Crawfish-N-Blues Festival

Then, two days later, on March 6, my father, brother, and I went to the House of blues for the first annual Crawfish-N-Blues Festival.  The price of the ticket included all you can eat boiled crawfish and live blues music for the entire Sunday afternoon.  The enormous amount of crawfish needed to feed the crowd necessitated the use of a third-party crawfish catering company called Crawdads of Dallas.  They arrived with all the necessary appliances on a trailer and pulled up into the front sidewalk area.  They had an open-air propane boiler on the trailer, and they stirred thousands of pounds of live crawfish, stirring them with wooden paddles.  After the boil, the workers strained them out of the boiling liquid, seasoned them, and then served them to the waiting crowds by the pound.  I ate 5 pounds of crawfish on my own, and my father and brother did the same, so we certainly got our money’s worth.  

While we ate, several different artists played.  We heard a Big Band-style group first, with a stand-up bass, a tuba, trumpet, and trombone, very similar to a New Orleans Brass Band.  Following them, a country blues band played, and the main interest element in this group was the African-American lead singer who played the accordion.  He also had very strong country attire, with a cowboy hat, belt buckle, and an ornamented denim shirt and jeans.  I don’t know the names of the two opening acts---the main interest at this point was the crawfish and beer.  These acts together lasted about an hour and a half.

 The headliner for the day was the Zac Harmon Band.  Zac Harmon has been named “best new blues artist” by XM Radio.  This band would be classified as electric blues.  Zac Harmon hails from Jackson, Mississippi, and he completely fits the stereotypical image of a blues guitarist.  He is African American, gifted at blues guitar playing, and has a soulful, rich baritone voice.  At times, I thought he sounded much like Louis Armstrong.  He made a definite, personal connection with the crowd, breaking into conversational style mid-song.  The crowd was totally engaged in his performance, and responded enthusiastically with dancing and cheering.  In this case, it is totally appropriate to say, “the crowd went wild.”   His set lasted over two hours, and the time went quickly because he was quite the entertainer.

This is about a pound of crawfish.  It comes with a corn on the cob and a whole new potato.  For those that have never eaten crawfish,  the only significant portion of meat is the tail, so you have to work a little and peel the shell off the tail. It's delicious.

This was the first opener to the afternoon

These next few pictures are of the second opener

Sister Hazel

On March 4, 2011, my brother and I went to see Sister Hazel.  Being a more famous group than Back Door Slam, the Sister Hazel concert was held in the Music Hall, where there was much more room for the larger audience.  The first opener was Armand Margjeka, an Albanian-born country folk singer.  For his performance, he only used his guitar and his voice.  His music is a fusion of folk pop and blues and given that he is Albanian born, his music is the perfect example of the worldwide influence of blues. 

 Next on stage was the Edwin McCain band.  Their music is bluesy country with wide, crossover pop appeal.  In fact, the single, “I’ll Be”, which he closed his set with receives substantial airplay on local pop radio stations.  On a few occasions, during a peppier song, McCain would be very energetic and would jump around the stage with his acoustic guitar and microphone, which was entertaining in and of itself, adding to the concert as a whole. 

 Finally, the headliner, Sister Hazel, took the stage.  The crowd became very excited and was very responsive to the lead singer asking questions of the audience.  The audience was a mix of young and middle-aged people, since Sister Hazel has been in existence since 1993.  There were five members in the group, of which four sang.  There were two that played guitar, one bassist, keyboardist, and the drummer.  Similar to the Edwin McCain Band, Sister Hazel’s style of music is a blend of folk rock, country, pop, and Southern blues.  Their music, contrary to normal blues, has more optimistic and upbeat lyrics.  They’re very talented vocally, with almost the entire band singing in harmony.  This is present in their most famous song, “All for You”, which has a very melodic chorus and a tight harmony.  This entire concert, from beginning to end, lasted nearly five hours, and the audience was responsive and energetic into the night.  I apologize for the quality of these photos and videos.  I forgot my camera so these were taken with my phone.  Also, since Sister Hazel is a much more famous band, the security placed a firm rule against recording equipment during their show.

