beach area tends to have at least some musical happenings; there's a bar around Dana point that has had some awesome blues acts but they aren't all that common...
I hope to investigate these areas more this summer, I'll tell you guys what I find.
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"Without music, life would be a mistake" -Nietzsche
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Kingley
38 posts
Jun 14, 2009
2:51 AM
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Well the only thing I can tell you for certain is the best place for live blues is not in the UK!
If I could I'd move to the States tomorrow and not just for the music!
If I had to hazard a guess as to a good place for live music in America, I'd probably think the California Bay area would be a good choice.
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Fredrider51
71 posts
Jun 14, 2009
4:54 AM
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Hey note there are worst places then philly but as far as live music goes there is really not that much.. Warmdaddies dont have that many players and if they did who would go..i have seen james cotton junior wells sugar blue charlie musslewhite rod pizzia jason ricci all at warmdaddies and the place is empty.. i just saw kim wilson then saw charlie musslewhite and annie raines in sellerville place was half empty.. what i am saying is nobody supports the blues these days .. now if we were young we all be doing hip hop and rapp you know what i mean
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Kingley
40 posts
Jun 14, 2009
6:15 AM
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I agree about most music not having the support it deserves. I recently saw the Derek Trucks Band at Manchester Academy in the UK, whilst down the road there was some Hip Hop DJ act performing.
At the Derek Trucks gig, you could walk right in and buy tickets on the door, and I guess there were around 150 people watching him. Whilst the Hip Hop DJ had them queuing up halfway down the road!!
Last Edited by on Jun 14, 2009 6:16 AM
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TheBlackNote
67 posts
Jun 14, 2009
7:05 AM
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Well I mean I am 20 and just can't stand most hip hop lol.
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Feel my music.
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Fredrider51
72 posts
Jun 14, 2009
7:39 AM
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hey note i am 58 and love to drive the old farts crazy in work crazy with some ludicris m and m and plain old q102... they get so mad at me .. we need a harp making some hip hop... i know you can do it i heard you cool music .. oh do you know a rapper in philly named buck jones .. get with him and make a song
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sopwithcamels266
110 posts
Jun 14, 2009
7:51 AM
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Look the music scene for blues in the western world is more or less the same anywhere.
I can't stand all this bullshit that it's no good in UK are parts of states.
It's like going into a pub and saying to your friend come on lets go there is no atmosphere in here.
Well bloody well make you then does everyone dig that.
Negative negative does my head in.You want to thank your selves lucky if you live in USA, UK, France Germany etc etc. There are far worse places on the planet.
Make your own scene, man don't you guys get it.
Get on and live a life and make the things happen.
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Kingley
41 posts
Jun 14, 2009
8:23 AM
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I agree that wherever possible you should make your own scene and yes, there are far worse places to live.
But it's not always possible for some people due to either their location or personal circumstances to get together with like minded people and create a "scene".
If you live in a city or large town then it's more likely for you to be able to achieve that goal, simply due to the law of averages.
Where I live there are no musicians that want to play blues (which is my bag), but plenty who want to play heavy rock (which I have no interest in at all).
The sad fact is that there was a great scene here at one time, but it died off, as a lot of the local musicians wouldn't support it by going to watch other bands, etc. They would however complain when nobody came to watch them. Go figure!
So what I do now is spend my time working on my techniques, etc.
I would love to move to a different area where there was a greater chance of meeting like minded folk on a regular basis. However for various reasons, I am unable to at present.
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Fredrider51
73 posts
Jun 14, 2009
8:24 AM
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266 your so right .. not trying to be negative .. just stating a fact.. i started a harp club in philly and we are going to have a big jam 6 23 09 at a club called holy smoke.. some of the best harp players in the area will be there .. so jonsparrow dont move you do live in philly area i think and come to the jam lets hear you play and have fun look for me fred
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Greg Heumann
86 posts
Jun 14, 2009
10:27 AM
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S.F. Bay Area probably has the best, largest blues scene next to Chicago. The population of CA is 36M+, about 12% of the entire population of the country. The SF Bay Area is 7M of that - all within an hour or 2's drive. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area for more.
There is a marvelous event resource:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Jacksblues/
A new but budding and properly run Blues Society: http://tggbs.org
The best jam ANYWHERE: http://www.rwcbluesjam.com - along with many others - available pretty much any night of the week.
This is the place.
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/Greg
http://www.BlowsMeAway.com
http://www.BlueStateBand.net
Last Edited by on Jun 14, 2009 10:27 AM
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bluzlvr
209 posts
Jun 14, 2009
1:50 PM
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There are quite a few blues venues in the L.A. area, but the L.A area is pretty spread out as opposed to San Francisco. (I love S.F. but that city is REALLY expensive.)
