A blues holiday; a Billy Gibson FootNote

 It's a holiday weekend. And BlueNotes should be relaxing in the rockets' red glare.

But I just realized an oversight from the previous post about bluesharp dervish Billy Gibson, and the DVD of his performance at the North Atlantic Blues Festival last year. While I was watching, the cameras kept catching snippets of backstage action, and a couple times I caught a glimpse of a photographer's long lens looking in from offstage. The backwards ball cap looked familiar. I stopped, looked again, and I was right. The boxman was Pittsburgh's blues lensman Dusty Scott, who seems to be everywhere there are blues to be photographed.

Then I checked the DVD notes, and sure enough, Dusty was credited with the photos on the cover.  Very nice photos, at that. BlueNotes is suffering from photo-envy. Dusty and I had a chance to talk here and there at the Chicago Blues Festival, and he's posted a fine gallery of photos from the fest on his web site. Hes obviously much more industrious than BlueNotes, who still hasn't worked on his photos enough to get a decent gallery together. But there are a few at the link just to the left.

Dusty and his wife, Val are both big blues fans, and she and I were among the judges at the recent International Blues Challenge for the Blues Society of Western Pa. They're just a couple of the good local people I know who work hard to keep the blues alive. A tip of the BeerNotes mug to both.

I just finished a first listen to a great new CD on the Vizztone label, "Live From Bluesville," with Mookie Brill, Fiona Boyes and Rich DelGrosso. It's great acoustic blues with a classic sound. More next week. BlueNotes has to rest his easily troubled mind this weekend.

Meanwhile, go support one of our local blues bands this weekend.