Getting the blues on a rainy day

Paul Clinton

A few hearty souls braved the rain and cold Saturday to hear the

soulful sounds of an inaugural blues festival at the Newport Dunes

Waterfront Resort.

The inclement weather cut attendance in half, organizers said, but

those who did show up said they enjoyed the first edition of the

Newport Dunes Waterfront Blues Festival.

“We need to have more blues festivals like this,” said Tom Haynes,

who drove from Lake Forest. “It’s too bad the weather put a damper on

it. I plan on coming back year after year.”

Optimistic projections put attendance at 400, about 100 more than

the number of tickets sold before the event. Organizers said they had

hoped the event would draw as many as 700 people. Original estimates

put possible attendance at 1,500.

Festival promoters said they were disappointed in the fairly

sparse crowd. Event organizer Bill Horttor said they were counting on

a large part of their audience coming from locals looking for a

spur-of-the-moment activity on a Saturday afternoon.

“The weather is taking its toll here,” Horttor said. “A lot of

folks woke up and decided to stay home.”

The musicians played their 40-minute sets under a large white

tent, erected in the parking lot on the waterfront.

Horttor, who mounted an annual blues festival on Catalina Island

from 1997 to 2000, still has high hopes for the festival. The new

ownership group of the Dunes, who hired Horttor, plans to bring it

back for a second year, he said.

Plans are underway to expand the festival, Horttor said, to a

two-day event that could attract some bigger-name acts.

“We hope to turn this into a big festival,” Horttor said. “We hope

to get a mix of really eclectic music.”

Attendees of Saturday’s event, which began shortly after noon and

ran until about 5 p.m., heard a variety of styles from the genre’s

current landscape.

Robert Lucas, a guitarist who played with 1960s bluesy rock band

Canned Heat, opened the show with Mississippi Delta style songs.

Lucas strummed his 1930s replica Gibson, picking out tribute

replays of songs from such luminaries as Robert Johnson, Son House

and Muddy Waters.

In a moment that had the feel of improvisation, Lucas sang

Johnson’s “Come On In My Kitchen,” with the lyric: “You better come

on in my kitchen, because it’s going to be raining outdoors.”

Following Lucas, R&B-infused; Blu Tabako brought a more expansive

sound to the stage. With incense smoke wafting around them, Blu

Tabako quickened pulses, offering a danceable mixture of original

material and covers.

Solo singer Janiva Magness followed, bringing her torch song

flavor to the festival. Headliner Walter Trout, who sells out arenas

in Europe but isn’t well known in this country, rounded out the

lineup.

Lucas, who grew up in Long Beach, lamented that he saw few younger

blues fans or blacks, whose ancestors created the art form.

“To the black community, it’s like an Amos and Andy film

festival,” Lucas said, talking about the audience for blues. “They’d

rather go see James Brown. Robert Johnson wore overalls and picked

cotton.”

Organizers picked Saturday for their event to avoid the glut of

other music festivals during the summer months. And while the event

was the first of its kind at the Dunes, it’s not the first blues

festival in Newport Beach.

Each August, the daylong Blues on the Bay concert comes to

American Legion Post 291.