Hi CaSandra,

I am no longer in the Denver area, but I'd be happy to talk about blues and stuff.

There is a band in Denver you might run in to called "The Jill Watkins Band." Once upon a time, in about 1999 or 2000 I had met the guitar player from that band, and the drummer, and we had another band... (pre Jill Watkins). I am still very good friends with the guitar player from the Jill Watkins Band, his name is John Ragan.

They have a web site:
http://www.jillwatkins.com/

And their gigs are listed on there...

Here's what you do... check out their calendar, go to one of their gigs, and tell John the guitar player "Jam Handy says hello." Then, in the course of the conversation you might fit in a question about getting involved with the blues scene in Denver.

Maybe tell John you're curious about getting involved with some musicians, jamming or gigging, either way, around the Denver area.

Now as far as me and the blues... well, you see we're pretty much inseparable... like, I've lived the blues, and I've lived where they came up with the blues. I play a damn mean lead guitar, or can sit back and fill the rhythm part. But what John and company liked me for most was my searing-fried blues voice... (ding-ding, there I go tooting my own horn...) But, heck, if I don't toot it, who the heck else will?... (especially in this e-mail, since its kind of a closed environment...)

[Don't let ********** know about this-he'll stroke out!We WON"T talk about how he was laughed off stage by the blues guy

on open mic nite @ the Palace Saloon,Amelia Island,Fl. Htos1]

I've had the privilege to live in the great state of North Carolina... whereas most folks know all about Mississippi and the Delta Blues, or maybe Chicago and the Chicago blues... or even Texas and the Texas Blues... "Piedmont Blues" or "East coast Blues" is a little more less-known...

The geographical area called the "Piedmont" is just west of the coastal plain of the United States east coast (Atlantic Ocean, etc...) and just east of the Appalachian Mountains. The "Piedmont" is a wide ranging section of rolling hills that stretch from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and into Georgia. Basically the "foothills" of the Appalachian mountains.

The number on crop in the Piedmont was and pretty much still is... tobacco. And it was near the tobacco warehouses of the Piedmont where the Piedmont Blues were born. One man in particular, a man by the name of Blind Boy Fuller, recorded 130 songs in the 1930s, and is responsible for establishing the genre of blues called "The Piedmont Blues." There are many other Piedmont Blues artists out there, two that you might have heard of would be Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee.

I was also a member of the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society for many years.

http://www.piedmontblues.org/

Its very similar to the Colorado Blues Society... there are probably 200 or more blues societies of this type throughout the US...

Then my travels found me in Mississippi for a while. I lived just on the edge of what they call "The Delta." Now, I'll tell ya', it took a while to understand just what in the heck "The Delta" was... at one point, I used to think the "Delta" was down there in New Orleans where the Mississippi dumps into the Gulf of Mexico.

Annnnnnnnnnk

Wrong answer... that is possibly called a "river delta" but it is not THEE Mississippi Delta that folks came up out of after being cotton pickers and share croppers most of their lives. Nope...

If you get you hands on a good aerial map of Mississippi, you'll see the Delta.

The "Delta" takes it's name from the letter "D" or the greek letter "D" (which just so happens to be "Delta" in the greek alphabet...)

The straight part of the letter "D" on the map is the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tennessee down to Vicksburg, Mississippi (no further...) And the round part of the letter "D" (or the triangle part of a greek letter "delta") ... is the Yazoo River as it leaves Memphis, travels south and east out of Memphis, then somewhere out in the Mississippi countryside, decides to cut back toward Vicksburg on a south and west slant, thus forming a letter "D" or a greek letter "Delta" as it carves its way across the earth..

I can tell you some things about the Delta..

For one, its flat as a pancake for as far as your eyes can see in every direction. North and east Mississippi is higher in elevation, and the folks who live in the Delta call folks from that area folks who live "in the hills"... the "hills" of Mississippi were talked about in Blues songs and such... but "the hills" aren't in the Delta.

