Tag: Juke Joint Festival

Posted on

Celebrating the Blues and Juke Joint Culture in its Birthplace

Saturday April 23 was the main day of Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale, a bright and sunny day, but extremely windy. In fact, the wind was so severe that it blew down a number of the vendor tents along downtown streets. When I arrived at the Wade Walton Stage, one of the free stages throughout the daytime, Memphisippi Sounds was on stage, the duo of Cameron Kimbrough and Damian Pearson. While there are not a lot of young Mississippi Hill Country artists, this group is one of the best emerging artists from the region. They were followed by Garry Burnside and his band, and then Duwayne Burnside and his band, and finally Kenny Brown, who was mentored by Mississippi Joe Callicott and the great R. L. Burnside. Around the same time, Como bluesman R. L. Boyce and Lightning Malcolm were on the Sunflower River stage next to Quapaw Canoe Company.

2022 brought some new openings to Clarksdale as well as some sad closings. The Riverside Hotel, famous as the the former hospital where blues great Bessie Smith died, has remained closed since it was damaged in a storm, and a fundraising effort is underway to keep it from closing permanently. Yazoo Pass, although open to a limited extent during weekdays, has closed at night, and was open only briefly on the festival day. But Sean “Bad” Apple’s new blues club in the former Club 2000 building, as well as the opening of the new Buster’s Blues Club next door show that the renaissance in Clarksdale still remains strong coming out of the pandemic.

After a dinner at the Hooker Grocery, I made my way over to Pete’s Grill on Sunflower Avenue for Duwayne Burnside’s night show. While the daytime stages are free to the public, the night shows inside the various juke joints require wristbands or paid admissions, but the shows are generally well-attended, and Duwayne’s was no exception.

Posted on

Juke Joint Fest: Johnny Rawls at Hambone and Kent Burnside at Gentleman Lyfe

After Sherena Boyce and myself attended the Jimmy “Duck” Holmes party behind Sean “Bad” Apple’s juke joint in Clarksdale, we went different directions. She wanted to go to Kent Burnside’s performance at a new club called Gentleman Lyfe, which usually hosts more of a hip-hop crowd, but I wanted to catch Johnny Rawls’ performance at Hambone.

However, when I got to Hambone, I was somewhat disappointed. Rawls typically has a large band with horns on his albums, but at Hambone, he had a stripped-down trio band instead. Worse, the place was so crowded that I could not get anywhere near the stage. So I left there and headed around the corner to Gentleman Lyfe for Kent Burnside’s performance. Sherena got there about an hour after I did, but although Kent gave some rousing performances of Hill Country standards, the long day had taken a toll on me, and I was running on fumes. Ultimately, I left to head back to the hotel and to bed.

Posted on

Juke Joint Fest: “You Will Have To Meet That Man”: R. L. Boyce Closes Out The Festival Day Beside the Sunflower River

Como, Mississippi bluesman R. L. Boyce is one of the last living musicians of the first generation of the Hill Country, and on Juke Joint Festival Saturday, he closed out the day of free outdoor performances with a rousing appearance at the Quapaw Canoe Company Stage with one of his disciples, Lightning Malcolm.

Boyce’s music exemplifies the trance-inducing repetition that Hill Country blues shares with the music of the Senegambian region of West Africa. His composition “You Will Have To Meet That Man,” also known as “River Jordan,” seemed to aurally complement the slowly flowing Sunflower River in the late afternoon sun. An enthusiastic crowd gathered around the fountain and covered almost all available ground, other than the stairs down to the river itself behind the stage, where a young man and his girlfriend were talking. It was a fitting end to the day performances, with the indoor night concerts in clubs still to come.

Posted on

Juke Joint Fest: Garry Burnside on the Wade Walton Stage

Blues musician Garry Burnside, a son of the late R. L. Burnside, recently moved to Ripley, Mississippi in Tippah County, and put together a new band with a young drummer from Ripley, along with old familiar faces like Andrea Staten. Garry took the Wade Walton Stage in the slot before his brother Duwayne, and captivated the significant and growing crowd. Duwayne came on after him, but as I was playing keyboards for Duwayne this year, I could not document his performance. Duwayne was followed by Kenny Brown, whom R. L. considered an ‘adopted son,” but Kenny’s performance overlapped with that of R. L. Boyce and Lightning Malcolm at the Quapaw Canoe Company stage, so I made me way down to the Sunflower River to catch’s Boyce’s performance, the last one of the day.

