Tag Archives: Music

Buddy, Can You Lend Me a Sign?

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When the American Sign Museum announced its “first-ever traveling exhibit” at the National Museum of the Air Force, I felt pretty confident that I would see it someday. I was less certain that I would see the signs the museum had loaned to the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. Then, with almost no planning and a fair amount of luck, I saw both borrowed batches of brightness this week.

On Saturday, I learned that my previously made plans for the week had fallen through then almost immediately recalled an email about a museum member discount for the play featuring the loaned signs. I went to the CSC website looking for something later in the week but was surprised to find that a front-row seat was available for the next day (Easter Sunday) and that the performance was one followed by a Q&A with some of the performers. I snatched it up.

CSC’s production of The Comedy of Errors has a modern setting with the play’s Ephesus presented as a Las Vegas-like city. Wanting to add some Vegas-style glow to the stage and realizing that an outstanding repository of neon and such was just a few miles away, the CSC reached out to the ASM, and here (with permission and a phone camera) is the result. The play is hilarious and the cast is superb. In addition to the neon, modern touches include a number of songs to make it a sort of Shakespearean musical. All my roadie friends will be happy to learn that among those songs is a version of “Get Your Kicks on Route 66”. The production runs through April 30.

With some pictures of one set of borrowed signs in my pocket, it wasn’t long before I began thinking about a blog post on the subject, and almost immediately realized that any such post would benefit greatly by also including the other set of current loaners. On Tuesday, I headed to Dayton and, after breakfast at the nearby Hasty Tasty, the Air Force Museum.

Using the life of real sign maker William H. Hahn as inspiration, placards displayed with the signs tell the story of the fictional Joe Signman. On display are examples of the lightbulb, neon, and plastic signs Joe would have dealt with during his career.

My birthday has been the subject of a couple of recent blog posts so you might already be aware that the United States Air Force and I were established the very same year. I have about five months seniority on the Air Force and am all done celebrating. The museum, however, intends to talk up the big anniversary throughout the year. “The Signmaker’s Journey” will be there through October 10.

Book Review
Lost Cincinnati Concert Venues
Steven Rosen

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This book brought back some memories, corrected others, and filled in gaps I didn’t even know I had. And I was only here for the last quarter of the covered period. For the years before I moved to Cincinnati, it confirmed some rumors and filled in some blanks. Its author, Steven Rosen, has done an awful lot of writing both as an employee (Cincinnati Enquirer, Denver Post) and as a freelancer (NY Times, LA Times, Cincinnati Magazine, etc.). He is currently serving as Contributing Visual Arts Editor for Cincinnati CityBeat as well as continuing to freelance. With a resume like that, it’s surprising to learn that this is Rosen’s first book.

True to its title, the book is organized by the venues where concerts took place, but venues only matter because of the events they host, and those events are what is really at the heart of Lost Cincinnati Concert Venues of the ’50s and ’60s. The two venues in the subtitle are great examples. The Surf Club operated at the beginning of the 1960s and became known for hosting comedians like Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Henny Youngman, and Phyllis Diller; musicians such as Sarah Vaughan, Peter, Paul, & Mary, and Julius La Rosa; and acts like The Smothers Brothers and Homer & Jethro who were a bit of both. Ludlow Garage rose at the end of the decade with performances by Alice Cooper, the Allman Brothers, Santana, the Kinks, and a whole bunch more. People may or may not remember that the Surf Club had taxidermied swordfish on the walls or that the Ludlow Garage had some really big chairs, but remembering where you saw Phyllis Diller or the Allman Brothers is a certainty.

Cincinnati is a border town with some Kentucky venues as accessible to residents as many in Cincinnati itself. Rosen’s first chapter is, in fact, titled “Northern Kentucky”. He acknowledges the Beverly Hills and Lookout House showrooms but seems to feel that their notoriety has brought them enough attention. He focuses on some lesser-known places like the Sportsman’s Club (where the Drifters once performed), the Copa Club (Miles Davis, Sam Cooke, and more), and Stagman’s Flamingo Dance Club (Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, et. al.).

Rosen describes and locates the venues then fleshes them out with tales of the acts that played there and the people who owned and managed them. In the case of the northern Kentucky clubs, ownership might have a little organized crime involved and Rosen discusses that too.

