[Harp-L] Re: JRNB en France

["Dave R. Fertig" <drfertig@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jason Ricci & New Blood played the Harmonica Sur Cher Festival this 
past weekend at Saint-Aignan, France, in the Loire Valley.

It was a fine festival run by volunteers, with great music, good 
engineering and lighting and a fun crowd in a beautiful setting, 
followed by lively jams into the wee hours. There was lots of fine 
harp playing with diverse other instruments and styles.  Gentleman 
Ben Felton will, I trust, describe it better in his 
newsletter  http://harmonica.typepad.com/, also see the festival 
website, http://www.harmonicasurcher.com/     The audience got a 
great show of what the harmonica can do.

But here I am writing about JRNB.

They played Saturday night, closing the festival.  (They also played 
Friday night, a brief 45 minute impromptu set in the corner of a 
little bar.   Tore it up.)   After their Saturday night eye-opening 
show-closer, at 1:30 Sunday morning, after more than 3 hours of 
variously complex, simple, moving, technical, sweet, coarse, gentle, 
harsh, funny and even angry music ("Can't Close our Eyes" is not 
merely angry), everyone left smiling and in awe of the little 
ten-hole toy*, not to mention Shawn's searing guitar, Todd's solid & 
funky  bass and Maki's lively drumming.  They played fast and furious 
at times, sure, they also did plenty of slow sweet stuff that gently 
warmed the heart.   And Jason wore a fetching ensemble, for most of the show.

When the set ended, everyone, including the band, had more energy 
than before.  In fact, Todd, Maki and Shawn walked up the street to a 
jam that went on 'til 5 am.  Rocking the village to sleep, as it 
were.  Jason stayed at the venue to talk about customizing harps.

By 2 am several hundred people had left with their new CDs, a jam was 
convened across the room, and Jason Ricci and Bodacious Ben Bouman 
sat down and discussed harps and modification with a couple of us 
watching.   For another 3 hours (or more; finally I had to go) 
Jumpin' Jason and Dr. Bouman explored their harp hot-rodding 
techniques, showing each other what they had done to their various 
harps and how they did it, and they did some of those things to each 
others' harps as a few of us watched.  Pretty cool.   Pretty 
generous   No secrets held back.  As I left, Jason and Ben said they 
wished I'd asked questions, but I was getting plenty as it was and 
didn't want to interrupt their flow.

It's never easy to tour, and a tour in Europe, albeit brief, without 
proper support and resources in terms of logistics and language is 
even tougher.  Yet JRNB thoroughly enjoyed playing at Saint-Aignan, 
and it showed.  I hope we can encourage them to do it again, to tour 
outside of the U.S.A., they deserve the broader recognition (and 
better pay).   I think Sunnyside Bob Koch (who was there in fine 
form, not only playing some beautiful harp in jams but also helping 
JRNB tremendously in terms of language and logistics) agrees, and 
will help make it happen.

That's a good thing, for harps, for music, for blues, and for kids 
who will hear JRNB.  New Blood: good as the old blood. And newer.

-Dave Fertig

*uh oh, that "toy" thing again . . .