I Found It!

Written on Nov 20 in Dayton, OH

I have driven mile after mile after mile the past three weeks chasing down the blues, and boy did I find it, alive and well, in Clarksdale, Mississippi the night I discovered the Stacy Mitchhart Band. What a thrill to watch this blues man and his musicians perform live on stage, and sometimes off, as they are prone to spontaneously meandering off the stage and through the club, stopping by each person to give what feels like a performance played especially for you by Stacy and his horn players as they slowly, rhythmically snake their way through the room from person to person. If you come hungry to hear the blues, this band is a feast, and you will leave completely satisfied.

I was in Clarksdale MS, on two different occasions on this road trip. I went to Ground Zero Blues Club both times. For your information, Ground Zero broadcasts live blues online most week ends, so check their website at http://groundzerobluesclub.com/ to see who you might catch playing there.

I discovered Stacy's band, based out of Nashville, TN, on my second visit to Ground Zero. I got what I came for that night, my friends. As I said in an earlier blog, they were well worth the long trip south! When I got back to my room at the Clark House B & B, I looked at the band’s website and discovered, much to my amazement, that they were scheduled to be at Gilly’s Jazz Club in Dayton, OH on November 19. It was easily possible that I could pass through Dayton that night. I could not believe my luck.

I arrived at Gilly’s about 7:30 Thursday night, got a front table, ordered my drink and took out a book to read until show time. (My thoughful daughter had given me two books for this trip, collections of short stories written by women who travel alone.) As I sat engrossed in my book, there arose a flurry of excitement about me. I looked up to discover a bat whizzing at a high rate of speed, creating terror in some, humor in others. We watched it zoom back and forth from one wall to the other. Club employees opened doors in an effort to entice it into the darkness of the night, but the bat didn’t get the message. By this time, many of us were out of our seats, poised to flee. Within a short time we had become quite a cohesive group of bar buddies, chatting like old friends about what the management ought to do, venting our deepest feelings about bats, in short, creating an instantaneous support group. An announcement came over the PA that they were going to turn up the house lights to encourage the bat’s exit. At the front of the room band members curiously peeked from back stage to see the show that was clearly upstaging the anticipation we had all previously felt a short time ago about seeing them perform.

I was chatting with a woman beside me when suddenly a waitress, an African American woman who looked to be about my age, a previously cool, laid back person who had brought me my drink fifteen minutes earlier, came flying across the room as the bat darted her direction. Arms open wide, she threw them around me, we screamed and laughed simultaneously, hid our faces in each other’s necks holding tight to one another, and jumped up and down. It was an experience!! In conclusion of the bat tale, they never did get the thing out the door, it simply disappeared long enough that we began to feel comfortable about returning to our seats, and it was not seen the rest of the evening.

The bat was long forgotten once Stacy took the stage, his performance was as good or better than the one I saw in Clarksdale a week earlier. If you have cable tv’s documentary channel, watch for a documentary about him entitled Nashvegas Blues Stacy Mitchart: An unscripted documentary following the life and times of one of Nashville’s most unique talents. It is currently being broadcast across the country. Stacy is an incredible musician and a master showman. His mastery of the guitar and of the blues genre is an exhilarating experience. His band, consisting of a sax, trumpet, keyboards, drums and bass player, is equally talented. You can learn more about this group on their website; http://www.stacymitchhart.com/Home-0.aspx

I purchased two cd’s. Of the two, Gotta Get The Feeling Back Again is my favorite because those songs have that hard driving, gut wrenching blues sound that makes your toes curl. The other cd I bought is too R&B/pop sounding for my taste. However, there is one cut on the second cd (entitled Grown Ass Man) that is my favorite cut on either cd. It is Stacy’s solo rendition of Amazing Grace played on a resonator guitar. You can’t get any more Mississippi Delta blues than this song is. If I could technically put it on this blog for you to listen to as you read my words, I would; it is the soundtrack for all I have experienced and felt the past three weeks as I slowly made my way through the history of the blues traveling down Highway 61. You can download his Amazing Grace on I-Tunes, look for the cd listed as Grown A*s Man (they respectfully don’t use profanity on I-Tunes). You can also download his other blues cd I mentioned earlier (no profanity in that title) from I-Tunes, or you can purchase the cd from Amazon.com. Either purchase is an authentic expression of the blues by a real blues man.