There is also a chapter on “Downtown Cincinnati” (Living Room, Albee Theater) and one called “Neighborhoods and Beyond”. There are lots of neighborhoods in Cincinnati and Rosen doesn’t get to all of them but here’s a sampling of the neighborhood-venue-performer combinations he does get to: Walnut Hills, New Cotton Club, Aretha Franklin; Eastern Avenue, Vet’s Inn, Albert Washington; Western Hills, Hawaiian Gardens, Lonnie Mack.

Some venues get their own chapters. In addition to the subtitle’s Surf Club and Ludlow Garage, there’s Cincinnati Gardens, Seven Cities, Babe Bakers, Hyde Park-Mount Lookout Teen Center, and Black Dome. Gene Autry played the Gardens long before that Everly Brothers headlined show with Rodgers, Holly, Anka, Cochran, et.al., and in the years that followed, the Stones, Beatles, James Brown, Bob Dylan, and just about everybody else played there.

One act and one event also get their own chapters. The act, not surprisingly, is the Beatles who played Cincinnati twice; once at Cincinnati Gardens and once at Crosley Field. The event is the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival of June 13, 1970. It was also held at Crosley Field and Rosen uses the chapter to mention that the Ohio Valley Jazz Festival took place there from 1964 to 1970. With acts like Traffic, Mountain, Grand Funk Railroad, and Bob Seger, the Pop Festival was a major event and Rosen can certainly be forgiven for stretching the ’50s and ’60s by a few months. Back in those days, people apparently sometimes brought pineapple upside-down cake and peanut butter to concerts giving fans something to remember Alice Cooper (cake) and Iggy Pop (peanut butter) by.

Rosen used some of his own memories in this book and combed through a lot of local papers and other publications. He also contacted many of the others who were actually there. Jim Tarbell, of Hyde Park Center and Ludlow Garage fame, provided the forward. He also provides a telling comment about loss at the end of the ’60s. Reflecting on rock becoming big business, he says, “It was baptism by fire to realize how quickly the whole scene changed from peace and love to money.”

Even though it’s not exactly about peace and love and money, the book’s final sentence does make a thoughtful observation on the loss of a major Cincinnati concert venue. “Crosley Field is now lost but is still dearly missed by fans of both Cincinnati baseball and Iggy Pop.”

Lost Cincinnati Concert Venues of the ’50s and ’60s: From the Surf Club to Ludlow Garage, Steven Rosen, The History Press (Jan 10, 2022), 6 x 9 inches, 176 pages, ISBN 978-1467147217

Available multiple places including Arcadia Publishing (History Press) but I suggest going straight to the guy who wrote it: StevenRosen.net.

Went to Gogh

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I drove to Columbus on Wednesday to immerse myself in Vincent Van Gogh. You might be aware that Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience will be opening in Cincinnati in June. If so, I’d expect you to ask, “Why not wait? It’s the same thing isn’t it?” Well, no. No, it’s not.

There are currently five different digital Van Gogh exhibits touring the United States and triggering a flurry of bad puns. The one I saw in Columbus is Immersive Van Gogh. It is also currently in Cleveland. The one in Indianapolis at present is called Van Gogh Alive. Beyond Indianapolis, Beyond Van Gogh: An Immersive Experience is playing in St. Louis. All four of these have appeared or will appear in several cities other than the ones I’ve mentioned. The fifth exhibit, Imagine Van Gogh: The Immersive Exhibition just opened in Boston and will open in Seattle in March. Those two cities are the only stops currently planned for that exhibit. AFAR has a rundown on all five here.

So which is best? Having seen only one, I have no idea. I went to Columbus for a couple of reasons. One is that I didn’t want to wait. Another is that I’d read a very positive report from a friend I haven’t met. It’s here. She immediately followed her Immersive Van Gogh experience by taking in a related display at the Columbus Museum of Art. That’s described here. I decided I should do that too although, because of ticket availability, I visited the two exhibits in the opposite order.

The picture at the top of this article is of the big ART sculpture near the Columbus Museum of Art. The picture at left is at the entrance to the Through Vincent’s Eyes: Van Gogh and His Sources exhibit inside the museum. The title comes from the more than 100 works from artists that Van Gogh admired and was influenced by. These include Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, and many others. For me, however, the real draw of the exhibit was the seventeen pieces by Van Gogh himself.

