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.

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.