Blues Festival - Club Scene

Friday, July 13

Friday’s Club Crawl opened with local favorites the Super Delinquents’ harp-heavy brand of blues at Redfield’s in the Crowne Plaza lobby, 701 E. Genesee St. The Mick Hayes Band followed at 10 p.m., which coincided with the scheduled start time of a much-anticipated jam session in the hotel’s LaFayette Room. By 10:15, however, the LaFayette Room was still quiet as fans eagerly waited for some musicians to show. 

After a roaring set at Redfield’s, Hayes and his band ambled into the LaFayette Room where musicians and fans showed up in droves and the blues (and booze) began to flow. 

Instead of resting up for Saturday’s performances, arriving musicians flooded the makeshift stage in the small conference room at the Crowne Plaza. The swelling crowd at one point approached the room’s 200-person capacity, prompting a quick inspection by a Syracuse fire marshal (which showed no violations). 

With no schedule (or curfew, it seemed) the jam session kept fans on their feet dancing until well past 2 a.m. The session hummed along like a top-rate open mike night with one talented artist after another hopping onstage to collaborate with whoever wanted to play.

Blues Fest mainstays like Mark Hoffmann and Tom Townsley shared the stage with Hayes, Steve Marriner of MonkeyJunk, local Renaissance man of The Super Delinquents and the Goonies, Peter Capelli and an onslaught of other artists both native and visiting. Facing limited real estate onstage, Sam Wynn, a self-described “freelance musician” even resorted to setting up a keyboard behind a speaker and jamming away offstage. 

—Chris Baker

Saturday

Bernie Clarke wasn’t going to miss this opportunity. When a call came from organizers of this year’s New York State Blues Fest to see if he would be able to participate in the Club Crawl portion, Clarke jumped. That was before realizing that a few members of his usual group, Bernie Clarke & the Rhythm Sharks, would be performing at the Crowne Plaza with Tom Townsley at the same time Clarke, who calls Sylvan Beach home, was to play at the Westcott Theater, 524 Westcott St.

Not a problem, Clarke said, as he immediately got on the horn with four local musicians who were happy to join the jam session. Clarke, who sings and plays the harmonica, assembled a group known as Bernie Clarke & His All-Stars, and the group put on quite the performance given the circumstances. They hadn’t a chance to practice prior.

Clarke, Dan “Cato” Eaton (piano, saxaphone, vocals), Dan Morison (drums), Jack Chappell (bass) and Ron Spencer (guitar) sat down about an hour before their 8:45 p.m. start time, discussed a set list, loaded their gear on stage and went to blues heaven in front of a small crowd that could have been bigger had Clinton Square not still been going strong.

For Clarke, it was fun to get back to the blues basics. “I’d rather see a band sweat at a bar, really getting into it, rather than be outside in front of a crowd of people who may not be paying all that much attention,” said Clarke, who was the executive director of Blues Fest from 2004 to 2009. “The people here {at the Westcott} were here to see us play.”

Clarke thanked the crowd before introducing MonkeyJunk, a band from Ottawa with blue undertones behind a thick, layered exterior. A three-piece with a baritone guitar, electric guitar and drums, MonkeyJunk led the still-growing crowd down a harder path, with rich rhythm and blues melding into funky grooves, all while Tony D kept the fills coming over Steve Marriner’s dark and deep bass-like melodies on the baritone. 

Toward the end of MonkeyJunk’s set, the Westcott was getting a little crowded, and anticipation built for the Kenny Neal Band’s midnight set. Neal sings and plays his Fender Telecaster but also dabbles, like many good bluesmen, in the harmonica. His career has spanned 15 albums since he began playing in New Orleans’ clubs in the late 1980s, and he was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2011.

But the beginning of Neal’s set showcased far more than your basic 12-bar blues, with the band, comprising two of Neal’s brothers and a nephew, shooting out of the gate with a few down-home ditties that fit the description of swamp blues, Louisiana’s take on the historic genre. 

The crowd was loving it, maybe intoxicated by hours in the hot sun or perhaps one too many adult beverages. Either way, the 2012 Club Crawl made it possible for revelers to keep the party going late into the night.

—Neil Benjamin Jr.