I am neither an art connoisseur nor an art historian. I don’t doubt that there are several pieces in the exhibit that are more significant, but these three caught my eye for one reason or another. Bridge across the Seine at Asnieres caught my eye at least partially because it was both different from images I’d previously associated with Van Gogh and similar to images I’ve frequently captured myself with a camera. The bright gold of Wheat Field seemed even more different from the admittedly limited set of Van Gogh images that set my expectations. Neither of these paintings contains people and I think I’d really come to expect people in Van Gogh’s work. Undergrowth with Two Figures, which obviously does contain people, caught my eye through its reproduction in a jigsaw puzzle that passing visitors worked on now and then.

From the museum, I headed a few miles north to the Immersive Van Gogh Experience at Lighthouse ArtSpace. The exhibit opened on October 28 and was originally scheduled to close on January 2. It was sufficiently popular, however, to trigger an extension to February 27.

The 60,000 frames of video appear primarily on the walls but sometimes spill onto the floor and other horizontal surfaces. The giant images are far from static. For example, the purple irises slowly pop onto the green grass background until it is nearly covered and they are almost always in motion.

Neither proof of COVID vaccination nor a negative test is required for admission but a mask must be worn at all times. Circles are projected onto the floor to aid in social distancing. I had expected all of these to be “unfurnished” and many were but more than half contained a simple bench. I had anticipated sitting on the floor but was happy to see the benches. For those of us of a certain age, rising from a bench is much much easier than rising from a floor. Cushions, with a Van Gogh sunflower, are included in VIP ticket packages, and I believe they can be rented. I made do with self cushioning.

The space is basically open but it is large and there are a few pillars. They are covered with a mirror-like surface that avoids blank spots while adding some interesting variations of its own. I doubt you would have guessed and may not find it even after being told it’s there, but one of these pictures contains a funhouse-mirror-style selfie.

I suppose these are the sorts of images my mind tended to associate with Van Gogh in the past. I enjoyed seeing them but probably benefited more from being reminded that he produced some bright and pleasant images too.

These photos were taken with an exposure that makes the exhibit area look quite a bit brighter than it ever really appeared in person. Hopefully, they provide an idea of just how big the area was and how it was laid out.

Wow! The immersive exhibit was wild and entertaining. The original music was splendid and added considerably to the experience. At the end of the day, however, I think I liked the Van Gogh and His Sources exhibit more. The sequence that I saw them in could have something to do with that but I don’t think so. At Lighthouse ArtSpace, it was the presentation and the machinery behind it that held my attention. At the museum, my attention was pulled in by Van Gogh’s actual product and, on occasion, the stories behind it. Both exhibits were well worthwhile, and they do complement each other. It even kind of makes sense, perhaps, to end the day’s doubleheader looking at the eyes that I started the day by trying to look through.

My Memories — Chapter 3
Bruce at the Fox

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A forty-three-year-old memory was triggered recently as I looked around the internet for Christmas music to include in a trip journal post. The memory involves a pair of trips to the Fox Theater in Atlanta, Georgia. The second was from my home near Cincinnati but the first originated in Eufaula, Alabama.

It was fairly early in my Bruce Springsteen addiction, The Boss was booked into the Fox, and I was visiting friends in Eufaula. Although it’s possible that the timing of my visit to Eufaula was affected by the concert, that wasn’t its purpose. My friends had only recently moved to Alabama and for several years I visited them at least once each year. Regardless of whether the overlap was by design or happenstance, it became a key aspect of the trip when my friends obtained tickets — very good tickets — to the show.

Arrangements were made for a neighbor to watch my two sons, who were with me, while the three of us made the approximately 150-mile drive to Atlanta. As I recall, we arrived well ahead of showtime and ate dinner near the theater. We then walked to the theater and noted the lack of a crowd as we approached. At the theater, we found the doors locked and finally looked up at the marquee. The show was canceled. Bruce was sick and both this show and one the previous night in Birmingham were affected. We would have known this if we had just listened to the radio on the drive up or paid attention to any number of news sources, but…

That was July 23, 1978. The show eventually gets rescheduled for September 30, but my friends are unable to attend so I had all three tickets. My girlfriend and I drive down the day of the show with a spare ticket that I ended up trading for a Beatles teeshirt at one of the vendors set up near the theater. It is a very different scene at the Fox than the deserted one of two months earlier.

Our seats were near the front at stage left. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to the band in the twenty-five or so times I’ve seen Springsteen perform. In those days, Bruce often left the stage and mingled with the crowd with mic in hand. Tonight he worked the aisle at stage right while Clarence walked and played in the aisle near us. I believe the last time I ever saw him do this was at a show in Oxford, Ohio, a couple of months later. The Springsteen rocket was taking off and audiences were becoming more boisterous. In Oxford, he made it just a few feet into the crowd before retreating to the stage for safety. I was nowhere close.

