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BLUES FESTIVAL E-GUIDE MAY 27, 2021 VOL 16 / ISSUE 22
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 | Progressive Blues Movement Plants Roots in Sacramento Delta
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 By Chris Elliott
Blind Lemon Peel is a Sacramento newcomer, but he has been at the forefront of progressive blues communities in major cities for more than 40 years. Peel’s particular approach, incorporating traditional blues styles into progressive blues adaptations, has been a decades-long evolution.
Progressive blues. Wait, what? The very phrase seems to have a tug-of-war going on inside of itself. It’s like “jumbo shrimp” or “the only choice.” There is an inherent contradiction to the notion of progressive blues because the blues holds simplicity and tradition in such sacred regard. There is probably no American music form whose purity is more fiercely protected by its listeners and practitioners than the blues. Any musician seeking to make a high-profile expansion of traditional blues will face hidebound doctrinaires eager to share their opinion on whether the experimentation has merit. And they’re usually going to say “no.”
Blind Lemon Peel seeks to do in Sacramento what he has done in the New York City blues scene and more recently in Los Angeles, and that is to present his catalog of original progressive blues material in an environment of impeccable musicianship and engaging vocal delivery. Throughout his performing career, Peel has attracted musicians associated with the blues who are comfortable pushing at the traditional boundaries that have long served as guideposts for the creation of new blues music.
In Los Angeles, his group’s musical director was L.A. blues star, Lucky Lloyd. Bobby “Hurricane” Spencer was his tenor player and, as Peel likes to say, “musical conscience.” Spencer is an absolute legend in L.A. blues, but he has a deep jazz education as well. Bobby’s outsized presence in L.A. is a second chapter, as his time in the Bay Area earned him a star on the Walk on Fame in his hometown of Oakland. The society of advanced musicians following Lucky and Bobby became a Swiss Army Knife for Peel, and his eagerness to begin in Sacramento is palpable. Blind Lemon Peel’s presence in Sacramento is a welcome splash of color that accentuates perfectly its lively, traditional blues community.
In one way of thinking about it, everyone does their own thing with the blues by the simple fact of their voices and playing styles being their own. Does that make everyone progressive? Is progressive blues even a thing? Of course it is. It is human nature and also the nature of musicians to test what convention has determined as a boundary or a bare minimum.
“This isn't a muddy gumbo, you can taste each flavor individually,” says Hurricane Spencer, Oakland’s favorite son. “It's the kind of music that takes me back to clubs where if you're playing the music right, there's bound to be a fight.”
There is a point at which an experiment in progressive blues will be assessed as frivolous or not meaningful, but many fine blues musicians seek to open further the umbrella that covers blues music and do so with a credibility that moves the markers. And it’s nothing new. A lot of luminaries and contemporaries fit, and Blind Lemon Peel humbly identifies in that company.
Who might be progressive blues’ Robert Johnson? Who was the first blues band or musician to turn the wheel hard to the left and keep it there, and do so with broad acceptance? One arguable progenitor is John Lee Hooker. He moved blues in a new direction not by ornamenting it, not so much by expanding on the existing accepted harmonic structures, but by dialing them even further down and shining a light on his fiery vocal timbre. The way John Lee Hooker approached the blues was progressive because it was very often a further reduction of three chords down to one.
Also consider Canned Heat. The band comes from one place alone, and that is the blues. But as they demonstrate on their 1968 double live album, Living the Blues, they know how to open a door with the blues and use that comfortable welcome to introduce a rock and psychedelic world. And still, they never stray far enough to be called anything but a blues band. “Refried Boogie Parts I & II” add up to more than forty minutes of often improvised and often dissonant amplified electric music that can only be called blues, and for 1968 especially, that can only be called progressive.
Captain Beefheart is another place to look if you are bulking up on your progressive blues intake, as he may have some resemblance to the Blind Lemon Peel concept. The Captain’s rough and ready guttural bark is not necessarily at odds with the blues (think Howlin’ Wolf and Koko Taylor), but Beefheart’s growl adds an angularity to the storytelling. Peel’s emotional hostage-taking in his final choruses put a bow on an often pretty and often twisted back-and-forth between Peel and his back vocal line. A good part of the Beefheart oeuvre is well outside the blues, but the part of the catalog that is inarguably inside the blues is also at least a little outside. And that part of it sounds a bit like Peel.