This is Armand Margjeka

This is the Edwin McCain Band

Back Door Slam

My first time At the House of Blues was in 2008, when I saw Back Door Slam.  They were a very young band from the Isle of Man, and my brother saw them at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin.  My brother and I arrived a few hours early to ensure that we had a good spot at the concert, specifically in the Cambridge Room, since we had standing tickets.  Soon there were 50 people behind us.  As soon as we were let into the room, we claimed our spot, standing right behind the railing in front of the stage on the left side.  As you can see in the pictures, we were literally feet from the performers(I used no zoom).  The people around us were talking about how they had heard of Back Door Slam, giving little attention to anything but the upcoming music.  The music was a combination of blues and rock, with a strong guitar emphasis and soulful vocals.  The leader of the group, Davy Knowles, played lead guitar and sang the lead vocals.  There was also a bassist and drummer playing, but they seemed to play more in the background than the guitar.  Most songs played had a guitar solo, furthering its importance in the songs.  The songs were quite tonally varied, from soft, slow acoustic songs such as “Stay” to heavy, electric, upbeat songs such as “Come Home”.  Afterwards, I bought a shirt with the Back Door Slam logo on the front and went home to see what music they had available on iTunes.

Material Culture of the Blues

The House of Blues Dallas has a very strong material culture.  One of the most significant parts of this is the instruments used, and of that the guitar being the most significant.  While instruments are not sold at the House of Blues itself(except for the harmonica), there are many stores in the Dallas area, such as Guitar Center, that focus entirely on these kinds of instruments.  The store at the House of Blues focuses more on memorabilia.  The store offers many House of Blues shirts, as well as hats, glassware such as shot glasses, collectibles, and even art.  The artists themselves generally have a makeshift store, called a Merch Table, located just outside the room that the performance is in.  The House of Blues, as well as the artists themselves, also sell CD’s and DVD’s to the attendees.  There is a strong influence of alcohol at the House of Blues.  For example, the Main Hall has three separate bars accessible to the performance-goers.  Every event space has at least one bar, and there is no point in the performance when the bar is closed.  Art is also a very important aspect at the House of Blues.  The walls inside are covered with art, either in frames hung on the wall or painted directly onto the wall itself.  Art is also available for purchase in the store.  Some of the art is seen in the following pictures in the Music Hall.

Repertoires of the Blues

The lyrics in blues are one of the most important aspects of blues music.  Blues originated lyrically with a line simply being repeated four times.  It eventually developed into the twelve bar AAB format in order to make it less repetitive.  The lyrics of a blues song are logically about rough times and struggles that the writer has.  For example, The song “Dallas Blues”, which I mentioned earlier as the first produced blues song has these lyrics: “There's a place I know, folks won't pass me by, Dallas, Texas, that's the town, I cry, oh hear me cry.  And I'm going back, going back to stay there 'til I die, until I die.”  Even the term “the blues”, the name of the genre itself, was a result of the thematic lyrics that the singers produced.  

There is a great amount of body movement in the blues.  There is simply no way to be still when listening to an accomplished blues musician.  At the bare minimum, it makes you want to tap your foot to the dominant beat, and in the case of one concert I attended, the audience was free-form dancing and twirling.  There is wide freedom in blues music to express yourself in your own way as the music moves you, and there is no negative judgement  or elitism among the musicians or the audience members.  The music simply draws people together, and however they wish to display their emotion is perfectly okay in this genre.

Activities Involving the Blues

The blues today is widely available on popular websites, iTunes, and commercially available for purchase.  Blues originally, like ancient Greek storytelling, was only shared through oral performance.  Similarly, blues used to be sung and performed by day laborers either during work in order to make it through the deplorable work conditions that many faced or after work as a community activity.  Today though, most blues performers use music as their career.  All of the performers that I saw at the House of Blues were either professional musicians or aspiring musicians.  Blues has also been traditionally an African American music genre, but in more recent years, white music artists such as Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan have become famous for their blues style, although the genre is still dominated by African Americans.  The roots of blues includes spirituals, so much of blues even today contains Christian elements, but is not as prominent as it used to be.  At the Dallas House of Blues, food is a very common activity shared by people listening to the blues.  In most cultures, partaking of a meal with others is a sign of friendship and fellowship.  And this holds especially true at the House of Blues and Dallas blues culture.  Since the blues is so strongly tied to Southern culture, and food plays an integral part of Southern style, a meal and music are commonly put together.  The food at the House of Blues greatly enhances the total experience there.  For instance, at my second visit to the House of Blues Dallas, I had dinner at the restaurant before the show.  I ate chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes and green beans- an iconic Southern classic.  I also have had fish and chips and an all-you-can-eat crawfish boil, which I will tell y’all about in a later post.

