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Name: Keno
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Subject: L. Russell, J. Lee Hooker, and festival comments
Date: Monday, August 06, 2007
Time: 4:07:19 PM
Remote Address: 66.243.196.99
Message ID: 218045
Parent ID: 0
Thread ID: 218045

L. Russell, J. Lee Hooker, and festival comments

Notice, I didn’t write “review” above and instead wrote “comments”, since because of how this festival went, I could not really write a review of each show and do it justice, but a few of you asked me to let you Gassers know how it went. Also, no room on top to write (LSC), too.

First, we had a great time at the Crestone Music Festival, as expected. We might be a community of only around 1200 or so freaked-out people, and totally isolated from the rest of the planet, but damn can we party and put on one great festival year in and year out. I hear this every year from people out of town who show up for it.

The festival is held outside of where most of us live in town (4 miles west), on a golf course of all places. I say that since hippies and golf courses don’t usually go together, and this is one hippie town. The reason we have this golf course is that back in the 1970s when the Baca – a part of Crestone where most of us live, was first being built, it was being built as a retirement community for military people, and the golf course was the first thing built back then. But those who planned this had their heads in the sand – you don’t build a retirement community in the middle of nowhere - with the closest medical care a full hour away. Anyway, that whole deal failed big time and went bankrupt, and in the early ’90s Crestone and the Baca was reborn as hippies, artists and spiritual and New Age people started to move in and build here. So the golf course is almost never used by us locals, but still maintained, and we do use it once a year for the music fest. For that it is the perfect place, not only does this golf course, which sits out in the valley, have the best view in the world of all the mountains that surround it, it also has grass (after all it is a golf course). I say this because 99% of the homes here in Crestone have no lawns at all. We like to keep things natural here, so we have lots of pine trees, cactus, rabbit brush and sand – and in the wintertime snow on the ground, but no grass. So the fact that the fest site has grass is a big deal to us locals, since almost everybody goes barefoot at this event (heck, we didn’t even bring or wear shoes or sandals to it!).

Okay, so that’s the set-up. Real fast, this is a family event (kids under 12 get in for free), so that makes this festival a bit different than most music events that usually are for adults only. We have two stages set up for the music, and everybody – and I mean everybody, is up and dancing for each act – which covers all kinds of music. Then there are many different booths set up around the site that covers all kinds of things from food to cloths to massage therapy. We also have a part of the site set up for the kids, and the thing that is so cool is that regardless of your kid’s age, they can run around free all day – without their parents having to be right next to them, that is how safe it is around here. I talked about the pie eating contest in my last post, well Zack did it again, he came in second for the second year in a row, this time by one bite! Gosh did he look sick after it was over, too. My grandson Cooper didn’t fare as well, but did finish his apple pie and then took another pie that was left over, after the contest was over and he ate half of that one too. Boy can that boy eat, but how can he stay so damn slim, too? Oh to be young again.

So, now about the two main acts. Leon Russell played Saturday night, John Lee Hooker Jr played Sunday night.

First Leon’s show….. it was excellent and a record crowd showed up for it, that being about 1500+ people, about 60% of them were locals I would guess. I met this wonderful lady in this drum circle that I was playing in between acts, who came from Colorado Springs. We hit it off great and hanged a bit afterwards, but she was there just for Saturday – because she is a big Leon Russell fan and had seen him many times in the past. She did warn me about him – he isn’t at all personal and didn’t do encores. That alone got me, every act at this fest does encores, in fact the main acts sometimes does two or three of them, as the crowd kind of demands it and the performers seem to want to do them, too.

Leon is getting real old too, my guess is that he has to be over 70, even if I was told he is only about 66 or so. Those of you who might only remember him from years ago with his long, shoulder length blond hair and short bear, well today his hair is just as long – but 100% pure white, heck, as white or whiter as the Winter Brothers, and his white beard is down to his belly. Heck, he looks old and wise, he would blend in fine here in Crestone, as so many of us here look as freaky as he does, other than I’ve never seen such white hair on anybody!

But my lady friend was right about how he acts during his shows. I was alone with Cooper at this point of the festival. Once it got dark I didn’t want Coop running around the site so I told him he had to hang with me for this one act. We were right in front of Leon, about 15 feet away, but we also were about 3 rows back. Leon came out, waved to us and then started to play “Delta Lady”. Everybody got up, I figured once everyone started to dance we would work our way to the very front so Coop could see. But that didn’t happen, there were too many people standing next to each other for anyone to be able to really dance a lot, so we were stuck there and Coop could not see a thing. So like the other parents did who were by me with their kids, I had to pick him up, all 60 lbs of him. But I’m no young parent and I’m tired of people telling me how I still, even in my 50s, don’t look like a grandpa. I only know that I feel like one with my bad back and arthritis, and I didn’t need to be holding up a kid for an hour and a half. I would put him down a few times between songs but he was enjoying the show and almost as soon as I put him down he wanted me to lift him up again. After an hour I could not hold him any longer and told him sorry. So he somehow managed to make his way to the front of the stage and stayed there for the rest of the show. But because I was holding him for so long I was hurting so bad that it took some of the fun out of Leon’s performance.

