Just got back from Syracuse, New York and the New York Blues Festival. What a great blues scene and town. I had been to Syracuse @ 5 years ago to tour my younger daughter around Syracuse University (she'd been offered a scholarship and wanted to check it out). I managed to sneak in a visit to the Dynasaur BBQ for some to die for ribs, corn bread and?sides,?and a set during the blues jam there. She decided it would be too cold in the Winter and wound up going to the College of William & Mary in warmer and relatively snowless Virginia. Nothing I could do would convince her to go to Syracuse......
I went to last year's NY Blues Festival, which was, to be honest from a harp player's perspective, a better festival than this year, with Kim Wilson fronting the Fab TBirds, and John Nemeth demonstrating outstanding harp and vocal chops. This year the festival was great, featuring an all NY theme, but it had limited harp presence. John Hammond played some rack harp, and Dan Akroyd played a tune during his Honorary Master of Ceremonies stint.
The best harp I heard all weekend was from Tom Townsley and Bernie Clark who hosted the two stages during the fest. I went to a harp tone seminar led by Townsley, and met Scott Berberian of Meteor amp fame there. Both were welcoming and friendly to an out of town harp player and invited me to a cool after festival jam session in a great divey bar. I got to play through a pretty nice Meteor amp. The musicianship at the jam (with the exception of that out of town, old guy harp player from Delaware) was great. The collection of diverse folks at the bar and on stage were all friendly and into the blues. The volume and dynamics were handed nicely. Speaking of nice harp playing, that Meteor amp guy can play a mean harp, even a chromatic.
What a great blues town.
Andy Vincent _______________________________________________ Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l