Here's a very cool fact about the rich agricultural area of the Delta.... the top soil in the Delta is on average 130 feet deep. Meaning, if you're standing in a cotton field, the topsoil, on average, goes 130 feet beneath your feet. That's from years of the Mississippi River flooding, and then receding, and depositing rich fertile soil in the Delta. You see, when the Mississippi River floods, it floods everything in the Delta, since the Delta is flat. Most of the roads are built up on levees (but not all of them)

I was there shortly after September 11th and the World Trade Center/Pentagon stuff. Mississippi has experienced a huge amount of rain that year, and the Delta was flooded. Whole fields disappear during that time of the year. And running between these fields are many roads equal in elevation to the farm fields, which means the roads are not accessible until the waters recede.

Most cities will have some form of levee around them, but not all. You might even see a house with its own levee surrounding it.

Ever heard the Led Zeppelin song "When the Levee breaks?"

Talking about Mississippi...

I traveled all over the Delta while I was there and specifically hunted up famous blues sights.

I visited the train station in Tutwiler, MS where W.C. Handy first heard his first blues song. (1895) And in 1922, W.C. Handy was the first man to have a song published on paper with the word "Blues" in the title. A song he wrote for the election campaign race for the Mayor of Memphis, TN that year... the song was called "The Memphis Blues."

Because he was the first man to have a song published on paper with "Blues" in the title, many people call W.C. Handy "The Father of the Blues." That is why I call myself "Handy" (not my real name, just a stage name) And its all about "Jam"... most people get it... "Jam Handy"....

Just south and a little west of Tutwiler is an old Negro grave yard where Sonny Boy Williamson II is buried... when I was there, it was Valentine's day, and I left him a heart-shaped candle on his grave stone.

North of Tutwiler, at the intersection of Highways 49 and 61 is the town of Clarksdale, MS. I had a regular Saturday night gig in Clarksdale for a while. Clarksdale was a huge hub. You might remember a Jimmy Page/Robert Plant recording that came out in 1998 called "Walking Into Clarksdale?"...

Well, I can give you a little more background on why the title...

Jimmy Page has always been found of the occult... and one of the greatest musical occult stories to ever be told revolves around Clarksdale, Mississippi. I'm sure you've heard of Robert Johnson... one of the most famous Delta Blues musicians of all time... well, legend has it that at one time Robert really, really SUCKED on the guitar... guys would kick him out of their Juke Joints because he just couldn't play... Well, one night (as the legend has it) Robert went out to the crossroads of Highway 49 and Highway 61 and made a deal with Satan for his soul, in trade of the ability to play blues guitar..

Legend has it, that Robert came "walking into Clarksdale" a changed man... he now possessed an uncanny amount of Blues ability... when Page and Plant named their album... they named it "Walking Into Clarksdale"... to reflect this odd bit of the occult

Led Zep isn't the only British rock band to grab onto the blues and hold on... The Rolling Stones, The Who... and many more honored the blues in the 1960s when Americans had all but forgotten about the genre of music native to this land..

Shortly after this "Blues Revival" old blues players were sought out... Mississippi John Hurt had a time on stage in the 1960s... being a man who was still alive, and still a roots blues player from that era..

Also in my travel in Mississippi I visited Rolling Fork, MS where Muddy Waters was born. Muddy left out of the train station in Clarksdale in 1943 headed for Chicago, and never returned to the Delta as a share cropper... he hit it big in Chicago..

John Lee Hooker was born in Clarksdale, and they have named a major street running through town "John Lee Hooker Boulevard."

There is a very cool blues museum in Clarksdale called "The Delta Blues Museum."

They have a web site:
http://www.deltabluesmuseum.org/

I tried to shop their every time I was in town. In my own way, I was trying to help support the legacy of the blues in the Delta.

Oh yeah, I also traveled to Indianola, MS and saw B. B. King's hand prints in the sidewalk down there. B. B. is from Indianola.