In Atlanta. the band took a break after ten songs then started the second set with the song that prompted this memory. During a legal battle with his manager, Bruce had wrangled some airplay by recording “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and supplying it to radio stations. Set two in Atlanta opened with the song. Bruce frequently led into “The E Street Shuffle” with a story about meeting Clarence at night on a dark street told over sparse accompaniment. He now started a similar story over some familiar-sounding piano and drums. The approaching figure again turns out to be Clarence but now it’s Clarance as Santa Claus. And he’s coming to town.

During my memory triggering search, I learned something about the performance that was totally new to me. Plastic snow had fallen during “Santa Clause is Coming to Town” and was something of a slippery hazard that had to be dealt with. While stagehands swept away the fake flakes, the band filled the time with an instrumental version of “Night Train”. Apparently, that was completely spontaneous. It’s the only time they ever performed the song on stage.

It was not the only time “Santa Claus…” was performed although it might be the only performance that included snow. Here’s a performance in Houston that preceded the Atlanta show by about ten weeks:

The show at the Fox was on a Saturday. The plan had been to drive home on Sunday in order to go to work on Monday. But the weather was great and we decided to spend Sunday at Six Flags Over Georgia and do the driving on Monday. Before hitting the road early Monday morning, I literally called in well.

Musical Review
Need Your Love

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Back in 2015, I attended a reading of KJ Sanchez’s Cincinnati King in Washington Park and wrote about it here. Three years later, I saw it performed at Playhouse in the Park and wrote about that here. At the time, I really expected that I would next encounter the name KJ Sanchez when Cincinnati King opened in another theater in another city. That hasn’t happened yet — although I very much believe it should — so my next Sanchez encounter was back at Playhouse in the Park where her second play with King Records connections is now playing.

Cincinnati King is the story of King Records told through three main characters. There are other cast members but company founder Syd Nathan, long-time session drummer Philip Paul, and star recording artist Little Willie John are all that Sanchez needed to paint her King Records picture. Her latest play is about just one member of that trio and she is every bit as efficient this time out as last. If three characters can tell the story of a large record company, how many are required for a single artist?.

For KJ Sanchez, the answer is one. I first realized that Need Your Love is essentially a one-man play while reading the program in the playhouse lobby before the show. I say “essentially” only because the four-piece band is an integral part of the performance, is always on stage, and occasionally interacts with the only cast member. But that cast member, Antonio Michael Woodard, speaks every line, sings every song, and dances every step. OK, technically — and only technically — that “speaks every line” claim isn’t entirely true but it is impossible to watch Woodard’s performance and not be impressed with the collection of talents he brings to the production.

The band’s performance was also impressive. Half of the quartet, drummer Richard Huntley and bassist Terrell Montgomery, were also part of the Cincinnati King combo. Pianist Ian Axness and guitarist Joel Greenburg may have missed Cincinnati King but they are hardly rookies. The group convincingly delivered a variety of styles. Naturally, “Fever”, John’s biggest hit, is included in the show’s thirteen songs as is his first King release, “All Around the World”. They supply a glimpse of Jack White’s somewhat edgy cover of “I’m Shakin'” then follow it with the original Little Willie John R & B version. The title inspiring “Need Your Love So Bad” is there too, of course. 

The technicality that results in Woodard not quite speaking every line is one of the production’s coolest features. Syd Nathan, who died in 1968, recorded some instructions about how King Records should operate. At several points in the performance, excerpts from those recordings and possibly others are played from off stage. Sometimes the on-stage Willie John sort of has a conversation with the disembodied voice. This isn’t an attempt to pretend that a living Syd and Willie are chatting in the 1960s. The play’s setting is the empty King Records building in Cincinnati. The time is now. It opens with a group of musicians entering the building for a not exactly kosher jam session. Something about the old building transforms the group into Little Willie John and friends and the music begins to flow. It is, I suppose, the spirits of Little Willie John and Syd Nathan having those conversations.

