What better way to celebrate a milestone than a reunion of the best B.C. blues masters?
John Lee Sanders, Jim Byrnes, Steve Kozak, David Vest and Willie MacCaulder played to sold out houses all last weekend at the Pender Harbour Blues Festival. And the folks who put on the festival did it right, all over town.
Steve Kozak's '50s style roadhouse blues opened Friday night at the Garden Bay Pub. Madeira Park, Garden Bay and Kleindale rocked Saturday afternoon to multiple sets of free concerts with famous stars and local musicians.
Saturday night Byrnes gave a blues history lesson at the Garden Bay Pub, and Brickhouse rocked the Madeira Community Hall.
Sunday afternoon and evening were jams and a three-blues-stars pianorama with three pianos at the Garden Bay Pub with MacCaulder, Sanders and Vest.
And Sunday morning, Sanders and Byrnes gave the gospel show. Both are from the south, both were church choirboys, and both are steeped in the blues and gospel.
Sanders started off by "taking us to church" where he first learned to play piano. He told how he got a gig playing for an all-black Episcopal Church choir by showing up for an audition, though the ad called for a black musician. He played for 40 days, and got the job. That lead to his sermon on the relevance of 40 days as a significant period of time throughout the Bible, interspersed with amazing piano technique (he now has several degrees) and a deep bass voice on traditional and new songs such as Dylan's You Got to Serve Somebody.
Byrnes came onstage, joked that 40 days of rain is nothing here, then broke into a blistering Didn't It Rain from his 2006 House of Refuge CD. The Pender Harbour Choir joined in with Sanders and Byrnes trading direction. At the end of the hymn Will the Circle Be Unbroken, an emotional Byrnes asked Sanders, the band, the choir and audience to sing the chorus a few times for him and his mom, who had just passed away. He closed his eyes, sat still and took in the sound.
In a later interview, Byrnes called gospel and blues "different sides of the same street."
Sanders said the relationship between gospel and blues was like the scene from the movie The Colour Purple, where Shug has sung the blues Saturday night until dawn at a roadhouse, and while walking home, is met with the sounds of hymns from her father's church choir.
However they describe it, the gospel show was the highlight of an amazing Pender Harbour Blues Festival.
