Back to the blues

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“Blues is the roots, everything else is the fruits,” the legendary bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon once said. This saying rings true for many of the performers at Taipei’s annual Blues Bash, which features a dozen acts tonight and tomorrow.

Festival headliner Darrell Raines started out with the “fruits.” The 44-year-old guitarist, pianist and singer began his career playing in gospel, reggae and calypso bands in Miami, and trained in jazz during high school and college.

He didn’t start playing blues full time until 1996 when he joined the backing band of Joey Gilmore, the award-winning bluesman who toured Taiwan last month.

After a 10-year stint with Gilmore’s band, a time that included constant touring in Florida and Europe, winning the International Blues Challenge in Memphis and getting nominated for the Albert King Award for most promising guitarist, Raines decided to embark on a solo career and form his own group.

His latest release, Moanin’ Time in Arkansas (2008), is full of smooth, laid-back vocals and blistering guitar work. Raines acknowledges Gilmore’s B.B. King-inspired playing as an influence, as well as a long list of guitar heroes: Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, and even rockers Steve Vai and Eddie Van Halen.

Raines enjoys the “free expression” possible in blues and, like Gilmore, says the diversity he experienced in the south Florida music scene has shaped his personal style.

“I like all kinds of music,” Raines said on the phone from Florida. “But I put all kinds of music in the blues. You’re going to hear some jazz in it, you’re going to hear some rock in it. It depends on how I’m feeling, what kind of mood we’re in, what kind of song it is.”

American singer and guitarist Adam Posnak, another feature act this weekend, likes to dig beyond the roots. For him, blues are one part of what he likes to call “old-time music,” or “historical American music” for unfamiliar listeners.

Posnak, who grew up in Georgia and hails from Fayetteville, Arkansas, performs traditional music that originated in the American south at the turn of the 20th century.

His repertoire includes country blues songs by African American musicians like Charley Patton, Frank Stokes and Furry Lewis — all of whom were highly influential figures in the formation of blues music during the 1920s and 1930s but also played old-time folk songs shared among white performers.

Listen to Posnak’s raspy vocal delivery and fingerpicking-style of guitar playing, and you wouldn’t guess that he was only 36 years old. (Nor would you peg him as a potter — he holds an MFA in ceramics and is currently an artist-in-residence at the Tainan National University of the Arts).

But he’s not out to reproduce old recordings note by note. Citing some contemporary inspirations such as Tom Waits and indie-folk group The Low Anthem, Posnak’s end-goal “is to make original music that somehow gets to the root of those old songs, feeling-wise.”

This year’s Blues Bash, now in its sixth run, takes place with concerts tonight at Roxy Roots in Taipei and tomorrow evening at the Dream Community’s (夢想社區) indoor theatre and cafe.

Japanese blues acts have been a fixture in recent editions of the festival and this year is no different. Festival favorite Shun Kikuta, who is based in Chicago and served as Koko Taylor’s guitarist until the singer passed away earlier this year, will be backed by local outfit Black Sheep. Also appearing is Nacomi, a guitarist and singer whose R ’n’ B style brings to mind Bonnie Raitt, and Chicago-style blues guitarist Mr Oh Yeah.