It was an all-around great performance and it was KJ Sanchez’s script that enabled it. Regrettably, I cannot praise the script quite as freely as the performance. Little Willie John’s life certainly had its ups and downs and its ending was truly tragic. There is little doubt that racial prejudice affected his treatment in prison and probably in the courts. It is entirely possible that John was quite innocent of the crime for which he was enprisoned. There is, however, room in the real world for doubt but little such room to be found in Need Your Love. Some of those rough spots in John’s life were his own doing. He had some problems with alcohol and drugs and even his temper. Sanchez did not omit these from Cincinnati King and I don’t believe they made me any less angry about the injustice John encountered. For some reason, though, those things seem to be missing from Need Your Love.

Sanchez made contact with Willie John’s sister Mable during the writing of Need Your Love. Mable had her own musical career both as a solo artist and as a Ray Charles Raelette. Now 91, she recorded some remembrances of her brother that are played near the end of the show to further dilute that “speaks every line” claim. It was a real surprise and a nice touch. It even occurred to me that Sanchez may have left out alcohol and drug references to keep Willie’s image a little cleaner for sister Mable. If so, I guess I can live with that.

Need Your Love wraps up its run at Playhouse in the Park on December 12.

Remembering Larry

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Larry Goshorn - Cincinnati Summer of Love Reunion 2008Larry Goshorn left us this week. There was what seemed to be a promising upturn after a few rough days in the hospital but it was not to be. He breathed his last on September 14. I did a lot of remembering back in 2012 when he announced his retirement from performing. I was among those who didn’t completely buy that and expected him to occasionally pop up on a stage for a song or two, but I don’t believe he ever did. He did do some producing and wrapped up a long-simmering project in 2016 with the release of “I Wish I Could Fly“. Nine of the album’s ten songs were written entirely by Larry and the tenth was written by Larry and his wife Kim. The backing musicians were Cincinnati all-stars in various groupings. Plenty of current stars were always ready to play with Larry and Larry was always ready to help the not-yet-stars, too.

I’m going to let my 2012 Hats Off to Larry post supply most of the memories for this post. If I were to redo it, “I Wish I Could Fly” would be one of the two big additions. The other would be the song he wrote and recorded last year that was his response to the death of his brother Tim in 2017 (Remembering Timmy).

Big thanks to Jerry Burck for providing an embeddable version of the recording. It grabbed me when I first heard it in February 2020. Its grip is even firmer now. 

Trip Peek #113
Trip #150
Spontaneous Nash Dash

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This picture is from my 2018 Spontaneous Nash Dash. The two concerts around which this trip was centered had been on my radar for a short while but the decision to attend really did occur spontaneously on the morning of the first concert. I left home on Thursday, and that night took in The Cleverlys at the Station Inn. That’s when the featured photo was taken. The other concert that was used to justify the trip was The Long Players on Saturday night. That left plenty of daylight hours to take in the new Patsy Cline Museum, the Gallery of Iconic Guitars, Santa’s Pub, and the Lane Motor Museum with a stop at Bobby’s Idle Hour on Friday night.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Live Music From Dead Man String Band

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I have experienced very little live music during the last fifteen months, and I miss it. I was looking forward to attending a Dead Man String Band performance on Fountain Square last month but it fell victim to some serious wind and rain. It was rescheduled for June 4 and this time the weather cooperated in wondrous fashion. It was not, however, the same show I would have seen on May 7 if the weather had not misbehaved so badly back then. The “band” underwent a major transformation that included a tripling in size. You’ll see.

A difference I don’t think had anything to do with the transformation of the headliner, was a change in openers and an increase from one to two. I apologize to Loop Man Dan for catching just a smidgen of his set as I walked through the square on the way to dinner. I returned in time to hear about half of Nick Baker’s performance. Both were new to me and everything I heard sounded good.

Wikipedia says that a string band is “an old-time music or jazz ensemble made up mainly or solely of string instruments”. The original Dead Man String Band was an ensemble of one. Rob McAllister played some pretty fancy bass and lead parts on an electric guitar while wearing a mask and playing bass and snare drums with his feet.

Rob is still at the heart of the band but, with the addition of John Castetter on bass and Eric Osborne on fiddle, it more closely fits the standard definition of a string band.

Rob calls this the acoustic version of the band and has written a ton of new music for it. That even includes some banjo tunes so that the instrumentation matches that of a traditional string band a little closer. Tonight there was no snare or hi-hat; just a tambourine for that left foot. His face is still partially hidden but now it’s by a beard instead of a mask.

As I circled the crowd on the way out, two different groups spotted my camera and volunteered as subjects. One was seated at a table at the back of the widely spaced crowd and the other was listening from the side of the stage. That’s something that has not happened in a long time and it felt pretty good. Actually, the whole evening felt good — and a little strange. The pandemic isn’t over and COVID has not been conquered but there are promising signs. A little string band music is one for sure.

