Canter Bridge

Is it just me, or do Blues and Jazz festivals go best with big water? The wind and the waves improvise in a way that naturally frames the indefatigable improvisation at the core of these most American of musical genres.

Think the Chicago, on the edge of Lake Michigan. The Newport, on the Harbor. Now mix in Duluth, on the Lake Superior Bay that it shares with its Wisconsonian neighbor, Superior.

They’ve been at it now for 28 years up north, and it doesn’t much better than August 2016, our first—but hopefully not our last—opportunity to take in this inimitable Northwoods event.

Duluth could make a turtle race scenic, its hills rising up from the westernmost tip of the world’s largest fresh-water lake or—better said—inland sea. I was often here as a child on summer vacation, but know my way around little enough to require directions. They were forthcoming, with a smile, whenever needed. Duluthers treat their guests all right. Parking is ample just two blocks from the venue, where music-lovers look through the stage to the Harbor. One-day, walk-in tickets set you back just 50 clams, a quite reasonable price for the line-up on offer.

We arrived half-way through the first set on the second of three musical days. Everyone brings camp chairs, and we had no problem making our way forward through the ‘way-back’ folks to a place with a nice view of the stage. The acoustics were great throughout, quite a feat in an open-air venue like Duluth’s Bayside Park.

Bell’s Brewery (‘Inspired Brewing’) served up a full and savory range of micro-brewskis to accompany a food assortment that settled on average in the ‘not bad’ range. The Good Wife warmed to Bell’s Oatsmobile Ale, while I favored their Two-Hearted Ale (IPA).

And the music?

Good grief, this was great live music.

Houston’s Annika Chambers, by her own declaration 38 years old and 2 years sober has a deep blues female voice that puts one in mind of the soulful ancients. She works those pipes in a most amiable way—a word I don’t naturally use in connection with Blues—and her winning personality perhaps as much as her musicianship turns her audience into friends. I stumbled upon Annika in the concessions area, mixing as unpretentiously and comfortably with passersby as you’ll see any professional musician do. Long may she live sober, long may she roar.

Multi-band live performance that is this good  always sets me up to feel that the last band was as good as we’ll hear, and it’ll be a gentle downwards slope from here. Not at Duluth.

Next up on our Bluesy afternoon under partial sun and 84 degrees was Chicago’s splendiferous Toronzo Cannon. Now it will have dawned on the reader by paragraph two that this reviewer is a music lover rather than a music expert, so take this observation with a grain of salt: I have never seen a musician handle both lead vocals and lead guitar with as much compelling edginess and—when necessary—blunt force as Mr. Cannon. This was a great, tight, brassy Chicago sound that had its audience on their feet and in motion.

Cue a setting sun, San Fran’s Tommy Castro & the Painkillers, and a California-cool breeze from the stage. And personality. In buckets, easy to take, welcomed by a crowd that seems to receive Castro’s act back as a perennial favorite. Then, just as the man and his band were lured (it took little arm twisting for this high-spirited band) into an encore, the 1000-foot laker U.S.S. American Integrity slid noiselessly out of Duluth Harbor right behind the band. You can’t make this stuff up.

The night’s finale on the main stage belonged to the south. And to Southern Hospitality, arguably the quirkiest, most bodacious, and artistically compelling act of the entire day. This high-energy band passes the improvisational lead back and forth among the artists in a way that evoked audible gasps of appreciation from folks near us. They work a theme until it’s been pressed down, distilled, held up to the light, and honored for all it’s got in it. It was, as they say, a rip-roaring day that, at least on the main stage, did not present a single musical low.

As for the audience, we could have loaded up a pallet or two if forced to cough up our AARP cards. There were doubtless some Woodstock veterans, some well-aged hippies, and a sizable warehouse of tie-dye on hand. Yet this is a demographic fact on the ground that challenges live music of these genres anywhere, and some of the break-out exuberance that is not always to be anticipated among understated Northwoodsmen brought its own appreciable entertainment. To be fair, the under-thirty sector was present and accounted for and—one hopes—growing year on year.

You can find more sophisticated venues, and definitely more expensive. You can find some bigger names, and the egos that accompany. You can find the kind of massive crowd that follows the appeal of the elite Jazz and Blues Festivals, and the traffic jams it creates.

But I’m not sure you can do any better, anywhere, than the 28th annual Bayfront Blues Festival, Duluth, Minnesota. Two n’s, one t.