The blues come in many styles and colors,
fitting many different moods. Last weekend’s Old Capitol
Blues & BBQ downtown music party was a good representation of
the rowdy electric blues born in the bars of Chicago. If you liked
that sound, look for more of the same this week.
Joe Moss was weaned on electric Chicago blues
with a good measure of ’70s rock and R&B thrown in for
flavor. By the time he was 15, playing blues guitar was his
passion. Moss got his break when Buddy Scott plucked him from a jam
session at the fairly famous Rosa’s Blues Lounge on
Chicago’s West Side and put him to work. During his tenure
with Scotty and the Rib Tips, Moss received a full-blown
music-business education as the band toured Europe, released a
major-label CD, and worked steadily on the Chicago blues scene.
After the elder bluesman’s death in 1994, Moss gigged around
town as a sought-after sideman until 1997, when he formed the Joe
Moss Band.
His brother Nick Moss, also a Chicago-blues
bandleader, fronts the Flip Tops, a group specializing in a
traditional, standard sound based on ’50s electric blues
without the more modern influences brother Joe tosses into the mix.
In case you were wondering, the brothers in blues politely say that they respect each
other’s music but do not intend to perform together.
In 1997, Joe Moss released his first solo
record and staked his claim to a soulful, modern blues sound using
traditional lyric subject matter, a strong rhythm section, multiple
keyboards, and lots of blistering guitar work. Monster Love, Moss’
2003 CD, continues in the same vein, both lyrically and musically.
He takes a few detours into instrumental swing, light funk, and
slight R&B but never strays far from those basic blues, using
thoughtful arrangements and a consistent guitar sound to create a
cohesive recording. Moss is now out on the road, playing blues
festivals and hitting clubs throughout the Midwest and, of course,
taking his show back to the world-renowned Chicago blues bars where
he first learned his trade.
The Joe Moss Band is featured Monday, Sept.
4, at the Illinois Central Blues Club’s Blue Monday jam at
the Alamo. The band plays at 8:30 p.m., and the open jam begins
around 11. As always at Blue Monday, the cover is just one American
dollar.
Music Notes
Tune in Monday night to WUIS (91.9 FM) for a good
look at the life and work of songwriter/musician Bob Dylan. The two-part
program begins at 7 p.m. with “The Emergence of Bob Dylan,” an
overview of the bard’s career containing music, interviews, and
personal commentary. The program continues at 9 p.m. with “Written in
My Soul from Me to You,” an all-star tribute concert to Dylan’s
1975 album Blood on the Tracks. Thank your friends at Recycled Records and House of Music
for sponsoring the independently produced program and your buddies at WUIS
for locating and scheduling it.
Hear the rumble and roar north
of town, and you know the famed Springfield Mile is back. To us, that means
extra live music in the bars on a Sunday night. It also means that the
Ethnic Festival (Illinois State Fairgrounds, Ethnic Village) is on all
weekend with even more live music. How the two events feed off each
other’s crowds, coinciding without colliding, is a great mystery of
Springfield lore. Maybe the secret lies within the music of the Groove
Daddies. The local classic rockers are playing at the festival on Saturday
night, then at the Forty-Niner Bye-Bye (518 Bruns Lane, 217-787-4937) on
Sunday for a Springfield Mile afterparty. Guys, what’s going on here?
It’s official. The
Disputes win the Hardest-Working Band in Springfield Award for Labor Day
weekend 2005. Other bands play twice, but so do these guys — and then
they come back for more. The popular hosts of Your MOM, the Monday open mic
at Floyd’s Thirst Parlor (212 S. Fifth St., 217-522-2020), play
Café Kanichi-Wa (1117 S. Grand Ave. E., 217-544-3500) on Friday
night and the MC Tap (2901 Chatham Rd., 217-726-5633) on Saturday. Then
they’re back on the job Monday for MOM duty. This week, MOM’s
guest, by the way, is the talented and expressive singing guitarist Sarah
Schneider.
Cheddar’s Casual
Café (3151 Horizon Dr., 217-525-3820) continues to lead the way in
local outdoor evening entertainment. Harry Nino and Oysters Rockefeller
play on Thursday, Sept. 1, and the Dan Rivero Trio entertains on Tuesday,
Sept. 6; yours truly, along with Bill Laymon and Raoul, shows up next
Thursday, Sept. 8.
This article appears in Sep 1-7, 2005.
