...a unique journey

• Almost every Blues enthusiast is familiar with the transition of Blues from its’ rural roots in the Delta of the deep South to the urban Blues of often industrialized Northern cities.▲
  Among those who were part of this Great Migration were some of the South’s greatest Blues Masters including, among others, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, James Cotton, Jr. Wells, Buddy Guy and Matt Guitar Murphy.
  
  What is often overlooked, is the reverse journey. The journey, or pilgrimage, of a subsequent generation of urban whites back to the Delta to experience first hand the ambience of cities like Clarksdale Mississippi in hopes of connecting with both the visceral and spiritual elements of the Blues that permeate these areas like a God struck slide guitar.
  
  This Journey that started in Detroit in 1949 and culminated at the Crossroads. A journey that finally led to Clarksdale after years Detroit born and raised harp man and his band make their first trip to the Crossroads, to Clarksdale, to Ground Zero, to all the places that had so much meaning for them but they had never seen.
  
  

....giving back once again!

• The James Montgomery Blues Band is recognized as one of the best of its kind in the country. He will be joining forces with Duke Robillard, one of the most critically acclaimed guitar players around on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Elks Lodge, 141 Pelham St.▲
  
  At the upcoming concert, Montgomery and Robillard will be backed by a trio, with David Hull on bass, George McCann on guitar and Jeff Thompson on drums.
  
  “We have a great time together,” Montgomery said. “We play high-energy, rocked-out stuff.” When Montgomery plays and writes the blues, he is influenced by other genres like soul, funk and rock ‘n’ roll.
  
  “I’ve never been a blues Nazi,” he said. “But James Cotton and Paul Butterfield were my biggest influences. They were innovators.” Both Cotton and Butterfield were harmonica, or harp, players like Montgomery.
  
  Cotton learned to play the harmonica from Sonny Boy Williamson II and joined the Muddy Waters band in 1954. His harmonica can be heard on the live recording of their performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960. Cotton played at the Newport Blues & BBQ Festival in 2013; he died last year.
  
  “James Cotton was my mentor and a close friend in the music industry,” Montgomery said. “He called me ‘son’ and I called him ‘dad.’” Proceeds from the concert this week, once expenses are covered, will benefit Elks charities like the Elks Veterans Program.
  
  Montgomery, 69, has often played benefits for veterans, going back to 1972. His mother served in the Women’s Army Corps in Europe during World War II and his father fought in Okinawa with the Army.
  
  “It will be the House of Elks instead of the House of Blues,” Montgomery said, smiling.
  
  The concert will open with Muddy Ruckus, a “two-piece punk blues millennial band from Portland, Maine,” as Montgomery described them. On their website, Ryan Flaherty and Erika Stahl, the powerhouses behind the Ruckus, say they play “folk-laden duo-stomp rock.”
  
  Over the years, Montgomery has played with great musicians like Gregg Allman, Johnny Winter, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Joe Cocker, James Brown, Peter Wolf, James and Livingston Taylor — and the list goes on.
  
  A visitor to Montgomery’s Newport home recently picked out a Boston Herald story from Jan. 10, 1984, from a random stack of clippings. The story tells how Montgomery played with Mick Jagger in a three-story mansion in East Boston.
  
  Montgomery moved to Jamestown in 1989 and moved to Newport about nine years after that, but his roots are in the Detroit blues scene. He grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a waterfront community adjacent to the big city.
  
  “As a blues musician, I can’t admit to that,” he said, joking. “There was a lot of money in Grosse Pointe.” His father was a public-relations executive for Chrysler. Montgomery joined a jug band in high school.
  
  “I played the washtub bass when I was 15,” he said.
  
  When he was a senior at Grosse Pointe High School, Montgomery took some LSD and formed a new band called “The Great Cosmic Expanding.”
  
  “The big Detroit newspaper compared our sound to Frank Zappa’s,” he said. That was not the music genre he would make his career in, though.
  
  “The first time I heard blues music, it just struck me,” he said. “It was my moment. Blues musicians remember when they first heard the music.”
  
  After high school, he studied English literature at Boston University.
  
  “I wanted to go to Boston because I’d heard about all the Boston clubs, places like Club 47, Jazz Workshop, Psychedelic Supermarket, all blues places,” he said.
  
  He had heard musicians like Muddy Waters and Paul Butterfield in Detroit. “I wanted to see those same guys in Boston,” he said.
  
  While in college, he formed the James Montgomery Blues Band. From the beginning, he was the front man and lead singer, composed much of the music and has always played the harmonica. After graduation from BU, he signed a $200,000 contract with Capricorn Records, turning down a teaching job. “My father said, ‘You mean we spent $20,000 a year on your education and you’re playing a child’s toy instead?’” He has had a long connection to Newport.
  
  “I started playing in Newport right after college, at Harpo’s,” he said.
  
  He knew about Newport before that, though. When he was still in high school, at the age of 17, he and a girlfriend flew to New York City and planned on hitchhiking up to the Newport Folk Festival. They had not cleared the trip with their parents, though, and his father had friends track him down in New York.
  
  “We got as far as the [Greenwich] Village,” he said.
  
  He is a member of the Elks and would like to start a series of concerts at the local lodge.
  
  “I’m on the road so much,” he said. “When I see an Elks Club, it’s a home away from home.”
  
  He has a strong desire to give back to the community and his band does 12 to 15 benefits a year.
  
  “If it weren’t for the fans that come to see me play, I’d be selling shoes or something, if I wasn’t teaching English,” he said. “Through their support, I’ve played music all my life.”
  
  

The Newport Waterfront Concert Series ​

• The Waterfront Concerts series is presented free by Newport Friends of the Waterfront and the City of Newport with support from the Isham Family Fund.▲
  Grammy-nominated blues singer and harpist James Montgomery and his band performed an evening concert as part of the Waterfront Concert Series on Friday, July 19th at King Park.
  
  The concert included special guest saxophonist Crispin Cioe of NY’s famed Uptown Horns. It was a high energy show with blues both old and new.
  
  According to event organizers, “James Montgomery is a long-time resident of Newport and has a storied career, having played, toured and recorded with many blues and rock greats; Allman Brothers, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, J. Geils Band, Johnny Winter, Bonnie Raitt, Kid Rock and many others. While growing up in Detroit he learned first hand from the masters – James Cotton, John Lee Hooker and Jr. Wells – at the legendary Chessmate Club. James carries on the blues tradition in performances around the world and writes music for documentary films”.
  
  “Joining James that evening, from their Detroit days, is sax player Crispin Cioe, who co-founded The Uptown Horns, an acclaimed horn section that recorded hits and toured with James Brown, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles, Debbie Harry, and many more artists. Crispin also served as musical director for concerts at the Obama Whitehouse and for the Gershwin Prize for American Humor,” the organizers share.

James Full Bio on Wikipedia