This year’s festival will feature US legends G. Love & Special Sauce and Robert Finley

The American legend of blues, funk and hip hop G. Love & Special Sauce will come to Šumperk after 27 years since their first Czech concert. Over time, the formation has added more mixtures to its style – rock, psychedelic, folk or, on the contrary, funk, jazz and soul. But the foundation with which they showed nearly three decades ago that blues could be done differently is still in their music.

American blues singer Robert Finley, who was discovered by The Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach, will also perform in Šumperk. Auerbach produced two albums that immediately put Finley, at the age of 60, in the top league of the contemporary blues scene. Stylistically, Auerbach’s unusual sensibility connected to Finley’s rural roots, and the albums carry strong autobiographical elements. Finley worked hard on the farm in his youth, sang in church and taught himself to play guitar. When he served in Germany in the army, he was a helicopter repairman and toured Europe with a military band. He sang gospel and blues on the streets. He raised a family and his children love him. And in the meantime, he developed one of the most unique, powerful and poetic styles to be heard on the contemporary scene. Robert Finley comes to the festival at the height of his career with his newly released anthology Tell Everybody! (21st Century Juke Joint Blues From Easy Eye Sound) documenting contemporary blues, where he sings the title track accompanied by stars such as Kenny Brown (guitar), Eric Deaton (bass) and Kinney Kimbrough (drums).

Guitarist, singer and producer Honza Ponocný is preparing a musical celebration exclusively for Blues Alive of the 80th birthdays of two giants of world rock and blues, Rolling Stones frontmen Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. During the Saturday afternoon concert, an all-star line-up of the Czech music scene will play Glimmer Twins songs, with an emphasis on songs from their solo careers, but of course accompanied by tastings of Stones songs. Special guest of the concert will be American singer Mikey Ariel.

For the first time ever, the original Memphissippi Sounds project of Cameron Kimbrough (grandson of the legendary founder of the North Country Blues style, Junior Kimbrough) and harmonica player Damion “Yella P” Pearson will visit Europe and therefore also Šumperk. This will be a totally unique opportunity to encounter something completely new yet deeply rooted in the deepest Mississippi roots. Memphissippi Sounds will bring their original music to Europe for the first time ever – and we’ll see it!

Other newly confirmed names include bassist Danielle Nicole, the current Blues Music Award winner in the Instrumentalist of the Year category, and the first Belgian band in the history of Blues Alive, Boogie Beasts. The latter will bring something that will probably be remembered for a long time. Dirty rhythms, hypnotic slide guitar, screaming harmonica, coarse-grained distortion. Also playing will be the seven-member Polish band Dark Leaves, winners of the Audience Award at this year’s Blues Aperitiv, British singer-songwriter James Harries, Prague power trio Cold Licks with frontman Jonáš Ledecký, guitarist Honza Ponocný with his “one man band” project Cirkus Ponorka, singer-songwriter Jakub Noha with guitarist Petr Bublák, one of the most expressive and energetic contemporary singer-songwriters Jana Štromská, guitarist and occasional singer Jan Martinek, who celebrates his seventieth birthday this year, the quartet Readymade Backsliders and The Bladderstones, who will celebrate ten years of their existence at this year’s Blues Alive.

Exhibitions are also a traditional part of the festival. This time, the Finnish photographer Pertti Nurmi, who has been working on the blues since the early 1970s and has received the prestigious Keeping the Blues Alive award for his work, will present his photographs of blues musicians in the in the Regional Museum in Šumperk.

The Blues Alive Tour will take place again this year from 11 to 19 November. The American Memphissippi Sounds together with Jan Fic will perform in eight cities outside Šumperk. The tour will stop in Benešov, Prague, Veselí nad Moravou, Olomouc, Mikulov, Valašské Meziříčí, Bystré v Orlických horách and Javorník. The tour will also include music workshops for local musicians and the second part of the Roots of the Blues exhibition, which is being produced in cooperation with the Library of Congress in Washington and the Blues Archives at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.

Visitors to this year’s Blues Alive can also look forward to changes in festival organization. We will expand on last year’s model of two alternating stages. We will elevate the Jam Stage to a full-fledged second festival stage, featuring prominent international performers.
Three-day tickets for Blues Alive 2023 priced at CZK 2,500 can be purchased at https://www.bluesalive.cz/vstupenky. Tickets for individual festival days priced at CZK 1,600 will be on sale in very limited quantities from 1 September 2023 at the pre-sale of the Šumperk House of Culture.

Categorised in: Nezařazené

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