San Diego Blues Calendar: Aug 4th – 10th

Blues Calendar - Aug 4
Monday through Thursday this week, we have lots of San Diego blues to choose from. It is lite over the weekend, which isn’t unusual downtown. But Patrick’s, which usually has some blues, will be mostly rock so they aren’t on the schedule for Friday or Sunday.

Humphrey’s on the other hand has lots of blues this week, and on Wednesday evening some powerful R&B/blues with Ms Silky Sol, who is new to the San Diego scene from St. Louis (where she has a great following). She is a raw, tell-it-like-it-is powerhouse with an incredible voice.  Go check her out!

San Diego Blues Calendar: May 19th – 25th

Blues Calendar - May 19 This week we have a nice mix of blues – from straight up blues to blues mixed in with zydeco, swing, jazz, R&B and soul.  Silky Sol is new in town – from St. Louis, and she has an amazing soul voice (think Aretha Franklin).  You can catch her Saturday afternoon at the SpeakEasy from 2-5pm.

Jams are happening as usual on Monday (Gaslamp SpeakEasy), Tuesday (Patrick’s Pub) and Wednesday (JammingOut at House of Blues AND also at Humphrey’s), so there are two jams now happening regularly on Wednesday nights.

NOTE: JammingOut at HOB on Wednesday will start at 9pm, not 7pm – this week only.

Oh What A Night JammingOut at HOB

Last night brought in a great crowd and another awesome mix of musicians at the JammingOut at HOB.  We just kept the video going as the night got better and better, and we only caught the last 2 hours of the 4 hour jam!  Most of these musicians have never played together, and often they don’t even know each other before going up on stage, so it isn’t always clean and smooth.  But everyone has a good time!

Local bass player, Shaaron Schuemaker, was singing Sam Cooke’s cover song Bring It On Home to Me in this clip.  She was joined by Jaz Jaszewski and Judd Austin on guitars, Steve Douglas on drums and Tom Safreed on harmonica, who was the recent winner of the BLUSD Spring Harpfest two weeks ago.  Congrats to Tom!

A member of the audience, Greg Loving from Indianapolis, then got up to join the folks on stage to sing cover song Falsom Prison Blues, to the delight of his other colleagues from out of town and the rest of us.  He was great!

New to the jam was Terry Padgett, who came in and sang cover songs Wish I Had a Nickle and Turn On Your Love Light, while playing guitar.  He was joined by Shaaron on bass, Nicholas Butterfield on guitar, Dennis Bucko on harmonica, and Bert Hammer (visiting from Canada) on drums.

Then Nicholas took over and sang Bill Wither’s cover song Use Me.

This was followed by Doyle Thomas playing guitar and singing his favorite Stevie Ray Vaughn cover song Pride and Joy.  He was joined by Junya Isogawa and Jacinto Castaneda on guitars, Fuzzy Rankins on bass (which is rare to see), and Jay Morris on drums.

And the night ended with Silky Sol (aka: Red Afro Queen) coming to the stage, along with Kevin Cooper on bass, Fuzzy Rankins and Mark Augustin  (host of the 88.3 Jazz/blues jam now at Proud Mary’s earlier in the evening) on guitars, and Michael Minor on drums.  They performed Jimmy Reed’s cover song Big Boss Man and then Aretha Franklin’s cover song Rock Steady.  Unfortunately both videos got cut off at the end, particularly the last video – ran out of memory taking so many videos 😉

San Diego Blues

Tuesday Night Turns Into Lafayette and Friends

Every Tuesday night Lafayette Falkquay and his blues band plays at the Gaslamp SpeakEasy.  On drums is Billy Wear and on bass is Ronnie Baumslater.  This Tuesday he was also joined by harmonica player, Doug Camphuis (who played with Lafayette a number of years ago), doing one of Lafayette’s signature cover songs… Black Cat Bone.

A former drummer also stopped in to play with the band, Frank Alverez, and here he is playing with other friends who came in that night: Fuzzy Rankins on guitar and Ms Silky Sol (Red Afro Queen) as they perform cover song Rock Me Baby.

And later on Ronnie took over the mike to sing Skin Tight.  Not exactly blues, but rounded out the evening perfectly.

San Diego Blues