Blues Jam Night Concert Report

For my first performance assignment, I chose to visit my local coffee shop “Taffy’s” in Eaton, Ohio where they have entertainers from the area perform almost every day of the week. My sister and I went on Tuesday, February the seventh for their annual Blues Jam Night. There were five performers, two on electric guitars, one on acoustic guitar, one on bass, and one on the drums. The group wasn’t a band, they were just individual musicians who enjoyed playing the same genre together, blues. They introduced themselves as, Jennifer Taylor on the bass, Paul Virgil on the first electric guitar and Micah Gourlas on the second electric guitar, Bob Dellaposta (the owner) on acoustic guitar, and David Maynard on drums. A large part of their set list I didn’t recognize at first, but usually when they got around to the chorus I knew they were songs I had heard before. They mostly covered the popular blues songs along with some underground songs. The blues icons they covered that night consisted of Larry Davis, Sonny Williamson, B.B King, Robert Johnson, Elmore James, Muddy Waters and more. A few of the songs I recognized were “Dust My Broom” by Elmore James, “Mannish Boy” by Muddy Waters, “The Angles

It felt like their guitar playing was heavily influenced by the later blues players. As I’ve researched for this paper I’ve noticed how the early blues seems to sound more like the classic definition of old time blues. By being slower and the lyrics mixed with the riffs expressing the hurt the musicians felt when performing the song. Versus as the genre grew into the 60’s and 70’s it seems like the sound started to get a little more inspired by Rock and Roll. As Jimi Hendrix, and ZZ Top came along the tempo and guitar riffs sped up and were played with higher notes. I feel like the players at Blues Jam Night leaned more towards the later style of playing