Posted on

Juke Joint Fest: Murals and Vendors

Although we had been told to expect a “modified” Juke Joint Fest due to the pandemic, the actual event proved to be not much different from ordinary years; certainly the crowds were just as large. The weather was beautiful, and one could not escape the feeling that things were slowly returning to some degree of familiarity. Perhaps there were fewer attendees from other countries, as travel between countries was still being affected by Covid-19, but there were far more people than I expected, many from out of state.

Of course there were changes, too, at least one of them sad, as Yazoo Pass restaurant and coffee bar in previous years would have been a hotbed of activity during the festival. This year, it was mostly closed, although it opened briefly in the afternoon for coffee and baked goods to go. Two new downtown lodgings had opened since last year, including the Travelers Hotel and the Auberge Hostel in the former Madidi Restaurant building. There were also many bright new murals in the alleys of downtown Clarksdale; not only did they brighten the environment, but they contained pithy slogans like “The only good border is a border collie,” and “The blues was born behind a mule.”

There did seem to be fewer vendors this year than in previous years, but the ones that were there had some very interesting artworks, hats, barbecue rubs and other items. Walking around and browsing took more than an hour. I eventually found a beautiful piece of wood art with a picture of the late fife and drum band leader Otha Turner burned into it. That I could not pass up, and at $40 it was basically a steal. By the time I got that item to my car, it was almost time for me to catch the next performers I wanted to see.

Posted on

Juke Joint Fest: Starting The Day With Joe and Trenton Ayers

In previous Juke Joint Festivals, Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art has been sort of the nerve center for the festival, but this year it seems that the organizers wanted to downplay that, perhaps due to the pandemic. Most of the artists that would usually have played at Cat Head in previous years were relocated to the Wade Walton Stage on Issaquena Avenue. An early morning exception however was Little Joe Ayers, one of the last living original Hill Country bluesmen, who opened the festival day with an awesome set in front of the store accompanied by his son Trenton, who for many years was part of a duo with Cedric Burnside.

Whereas the second generation of Hill Country bluesmen have adopted a more aggressive and electrified sound, Little Joe has remained true to the music’s rural roots, playing both traditional blues standards like “Smokestack Lightnin'” and favorite tunes from the Junior Kimbrough songbook like “Do The Rump.” There’s no better way to start a blues festival, and an enthusiastic crowd gathered despite the early hour.

Posted on

Kicking Off The Juke Joint Fest With A Leisurely Dinner at Kathryn’s on Moon Lake

The announcement that 2021’s Juke Joint Fest in Clarksdale, Mississippi would actually be held in person and not merely virtually online was a sign that things are tentatively moving toward normalcy, and along those same lines was my discovery that Kathryn’s on Moon Lake would be open for Friday dinner on the festival weekend.

The pandemic was not kind to restaurants anywhere, but things have been unusually difficult for Kathryn’s, which is located in a remote area of rural Coahoma County between the town of Lula, the communities of Dundee and Coahoma, and Clarksdale. Situated on Moon Lake, an oxbow lake that was once the main channel of the Mississippi River, it is now cut off from the nearest big town of Lula by a closed bridge which flunked an inspection and is not scheduled for repair. The detour requires people approaching from Lula to drive significantly further to reach the restaurant now, and makes what was already a remote location even more so. However, when I arrived, I found the little restaurant crowded, for Kathryn’s is simply the best restaurant overall in Coahoma County, and the absolute best place in the Clarksdale area to order steak.

Inside, the restaurant has the feel of a Delta hunting lodge. Stuffed fish, oars and other lake-related items are displayed decoratively on the walls, along with historic articles about the restaurant and the lake. Sophisticated jazz music plays low. Tables nearby burst with laughter, and most patrons seem to know each other. The servers are mostly young teenaged girls.

Prices are not cheap, but you don’t go to a place like Kathryn’s in search of cheap. You come here for great food, and if you do, you won’t be disappointed at all. My filet mignon was perfectly cooked to order, as was my baked potato, which came just as I asked for it, with butter, bacon and cheese only. Service was very attentive; my diet coke was refilled regularly throughout my visit. After bread, potato and steak, I had no room for dessert.

