Blues at the Blue Door Biker Bar — Seven Years Out — Image by kenne
Biker Bar Blues
— kenne
Texas Art Gallery in Conroe, Texas (December 2002) — Image by kenne
— kenne
AJ Murphy — Image by kenne
Music is . . .
Music is what
enables me
in my work
soothes me
when I rest
reminds me
of images past
of dreams yet fulfilled.
It is not the words,
nor the beat,
nor the instruments,
nor the relationships —
It is the rhythm
of the moments
composed by
the silence in between.
— kenne
#####
Music is . . .
a moral law.
It gives soul
to the universe,
wings
to the mind,
flight
to the imagination,
and charm and gaiety
to life and to everything.
— Plato
Purple Haze (First Posted September 29, 2009) — Image by kenne
Purple Haze
–kenne
Posting from November 28, 2005 on 360.yahoo.com/kenneturner.
Mark May & “T-99″ Nelson Collage at Houston’s Rhythm Room by kenne
The Rhythm Room
There was a place
Near downtown
Always rock’n
Embracing the sound
Echoing in time
Without a clock —
Down in old H-Town.
More than a room,
The grandest of joints
Rhythm was its fame
So no need to point
For people all knew
Blues was its claim —
Down in old H-Town.
Music recorded live
By Smoke’n Joe
For everyone to hear
From far and wide —
Blues lovers know
The music lives on
Down in old H-Town.
The room’s now gone
Replaced by condos
So too the sound
Losing out to big doe —
Rhythm in the blues
Forever to be found
Down in old H-Town.
— kenne
Mean Gene Kelton (April 10,1953 – December 28 2010)– Images by kenne
— kenne
George Bearishill, Guthrie Kennard and Julie Bonk jamming at Ken & Mary’s Blues Project, October, 2013 — Image by kenne
Video by kenne
Los Lobos “Kiko and the Lavender Moon” from Bruce Ashley on Vimeo.
— kenne
Ken Harris — Image by kenne
ANOTHER BLUES PROJECT NIGHT
— kenne
Ken Harris has posted —
Fall Fest 2013 is fast approaching. We are looking forward to seeing you here on Oct 26, 2013.
This year for the first time we will have three acts. Henry Old School Jones will open for Guthrie Kennard and Julie Bonk.
After Guthrie, Marina Rocks will play. In 1993 for my birthday I wanted some live blues music here at our house
The Blues Broad Kathleen aka The Blues Broad (she had a blues program on KPFT) sent me to Big Roger Collins.
He played here and the Blues Project was born and we have been presenting live music here ever since.
20 years later we are doing a special night for my 70th birthday.
As usual we will BBQ some meats and will have ice tea ,water and coffee.
Bring a side dish you like to show off to share, a lawn chair, your cooler with your favorite beverage and $10 (donation 100% for the music ).
We plan on serving food around 6:30 Henry Jones with his old school blues will play after we eat.
We received rave reviews the last time he was here so we are bringing him back .
The feature act will be Guthrie Kennard with his raspy voice Americana, bluesy, roots music.
Accompanying Guthrie will be Julie Bonk on key board . We caught Guthrie’s show at the Dosie Doe Music cafe
and were so impressed that we asked him to play here at the project . We first heard Julie at Camp Stupid at the Kerrville Folk Festival in 2012 .
She was playing keyboards in a song circle, Stephanie was singing with her, Marina was also there and they were wowing everyone.
To close the night out Marina will do an intimate set and jam. She opened here last year and was an instant hit with everyone rocking the house.
Musicians are encouraged to bring their instruments to jam afterwards.
Ken & Mary Harris, 2008, The 2013 Edition is This Saturday — Image by kenne
Jonn Richardson and Rich DelGrosso were the 2011 headliners.
Welcome Lady Rider — Image by kenne
Pinwheel Rainbows — Image by kenne
The Pinwheel, Green Jade and Rusty Blues
My rainbow colors,
spinning in the breeze
where I stand
shoulder to shoulder,
with Green Jade in his pot,
and Rusty, an old
barbwire-horseshoe windmill.
Then one winter,
my colors now fading,
Green Jade grew weak from the cold —
Rusty and I stood our ground
hoping Green Jade’s strength
would return in the spring.
Year after year
we hoped against hope,
I having lost all my color,
and Rusty, well,
becoming rustier,
as we continued to shared
Green Jade’s pot.
After a while,
the hurricane winds
blew in from the coast —
the strong winds were
more than Rusty could stand,
now he lies restfully
at my feet.
My spinning, having,
taken on a wabbly gait,
slowly weakening my pin —
when one day a gust of wind
blow off my wheel,
leaving only a stick
standing alone
in Green Jade’s pot,
with Rusty at my feet.
— kenne
Riding The Blues Wave — Image by kenne
Poet Kevin Young has written about the blues:
The rise of modernism parallels the rise and reach of the blues.
This is no coincidence—after all, what critic Frederic Jameson identifies as
“the great modernist thematics of alienation,
anomie,
solitude,
social fragmentation,
and isolation,”i
could be summed up as simply having them blues.
But, as I have said elsewhere,
the blues means both a form and a feeling,
the one a cure for the other.
The blues are good-time music after all,
meant to make you tap your feet and feel,
if not better,
then at least comforted by the fact that you are in good (or deliciously bad) hands.
The blues offer company, even if only misery’s.
It is in the face of alienation and anomie that the mask,
modern and often racial, becomes necessary.
This is why the dominant mode of the modernist era is the persona—
the mask both as metaphor and means of production.
But the mask is not just T.S. Eliot‘s blackface,
Ezra Pound‘s love of Noh drama,
or Edvard Munch‘s iconic rictus of despair in The Scream,
but also the Janus mask of the blues,
which laughs and cries at the same time.
Texas Live Music — Image by kenne
The Zydeco Dots at The Continental Club, Houston, Texas — (09/24/06)
Roger Wood and James Fraher
Roger Wood writes in the Introduction to his 2006 book, Texas Zydeco:
“No matter where you may have lived or traveled or what your tastes in music might be, somewhere along the way you have likely encountered the uncanny sound of zydeco. For many people it is but a fleeting moment of exposure, leaving them slightly confused but somehow enthused by their sudden involuntary foot-tapping. For certain others it is an even more visceral awakening, the start of an ongoing relationship with a potent force. For some, there is no memory of their first encounter, for they have known it all their lives — the phrase ‘Texas zydeco’ is not an oxymoron but a cultural fact.”
kenne
Bar at Houston’s Continental Club — Images by kenne
