Albert Cummings: Building the Blues from the Ground Up Saturday, January 24, 2015 Start time: 8:30 pm Doors open: 8:00 pm Tickets: $20 General Admission Singer and blues-rock guitarist Albert Cummings and his trio will heat up the stage with their sizzling blues, presented as part of the Blues on the Coast Series. Cummings has credited the late blues great Stevie Ray Vaughan with inspiring him to get serious about the electric guitar, and he deserves comparison with his musical hero. Backed by the excellent Warren Grant on drums and the equally accomplished Karl Allweier on bass, Cummings, a big man who, in jeans and a gimme cap, looks like the home builder he is, commands the stage and has the perfect voice for singing the blues. But its his guitar work that sets him apart. His solos, especially in the classic Walkin Blues by Son House, are just as expressive as the song itself: beautiful, complex, inevitable. You can almost hear the guitar say words as he gives the solos the rhythm of impassioned dialogue. At times he makes the guitar sound like a shrieking clarinet, or a growling baritone sax and his repertoire runs the gamut from old-style blues to rockabilly to boogie and rock n roll, sliding from misery to celebration. Tours and shows with blues legends B.B. King, Johnny Winter, Buddy Guy and others brought his music to an audience grateful for the opportunity to be rocked hard by a man possessed to play every song like his life depended on it.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 21:29:37 +0000