This was my second visit to Kathryn’s; the first had been decent, but this visit was outstanding. Kathryn’s is truly becoming one of Mississippi’s best restaurants.

Kathryn’s

5700 Moon Lake Rd

Dundee, MS 38626

(662) 337-0022

Posted on

More Blues and Roots Music at Clarksdale Caravan Music Festival

At one time, as far as music festivals went, Clarksdale, Mississippi had one, the Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival in August. Later, after former advertising executive Roger Stolle came to town, a second one, the venerable Juke Joint Festival took root, becoming the city’s largest festival, attracting people from all over the world. But now, Clarksdale’s burgeoning tourism business is driven by a succession of festivals, stretching nearly all year long. Music, film, art….all are celebrated in different events. The Clarksdale Caravan Music Festival is one of these newer events, held in May, with performances at Cat Head Delta Blues and at the New Roxy.

Like the better-known events, the Clarksdale Caravan is primarily about blues, although it is in a much more intimate setting, with only two stages, and therefore a lot more interaction between the artists and performers. On this year’s festival, there had been a considerable amount of rain up in Memphis, and I feared that could disrupt the event, as the Cat Head stage was outside, but in Clarksdale the sun was out, and shining.

My primary goal was to catch R. L. Boyce at the Cat Head stage, and I did. He was performing with Lightnin Malcolm and a violinist with whom I was not familiar. A small crowd had gathered under the tent in front of the store, and due to the threat of rain, I decided to do my photographic work with my iPhone instead of my Nikon. Indeed it did start raining briefly, and I eventually took refuge in the Meraki Coffee Roasters shop a block down the street.

In the afternoon, Lightnin Malcolm was scheduled to perform on the stage at New Roxy, a former theatre in the New World district of Clarksdale, but I arrived early, and nothing was happening yet, so I spent some time walking around the area shooting pictures of the buildings, many of which are sadly beginning to collapse. Local artists have attempted to brighten the ruins of what remains, with painted images and slogans, such as “I am of this city and this city is of me,” but the loss of such history is not easy to bear. The New Roxy is a better story, however, as it has survived, despite the loss of its roof, to become a popular music venue in Clarksdale.

Perhaps because of the rain threat, Malcolm’s performance took place in the smaller, lounge portion of the New Roxy, within the former box office of the theatre, rather than the larger outdoor stage. He performed primarily with his drummer, but also did a couple of tunes with R. L. Boyce, with whom he had played earlier at Cat Head. The crowd was fairly small but enthusiastic. It was ultimately a great day of music, and the rain threatened but never actually disrupted anything.

Posted on

Lightnin Malcolm Live at the Juke Joint Chapel at Clarksdale’s Shack Up Inn


My last stop of the evening was to see Lightnin Malcolm at the Juke Joint ChapelJuke Joint Chapel at the Shack Up Inn complex at Hopson Plantation, just outside of Clarksdale. But the venue is always crowded, and it isn’t always easy to get a good view of the stage unless you get there early. Also, by the time I arrived out there, I was exhausted, so I caught Malcolm’s first set of songs, and then I headed back to Memphis. All in all, despite the rain, wind and power outages, it was a great Juke Joint Festival this year.

Posted on

Duwayne Burnside and David Kimbrough at Pete’s Grill in Clarksdale


When I left Our Grandma’s Sports Bar, I headed out to Pete’s Grill on Sunflower Avenue to catch the Duwayne Burnside and David Kimbrough performance. Pete’s is another juke joint in Clarksdale that generally has live music only during the Juke Joint Festival, but it is a perfect venue for live blues, just a block or so from the legendary Riverside Hotel. Unfortunately, the performance started late, as the musicians were waiting for someone to arrive with an amp or microphone, and the first set only involved Duwayne Burnside, as David Kimbrough was nowhere to be seen. Of course Duwayne is one of Mississippi’s most gifted blues performers, so it was still an enjoyable show, and I heard that later, after I had left, that David did show up and perform with Duwayne. But Lightnin’ Malcolm was performing out at the Shack Up Inn, so I decided to head out there and see if I could catch him.