But no, Leon does not talk to the audience at all; he goes from one song directly into the next song without missing a beat. I always hated this about performers who do this (guess he got this from his old friend Bob Dylan). It wasn’t till the show was almost over when he introduced his band, that he talk to us. He had just played his old hit “Tight Rope”, then his band (just one guitar player, bass and drummer) left the stage and he played the next 3 songs alone, which was excellent. When his band came back out, the highlight of the show for me took place, as they played “Jumping Jack Flash”. Funny, it wasn’t just me the Stones freak, who loved this, because other than when he played “Tight Rope”, JJF got the entire crowd going wild. They must have all seen him do this in the Bangladesh movie I guess. But shit, some 30 years after that he played it the same way, with those “woo woo” backing vocals, fantastic! I should note that Leon’s voice sounds exactly the same as it did years ago.

So yes, I enjoyed the second part of his show more, and although there was a rumor going around before the show that Joe Cocker would show up and play with Leon, like in the old days – since Joe lives near Crestone, well that never happened. Would have been so cool had he. Also, Leon didn’t do any encore at all. He did play for an hour and a half and then when he finished with “Papa was a Rolling Stone” he talked to us again and said: "this is when most performers leave the stage and then come back on for two more songs as if it is some kind of a surprise for them to come back out. But I’m getting too old to walk back and forth on to stage, so we will just play our last two songs now” Then as soon as those two songs were played, my friend Neil from the Hot springs, who is in charge of the fireworks show, started to set them off at that exact point as Leon walked off. Neil told me the next day that he was told to do it that way, that way there was no chance for everybody to try to get Leon to come back out – since he wouldn’t under any conditions, he just don’t do encores, period. Oh well, it was still a great show anyway.

By Sunday morning I was hurting bad from holding up Coop, and with just 3 hours sleep for myself, we had to get back up for the 8 am start of Sunday’s show, as I was working the booth both days for the hot springs – for 3 hours a day, this paid for my admission. But by noon or so, after taking some pain pills, I was feeling much better and was once again dancing along with everybody else.

John Lee Hooker Jr was the last act of the show, and I noted in my other post how I didn’t know anything about him. Well, he was excellent, not some untalented guy living off of his dead dad’s name. This man was the complete opposite of Leon, he not only talk to the crowd, he talk after every song, and had a good story to tell us each time, heck he almost talk to us too much! He told one story about his drive into Crestone which had the entire crowd laughing, because it is the same story we hear here whenever anybody makes their first visit to town. “I was thinking we was lost once he got on Highway 17, coming into this big dusty, empty valley surrounding by these giant mountains, looked like nobody lived here, or could live here, were we being set up?….” He went on from there. But you could tell how much he really dug the people and town, even if he had to get to know us folks first. He talked about wanting to move here and become mayor – that got a big applause, but when he said he wanted to build a lot of houses in our mountain to help create jobs – well everybody booed, but he then understood why - that we are into open space here. After another song he talked about getting too wild and maybe being thrown in the Crestone jail by the police – when several of us yelled out to him that we don’t have any police or a jail here. “No jail? No police? I like this place!” he said. But anyway we also learned that he was recording the entire concert for a live album, which was also very cool.

Most of what he played was delta blues, with just a bit of funk and r & b thrown it. Several of the songs came off of his new album, so I didn’t know all of what he played, but they all sounded good. He also has an excellent lead guitar player; this guy looked young, but played very good indeed. Hooker himself just sings, he didn’t play any instruments, but he is a very good singer, no question. So I was impressed, for sure.

Overall an excellent time was had by all. As Cooper said to me on the way back home last night “I wish they had this music festival every day, I can’t wait till next year!”. Funny, if I recall correctly, that was what he said on the way home last year, too. But I did learn one thing Saturday night, there isn’t any way I could bring him to a Stones show. He has been bugging me forever on this, he wants to see the Stones the next time they play Denver. But at his height, and with everybody standing in front of him, there is no way I could bring him; I could not hold him up for the entire Stones show, that’s for sure.

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