 

Trip Peek #98
Trip #152
Dirk and Lincoln

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This picture is from the 2018 trip I called Dirk and Lincoln. The purpose of the trip was to see Dirk Hamilton performing at a venue he played at frequently in the 1980s with the musicians he played with there. That was all I needed to justify the trip, but the venue was in California and there was no reason not to hang around a few days. That’s where the Lincoln part comes in. I flew to Sacramento then drove to Stockton for the show. I drove down to the bizarre Winchester Mystery House the next morning and picked up some Lincoln Highway on the way back. The rest of the trip was spent following a sort of Lincoln Highway loop to the east through Carson City, Reno, and Donner Pass then back to Sacramento for a night that included a visit to the Delta King.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Music Review
Blues With Friends
Dion

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I started off my recent review of Willie Nile’s latest album by talking about my initial experience with it and I’m going to do the same thing here. I ordered both CDs ahead of their release dates but my experiences with them do not have much in common beyond that. I kind of keep up with Willie and placed my order while the music was being recorded. I ordered Dion’s CD in response to an ad on Facebook. I honestly believe it’s the first thing I’ve actually bought through a Facebook ad despite the platform’s tendency to flood my feed with eerily well-targeted items. There was nothing even slightly mysterious about why this album appeared. Just look at its list of guests. Predicting that I might be interested really could have been a no-brainer.

The only thing even remotely eerie occurred on the day it arrived. June 5 was the official release date. On the morning of June 1, I got a message saying my order was out for delivery. Preordering can have its advantages. In the afternoon, I took a look at Facebook and saw that a friend had shared a link to a video that had been posted a couple of days earlier. The video was of Dion singing one of the songs on the album and as I watched it the mail truck pulled up to deliver my copy.

I don’t doubt that current events had something to do with the posting of that particular song. By current events, I mean the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and protests over racial inequality and police brutality. The protests were triggered by the death of a black man at the hands of police although racial inequality was already a major topic of discussion because of the uneven impact of the pandemic on people of color. The black man was George Floyd. He died on May 25. The video was posted on May 29. The song is about Dion’s friendship with Sam Cooke, a black man who died in 1964. The video is extended a bit with some comments from Dion. I suggest watching it regardless of what you think about Dion, the blues, or any of the friends he recorded this set with. It’s here: Song for Sam Cooke (Here In America)

So what about the CD? I once reviewed a CD with a single word and I’m tempted to do the same thing here — with the same word. That CD was Love for Levon which was recorded live at a 2012 benefit concert following the death of Levon Helm. I justified not giving it a real review by telling myself that it was a big enough deal that my tiny voice would be totally drowned out by real reviewers, but the real reason was that there were so many wonderful performances by so many excellent artists that it would be nearly impossible to do justice to them all. Both arguments definitely apply to Blues with Friends. The word was “Wow!”

But it’s obviously too late to do a one-word review and there are some significant differences. The biggest is that, while Blues with Friends features an astounding roster of musicians, every song was written and sung by one man.

Dion DiMucci is eighty years old. His career is sixty-three. That’s a lot of time to pick up talented friends and Dion seems to have done better than most and he’s done it all along the way. Some of the friends contributing to this album, such as Joe Lewis Walker and Jeff Beck, have been performing since the 1960s. Samantha Fish began recording in 2009. None of them had to be begged and Joe Bonamassa didn’t even have to be asked. Joe wanted to play on “Blues Comin’ On” from the minute he heard it demoed. Dion credits Joe and his enthusiasm as being the catalyst for the album. As Dion tells it, “So I sent out invitations to my friends — and would you look at the names of who said yes!”

I have a feeling that all that talent could make some pretty crappy material sound good but what it does here is make good material sound even better. Saying that every song was written and sung by one man wasn’t entirely honest. Dion actually had a co-writer on each of them. It was Buddy Lucas on “Kickin’ Child”, Bill Touhy on “Hymn to Him”, and Mike Aquilina on everything else. Dion is the lead singer on every track although he does get help on a few. Of course, when that happens it’s people like Van Morrison, Paul Simon, and Patti Scialfa doing the helping.

I’m going to stop it with the details since I know that my tiny voice will be totally drowned out by real reviewers and there were so many wonderful performances by so many excellent artists that it would be nearly impossible to do justice to them all. Wow!