BF@XR part 2

The Hilton Garden Inn was booked for Saturday Night so we transferred to the Candlewood Suites on the south side of Wabash Avenue between 7th and 8th Streets. The refurbished Tribune building if you remember. I mention this as explanation from missing the National Anthem at noon and the first 20 minutes of Daphne Willis & Co. Daphne is a charming young lady who accepted my apology later.





if the people around us were slow to get started, Daphne was not - the part of her set that I saw was fast paced and much of the rhythm came from her guitar play. She got a lot of sound out of her acoustic guitar.

Packing and moving was painless but took some time away from the blues so, unlike ex-Mayor Burke who was front and center throughout, we missed a little. Here is last night's hotel as seen from the window of today's and a picture of His Honor avec le chapeau d'orange.




Hardline Drive arrived.


and played not blues but bluegrass to the surprise of all but those who had read the program. Everyone seemed to enjoy it - even blues fans might not be completely ready for hard hitting blues first thing after breakfast even, as it might be for us, if breakfast is in the early afternoon. The professionalism and talent of Hardline Drive won out.


Miche Fambro was next. BF@XR caught Miche in transition from single act to group. They have been together 8 days and he's still doing some of his one man band guitar as percussion, keyboard and strings act while they stand around. I was embarrassed when he dismissed the number I liked most as a 3-chord tune. Everyone around me in the front of the crowd seemed to love Miche so I figured he must have been good then I noticed that he was playing electric guitar left handed and had not restrung the guitar and was playing very intricate fast paced runs (not like surfer music icon Dick Dale who was also upside down and backwards on the guitar but got all his speed from quick double picking) but fast licks that would be hard to replicate on a keyboard. This Miche Fambro needs to be seen to be believed. His style is complex to say the least.



Then Duke Tumatoe and the Power Trio took over. Stopped traffic at 7th and Wabash at 5pm. The crowd laughed at Duke's jokes, swayed to the blues sound and the crisp professionalism of The Power Trio and Duke Tumatoe's blues voice and then gaped when he shifted to a powerful rock falsetto.





Not too dirty dancing.

Then a little past 6 another young girl sang with The Right Now. She looked a little like the actress who played Wonder Woman on TV. She wowed us all. Her name is Stefanie Berecz, a name to watch for.



.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I had not recovered from Ms Berecz when this guy named Guy Forsyth came out. I have not heard anyone compare Guy to Tom Waits but I don't know why not. Seems apt to me.
Many were standing when he did Summertime which he turned into a blues saw playing anthem. Here's Guy Forsyth -



The Kelly Richey band followed. The base player and drums were rock solid. That's the base player in the foreground of the picture shaking his head of hair around to such extreme that my slow camera shows him with two faces. That's Kelly Richey behind him. Her virtuosity on guitar had the crowd standing and cheering for song after song.



That's when I crashed. alas
I missed the Clayton Miller Blues Band and Ellusion.

Blues Fest at the Crossroads

In Southern California they say the best way to see Disneyland is to check in at one of the hotels in walking distance. The Blues Fest at the Crossroads is the same. Hilton Garden Inn or Candlewood Suites will put you at the center of the action if you like loud music. No careful drive home after "two" beers, no taking a tired family member home when the best band has not yet played, no nothing but music and music lovers all night long.



Jill Shutt (pictured above) opened the BF at the XR and her set was highlighted (for me) by Georgia on My Mind which I always thought was about one of Ray Charle's girlfriends but she made it her own song.

but before that, there was a moment of 911 silence and the THFD color guard adding red and white to the blues
lest we forget



but before that ... I need to point out that the 7th and Wabash (US 41 and 40) is only an historic location with a marker that says what it was before the interstate highway systems were built. From the west side of South 7th Street it looked like this (shaky camera holder and bad light and all)



Mike Milligan was next up and the first of many blues/rock groups. Knowing only what I like and don't gives me no right to judge or rank these many hard working groups and I won't try. I'm probably no better judge of the crowd around me but I made certain observation. After Jill Shutt entertained the crowd, they settled in to hear blues played as night fell and Mike Milligan and Steam Shovel blasted it at the crossroads. ...


In October of 2001 late on the last night of a week-long visit to Terre Haute I drove down Wabash Avenue and noticed that Boone Dunbar was playing at The Verve. I slowed and put the driver side window down and let the guitar and drums sound in. I thought I needed rest for the flight back to California more than to see Boone again.
The next time I saw him was at his funeral. There's a lesson there somewhere.

Governor Davis and the Blues Ambassadors, when they went Ray Charles call and answer with the BF@XR crowd, made me think of Boone at The Spot and all the other joints in the midwest that rocked all night with blues based sound.



Looking west from 7th Street onto Wabash Avenue at midnight.


The nightcap group, W. T. Fester, cranked up the volume to 11 so folks could hear their music all the way home with the windows rolled up. When I approached the stage to take a picture, I could feel the sound blast head to toe.




W.T. Feaster rocked all of the town and this new generation of blues fans.

It would be a short night of sleep for this old one if I was to be ready for more at noon Saturday.

A Good One

Terre Haute

Three recent conversations, ended with the same farewell. The 92-year-old retired physician, the door to door meat salesman and an Amish youngster agreed separately that I should "Have a good one."

As if taking this ubiquitous well wishing literally, I went downtown to the Oktoberfest for lunch. The Oberlandler Club moved the event to a new location on Cherry Street opposite Hulman Center this year but the menu was unchanged. A heaping plate of hot kraut with German Potato Salad, Weiner Schnitzel and Rye bread and an apple strudel dessert sent me home to sit and ponder just what the doctor, the peddler and the farmer meant.

But before that, I noticed the new Multi-modal Transportation Facility rising, as pictured above, on the north side of Cherry Street between 7th and 8th. Even taking into account that the nature of parking garages is to have sloping floors and that there is a 6 foot drop between 7th and 8th streets at Cherry - the Multi-modal seems askew. I am glad to take this picture with my camera phone at a time during the construction before the darkened windows will hide the stairwells behind the arches. There's something eerily familiar about the new Multi-modal Transportation Facility. ... I wonder if the architect had M.C. Escher's Ascending/Descending Stairs in mind.

I vowed to take a sack of marbles into the new building when it is complete and to drop a few to see which ways they roll.

7th and Cherry

At 7th and Cherry Streets, just one block north of the THH Hilton, the Multi-Modal Transportation Facility rises. I am told that long distance and local buses will meet there at a new parking garage. It will overlay the site of a small office where I applied for my first driving license on the north side of Cherry Street west of 8th Street 52 years ago. I remember parallel parking perfectly for the test on Cherry and that it was not yet a one way street. (Other pictures from that day)

between storms on the last Saturday in August

this is the way the new construction downtown looked:

From the old South Seventh Street Bus Stop, the new Terre Haute House Hilton exterior looks almost done - just hang a sign out above the corner, sweep the sidewalk and it's good to go. I haven't heard anything new about when the interior will be ready - Halloween is a good guess. (Other pictures)

status report mid-May 2007

The new Hilton Gardens Terre Haute House has reached its full height and is visible over the rooftops of the south side of Wabash Avenue and looking east. The yellow insulation board will be covered with brick.

new THH grows downtown

 

from the old South 7th Street bus stop perspective.

for comparison 

3rd floor

The Wabash Avenue side of the New Hilton Garden Terre Haute House begins to take shape. The temperature is in single digits causing me to view progress through the window of the top floor of the city parking building in the 600 block on Wabash Avenue. The red brick of the Hulman & Company is the background. It looks like the Hilton is 3 stories high now. It will rise to 6.