Blind Lemon Peel has a composition and performance concept that both borrows and creates, and to a definition level earns the label, progressive blues. There’s a real opportunity for a blues-philosophy twelve-bar semantic war to break out here, as you would have to say that the act of Muddy Waters plugging his guitar in was progressive. Innovations in amplification, instrument making and recording were all integral to blues music’s evolution, and the great artists who leveraged those technologies to achieve new avenues of expression must all be thought of as progressive within the blues. The progressive blues tent is as big as you want it to be, depending on how you think about it.
There is a lot about a BLP show that is absolutely traditional — the crisp arrangements, the top-flight musicianship, the snappy red hat — but what separates Mister Peel’s lemon-fresh approach is its elaborate presentation focus. Eight tenths of the show is original material, and the cover material he does present often experiences what you might call an extreme makeover. Rather than offering traditional B.B. King covers and arrangements to a blues-informed audience, Peel presents a wide selection of feels, tempos, keys and lyric content, all with a never-a-dull-moment philosophy driving the show. Emcee skills, comic elements and an all-female background vocal line make a Blind Lemon Peel show almost a cabaret experience.
A deep love of the freaky side of the blues has been burning for a long time in a lot of different places and one of those places is Sacramento. Maybe some of it stays a little underground, and musicians you think of as traditional get together in the garage for no one but themselves and stage a progressive blues jam. Uncommon harmony over common blues changes as well as rhythm jams that move the tonal underpinnings well away from expected changes. And Peel found them.
In Sacramento, the entity preparing to support the show includes a first-rate two-piece horn section, vocal elements that derive from Oakland’s legendary Cold Blood and one of Sacramento area’s best rhythm sections. Club fanciers of the Sacramento Bay Area take notice when you drop names like Steve Dunne, Dana Moret, Danny Sandoval, Larry Davis, Dave Johnson, and AJ Joyce. Peel consistently attracts this kind of playing muscle in every major metropolitan area he establishes himself. It happened in New York, it happened in L.A., and now it’s happening in Sacramento. The fans of blues music Blind Lemon Peel most seeks to engage are Sacramento’s blues cognoscenti, and he is confident that his understanding of where to draw the line will be seen as clear as good moonshine by the people in Sacramento who most care about this music.
Peel talked about the peril that any artist faces when they take liberties with the tried and true. “I know I’m walking on sacred ground. That’s the reason why I’m here. Believe me, I respect the antecedents of the music I play. My show isn’t humble. It’s outrageous. But I am humble. I know where this music came from and what it means. I have a band ready to put on a version of the show I had in New York and in Los Angeles to feature their individual talents. It’s always found a big, appreciative audience, and I intend to do the same here.”
Peel explains it like this: “The way I categorize progressive blues is broadening the genre while anchoring its roots firmly to its past – Mississippi, Chicago, Texas, Kansas City, and even Louisiana – almost creating a fusion of styles. Progressive blues operates outside the box, and isn’t afraid to take risks and experiment, all the while knowing exactly when to bring it home.”
The New York City clubs Blind Lemon Peel worked included Mikell’s, Lone Star Café, and Manny’s Car Wash, and in Los Angeles, he worked at Harvelle’s in Santa Monica, The Arcadia Blues Club in Arcadia, and The Rose in Pasadena — all top-tier clubs. Even so, where they really made their rep was on the blues festival circuit including memorable appearances at the Hayward/Russell City Blues Festival, Long Beach New Blues Festival, Venice Music Festival, Ragin’ Cajun Pop-Up Festival, North Sac Blues Festival, Balboa Strawberry Festival, Alligator Records’ Titans of the Blues Tour, Kern County Fair and others too numerous to list.
Noel Barr, a producer at the New Blues Festival and President of the Long Beach Blues Society is a fan. "Blind Lemon Peel puts on an insanely great show for audiences that want the real deal blues with a healthy sense of humor. This is one wicked cool act that generates unbelievable energy and contagious excitement,” Barr said.
In the wake of a public health emergency that has devastated night clubs, musicians and music lovers alike, the players and bandleaders who have been staying in shape and writing a great show are thirsty to present it this summer. The pandemic’s stubbornness will still have a chilling effect on live music in Sacramento through the summer, but outdoor festivals and outdoor venues will have an advantage and traditional venues will manage what they can. At whatever level Sacramento celebrates its summer, Blind Lemon Peel will be booked at the premiere venues with a band that has muscle and finesse, and a show that has heart and soul.
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