I made it to Morgan City, Mississippi, and I have a few pictures of myself outside of the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Morgan City. It is in front of the Mt. Zion Church that Robert Johnson was laid to rest (or at least they think he was... there are actually two places where they think he is buried... nobody gave a shit in 1938 when he died, so the records aren't that well kept...)

I wrote a blues song standing on Robert Johnson's grave, and I took a few pictures of his headstone. Folks have spent some big bucks to help on the up keep of his grave site. On a plaque on the side of the church there, it tells folks that the church is responsible for the up keep of the grave, and it gives the address of the church in case anyone would like to donate money to help keep the grave site nice.

I also traveled to Helena, Arkansas, just across the Mississippi River from the Delta (pronounced Hell-in-uh)... Sonny Boy Williamson II has a claim to fame out of Helena. Have you ever heard of "The King Biscuit Flour Hour" (yes, flour spelled "flour", not "flower") When I was a teenager, we used to hear live music late at night on the King Biscuit Flour Hour... (I used to think it was spelled "flower" because of the peace thing in the 60s, "flower children" and rock concerts being played live... I had no idea of the roots...)

Well, the very start of the "King Biscuit Flour Hour" was in downtown Helena, Arkansas. There was a local radio station there, and the folks knew about Sonny Boy Williamson II and they liked his music. They asked him to come in one day and play for an hour on the radio... live.

Well, Sonny Boy did, and that also marked a huge event in African American history... Sonny Boy Williamson had become the very first negro to ever be heard on a radio station.

The success of the program was pretty great, and a flour company decided to sponsor the program on a weekly basis. Back then, instead of buying "Pillsbury" flour, folks found "King Biscuit" flour on the shelves. And it was the "King Biscuit Flour Company" that sponsored the one hour a week radio program that had featured Sonny Boy Williamson II on its maiden broadcast. Used to be, you could still buy King Biscuit flour down south. I've often wondered what some good southern biscuits might taste like cooked up using King Biscuit flour.

This was the beginning of "The King Biscuit Flour Hour." Started by a negro singing the blues over the radio in Helena, Arkansas..

I just had to go to Helena................

Much like most of the Delta towns today, Helena is impoverished and stricken with ruin. The folks in the Delta are still very poor to this day. And as a white man, traveling through these cities found me a stiff minority in the population of African American peoples. Many times, I would be the only "white boy" in the entire location that I might visit. But people are very friendly in Mississippi... both white and black. Gone are the days of lynchings and Ku Klux Klan. Though there may be some behind-closed-doors commentary on racism, as you walk the streets anywhere in the Mississippi, or up in the hills around Tupelo (Elvis Presley's birthplace... lived there for a while, too...) you'll fins a peace in Mississippi like no other place in the country. I really love Mississippi (as you might notice) and while I was there, I wrote 40 blues songs about all kinds of stuff. For a blues lover, Mississippi was a Mecca of sorts for inspiration.

I might hear a train rumbling across the tracks in the Delta, and while sitting at the railway crossing, watching the cars go by, I might sketch out a few call-and-response lyrics.... for blues, there is no deeper or richer place on this entire planet..

Well, this has gotten a bit long as I've delved into some of my personal blues experiences, etc..

I love the blues...

As you can see, if anyone should actually want to take me up on my offer of accepting "my old brain"... they might get more than they bargained for..

I've been there... Sometimes life has really kicked me in places to cause the most pain possible, and I can relate to the struggles of the Negro, and the pain in the blues.

But I am convinced and will believe until I die that the "blues" is not about depression, down stuff, and boring... No, sir...

The blues was party music played after a long damn day in the share cropper's field... blues was alive... blues was fun and about people having fun... anybody that thinks the "blues" is only about depressing music doesn't really know anything about the music at all... Throw down that shovel, grab a guitar, or a harmonica, maybe a half pint of booze, and forget about the field... forget about whitey's hate, forget about everything for the night... because tonight, the Juke Joint is rockin'... and the music inside that Juke was.... THE BLUES....