Chicago Blues Festival

Chicago Blues Festival – Millennium Park – June 7, 2024

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According to the Revolt website, there are 33 rappers whose alter egos start with “Lil”, none of whom, unsurprisingly, I’ve ever seen perform in person, whereas Wikipedia tells me that there have only been four blues musicians whose names started the same way (although 16 more have started with “Little”), so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see Lil’ Jimmy Reed, who, by the way, is not one of the four, at the Chicago Blues Festival.

There is a Jimmy Reed listed, but unless Lil’ Jimmy Reed died in 1976 and then crawled out of a coffin like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to reinvent himself, it’s probably a different guy. Actually Lil’ Jimmy, born Leon Atkins, took the name after filling in for the original in a Baton Rouge club long ago. Is that what they now call identity theft?

Anyway, Reed, billed as the last of the original Louisiana bluesmen, sounded good, though I can’t really say I saw him, as I decided to linger in a shady spot outside the tent, where it was a lil’ cooler and not as loud, and refresh myself with a long, cool drink of microplastics.

Chicago Blues Festival – Millennium Park – June 9, 2023

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You don’t even have to enter the park to hear the music. It was so loud it made my throat hurt and my skin flaked. But the couple acts I heard induced a lot of head-bobbing in the audience and sounded great – Lightnin’ Malcolm, representing his birthplace on the Visit Mississippi Juke Joint Stage, and Stephen Hull, from that hotbed of blues, Racine.

Unsurprisingly, I have no interest in visiting Mississippi, but who doesn’t love a juke joint, which, in turns out, is a term derived from the Gullah word juke, which means bawdy or disorderly. What that has to do with a basketball player juking a defender, I’m not sure.

Besides the music and the everywhere-you-turned, blues-related merchandise, including items from the foundations of Muddy Waters, Eddie Taylor, Little Walter, and Willie Dixon, in case you need something from one of them to fill out your collection, the big draw at the festival is the smokehouse meat, which, I’ve found, has its own section concerning emission factors on the EPA website, which seemed like a good reason for taking a wide berth from where the cooking was taking place.

Printers Row Lit Fest & Chicago Blues Festival- June 8-9, 2019

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In case you were wondering, the Lit in Printers Row Lit Fest refers to literature, not to the new Illinois law permitting recreational marijuana starting January 1, 2020. But maybe next year it will be both.

One of the attractions of the Lit Fest for me in the past has been the Flash Fiction writing contest held by the Mystery Writers of America. Again, in case you were wondering, the Flash in Flash Fiction refers to fiction written quickly, not fiction written about Barry Allen of DC Comics fame.

There was no contest this year. The Mystery Writers didn’t even have a tent. Or perhaps they did and it was flapping so quickly in the breeze that no one could see it.

And this year there was only one program each day that interested me. On Saturday, it was James Geary amusing the audience with a discussion of his book Wit’s End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It.

As part of his presentation, he held a pun contest, with the winner receiving a copy of the book, and the losers presumably being sent to the witless protection program.

On Sunday I heard WTTW critic Hedy Weiss interview music director Jermaine Hill, and stars Monica West (Marian the librarian), and Geoff Packard (Professor Harold Hill) about the Goodman Theater’s upcoming production of The Music Man. I introduced myself to Hedy and spoke with her for about 15 minutes before the program, which I’m sure she also will mention in her next blog.

On the way to the Lit Fest Sunday, I stopped by the Chicago Blues Festival to listen to Erwin Helfer do his wonderful thing on the piano. Heller plays on Tuesday nights at the Hungry Brain, which seems like a good name for a place to go after a Lit Fest.

Five Venues – Seven Programs – Eleven Days – June 5-15, 2018

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In anticipation of the upcoming Make Music Chicago day on June 21, here’s a recap of the musical performances I’ve seen recently (not counting the Porchlight Revisits 1975 I already wrote about).

On June 5th I got a taste of the Rose Colella Quartet, along with the Cajun shrimp risotto, at Andy’s Jazz Club.

On June 8th I attended the noonday concert at Fourth Presbyterian Church, featuring pianist Mio Nakamura. I hadn’t been there in a while, in part because some recent programs were organ music. Other than people who play the organ, the phantom of the opera, and Johann Sebastian Bach (and he’s dead), who likes organ music?

The next evening I stopped by Millennium Park to check out the Chicago Blues Festival. The sound of a harmonica lured me, like a sailor to the Sirens, to the Wrigley Square stage to watch Chicago Wind, featuring Deitra Farr and Matthew Skoller. I wasn’t injured, but I thought there was a faint smell in the air that suggested that others around me may have [been] wrecked.

The next afternoon I went to see a Crossing Borders Music program Honoring Refugee Composers at St. James Cathedral, featuring music of composers from Syria, Armenia, Iran, Croatia, Germany, and Uruguay, the number of whom, unfortunately, about equaled the attendees.

Two days later I went to the Rush Hour Concert at St. James, where John Macfarlane (violin), Anthony Devroye (viola), Brant Taylor (cello), and Kenneth Olsen (cello) performed Anton Arensky’s String Quartet in A Minor. Wonderful music, but I longed for the folding chairs they used to add in the back, which I find more comfortable than the pews.

Afterward I went to Jazz on the Terrace at the Museum of Contemporary Art, getting there during the break between sets. Sadly, I liked the recorded music they played during the break better than the live band, so my stay was short.

Finally, on June 15th, I enjoyed the Grant Park Music Festival at Millennium Park, featuring music of Gluck, Mozart, von Weber, and Elgar. This year’s new security measures were painless, as I didn’t bring any laser pointers, drones, or firearms with me.