Our local jazz station (KKJZ - used to be KLON) used to sponser an annual L.A. blues cruise and a Long Beach blues cruise where for one price they would have buses running between 10 or 12 different blues venues all night long.
It was a hell of a lot of fun. One giant blues party.
Oh well, the really good stuff never seems to last...
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jonsparrow
446 posts
Jun 15, 2009
11:28 AM
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@fredrider
i might have to come check that out. but i HAVE to move. if we dont we gonna lose the house. but where exactly is the club an is there a cover charge? an what time it start?
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snakes
253 posts
Jun 15, 2009
12:11 PM
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Well we certainly are not Chicago or Memphis, but Seattle has a great blues following and several great blues societies located close. The Washington Blues Society is one of the only blues societies that has an all ages meeting (which consists of an hour acoustic set and an hour electric set with a few give aways and announcements in between) and there is no cover charge. We are blessed with several very good harmonica players in our area. It is a little spendy to live in the city, but the suburbs are close by and can reduce your living costs substantially.
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jonsparrow
449 posts
Jun 15, 2009
12:33 PM
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i allways relate seattle with grunge music. which i do like.
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snakes
254 posts
Jun 15, 2009
3:25 PM
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We have a lot of different music here. I think we have about 3 million people in the metropolitan area even though Seattle itself is much smaller. Some of our local blues harp players include Lee Oskar (maybe not quite blues - but famously good), Grant Dermody, Dick Powell, Mark DuFresne, Steve Bailey, Kim Field, Paul Green, Michael Wylde, Brian Lee, Jeff Herzog - just to name a few... Oh yeah I almost forgot. We have the famous YouTube artist named oldwailer!
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Tuckster
196 posts
Jun 15, 2009
7:16 PM
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Don't forget Paul DeLay,even tho he was from Portland,I think. Must be a good scene in the Pacific N.W.,he rarely left the area. South Florida Gulf side seems to have a pretty active scene-they have several good blues societies down there.
Fred: Philly's alot better than Pittsburgh,first & foremost,you have Steve Geiger! Your harp club is a great thing-wished I lived closer. Pittsburgh has lots of good players,but there's no audience. Went to see the Fabulous T-Birds about a month ago and there were 50-60 people. Sad.
Last Edited by on Jun 15, 2009 7:22 PM
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kudzurunner
512 posts
Jun 15, 2009
7:22 PM
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Yes, the one time I visited Seattle I was blown away by the camaraderie among the harp players and how good they were. Steve Bailey's band was playing; Kim Field came down. Seattle and Portland: two great blues harmonica towns.
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RyanMortos
210 posts
Jun 15, 2009
7:47 PM
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Jon, Here's the website for the restaurant:
Holy Smoke
As far as I know it starts at 6:30pm Tuesday June 23rd and I think they just want you to buy dinner there no cover charge.
I wish I could attend but I'll be in NC next week wishing I could find cool clubs, haha. Oh well I won't have to break the H.A.R.P. club's ears.
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~Ryan
Pennsylvania - H.A.R.P. (Harmonica Association 'Round Philly)
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Fredrider51
74 posts
Jun 16, 2009
5:11 AM
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Ryan I thought you were coming shucks .. was hoping to see you play again .. jonsparrow no charge just come and have a sandwich and a drink .. ask for me fredrider
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Miles Dewar
364 posts
Jun 16, 2009
6:06 AM
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Snakes,
I just met a blues guitar player from seattle named "Randy Hansen" at work last week. He told me that seattle has an incredible amount of blues. He says it's all over the place.
Although Seattle doesn't have Jay Cutler......lol
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---Go Chicago Bears!!!---
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snakes
258 posts
Jun 17, 2009
10:47 AM
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Miles,
Is that the same Randy Hansen that does the Jimi Hendrix imitation? Yeah, we are a great blues town and our Washington State Blues Society (there are other blues societies in our state, but that is the one located in Seattle) won an award at the IBC's for blues societies. I love it here. I just wish we had a little more sun and an NBA basketball team (then again I hope the NBA folds and David Stern loses his job). And no - I don't drink Starbucks... We are not the greatest sports town so maybe that is why the music is so good.
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Miles Dewar
365 posts
Jun 17, 2009
3:02 PM
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Yeah. He gave me a cd of his tour in europe that was called "hendrix live" and a dvd from '04. He was a really cool guy. We talked all about blues while i was waiting on them. He was telling me about some different harpers that stepped up with his band. He knew the names of almost all the harmonica players i know of so i was guessing he listened to a Lot of blues.
He was really excited that i played harp and listened to blues. It was pretty cool to talk to a blues dude out here. (not too much like minded people in WI)
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---Go Chicago Bears!!!---
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