Ideas about the Blues

Dallas blues culture believes in “racial and spiritual harmony through love, peace, truth, righteousness and non-violence”, according to the House of Blues Dallas, which is the hub of blues in the metroplex.  The blues originated from spirituals and work chants of southern African American communities in the late 1800’s.  Therefore, blues can be defined as a form of expression during times of sorrow.  The blues provided a rhythmic encouragement to persevere and helped to develop unity between fellow laborers.  In today’s Dallas blues scene, the music still retains these roots of companionship through music, but has developed more into the entertainment industry’s idea of music- a more mainstream, marketable form of the blues that is seen more as a show than a way of life.  The style of dress is very casual and unpretentious, much like the music itself.  Today, Dallas blues culture prefers artists to have a proficiency in guitar, with similar skills to that of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and B.B. King. The blues can be performed anytime.  At the House of Blues, there are performances almost every night.  Even on some Sundays, the House of Blues hosts a Gospel Brunch, where an African American choir performs the spiritual blues accompanied by instrumentalists and comfort-food breakfast and lunch are served.  

Many ethnomusicologists agree that the first blues song ever published is a song titled “Dallas Blues” by Hart Wand.  The blues originated in Texas, Louisiana, and the Mississippi Delta and was pioneered by singers such as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.  As African American communities began migrating from the south to the north in cities like Chicago and Detroit, transplanted blues artists such as Muddy Waters became very popular, since they sang about their humble urban setting as opposed to their old, rural setting.  These artists began using electric guitars and a band, including standup bass, drums, and a harmonica.  Willie Dixon, a Grammy Award winning Blues Musician once said, “the blues are the roots; everything else is the fruits.”  This style of music helped foster new music genres such as rock n roll and R&B.  These genres became popular with white Americans as well as Europeans, leading to its musical prominence today.  Blues music appeal transcends social class and position, and is appreciated by a wide variety of music aficionados. 

About the House of Blues Dallas

The House of Blues Dallas, established in 2007, is a recent addition to Dallas’ West End. It is in the heart of the entertainment district of Dallas, being near the American Airlines Center and Victory Plaza.   The mission statement of the House of Blues is to create “a profitable, principled global entertainment company, to celebrate the diversity and brotherhood of world culture, [and] to promote racial and spiritual harmony through love, peace, truth, righteousness and non-violence.”  It was opened in the newly renovated White Swan Building, where the historic White Swan Coffee Processing Plant had been since the 1920’s.  The House of Blues Dallas carries similar themes as the other twelve House of Blues around the country: live southern music, folk art, and delta inspired food.  The House of Blues Dallas celebrates folk art with Alan Sainte James Boudrot's "A Dream Come True" and S. Guion's painting of Blues great Robert Johnson, as well as others.  The House of Blues Dallas, as well as the other locations have a “crazy quilt” on display, symbolizing the patchwork culture of southern music, and a metal box full of mud from the Mississippi Delta under the main stage.  

The House of Blues has four separate event spaces.  The Cambridge Room is used for smaller concerts and can hold around 250, which also makes this room ideal for renting for special events.  The Foundation room is used for House of Blues VIP Members and has a fireside lounge with room for less than 200 and small stage, making it a very intimate setting for concerts.  This allows the performers and audience to be much more connected during the performance.  The Restaurant at the House of Blues has a very large collection of folk art.  The Restaurant features a large dining area and stage as well as an outdoor patio and serves southern-style comfort food.  The Music Hall, where the main stage is located, is where most of the concerts at the House of Blues take place.  The hall features a upper level balcony with seating, a standing area in front of the stage, and a small dining area behind, that, when filled, can hold around 1,600, making it a fairly large area.  The House of Blues frequently uses multiple rooms a night to accommodate the many events and performances that take place there.  The House of Blues is Dallas’ premiere venue for big-name, well-known artists looking for an intimate setting to display their talents, along with lots of audience interaction.

This picture, as well as the next one, was taken inside the Music Hall

This is the main stage before the Yonder concert