The next stop was the Cedar Theater which was featuring two blues documentaries: “Songs Inside the Box” which is a documentary on the resurgence of cigar box guitars and “Hill Country Troubador”, a documentary on cigar box guitar one man band Richard Johnston.

I’m interviewed in the “Songs Inside the Box” documentary so Chris Johnson, the Deep Blues Festival promoter invited me to play outside the Cedar Cultural Center before the showing of the documentary. We arrived and set up outside while Chris put up the Deep Blues posters. Almost immediately a man came up and wanted to purchase one of my Bluesboy Jag t-shirts. I hadn’t played a note so I thought it was interesting that he would buy a t-shirt without knowing my music. He bought it and walked away, never hearing me play at all!

I launched into a 45 minute set and in the middle of it a newspaper photographer arrived and started snapping pictures. Come to find out he was from the St Paul Star Tribune daily newspaper and said that it would be in Fridays paper. As it turned out it was in Wednesday’s weekly Vitamin newspaper who’s parent company is the Star Tribune. On Friday the same article appeared with a slightly different headline.

After I finished my set, Charlie Lawson and some friends ate a delicious Thai meal and missed most of “Songs Inside the Box” as a result. I hadn’t eaten since noon and it was approaching 8:30 so I thought I’d better get some food because I had one more show and about 5 more hours to go before heading back to the hotel.

After the screening of “Songs Inside the Box”, they had a drawing for a cigar box ukulele giveaway. I took a picture of the winner and headed across the street with Charlie to meet some folks at Palmer’s bar, the location of my next show in about 2 hours.  Charlie has been a fixture on the Minneapolis/St Paul blues scene for decades. He seems to know everyone, including the waitresses and hangers on who could easily have been his children. He introduced me to many of these people and told me stories of how he met them and the history of the blues scene in town. It was truly fascinating to know that there was so much blues history in Minneapolis . I had no idea! 

The Palmer’s patio was already hopping with impromptu jams featuring flute, mandolin and acoustic guitar. It was still hard to believe that all this was happening on a Sunday evening. In Little Rock you could not even buy a beer at a bar on Sunday until recently and there is nothing happening on a Sunday evening, let alone so many things happening on the same block on a Sunday evening! I was really starting to like Minneapolis .

We wondered back inside Palmer’s at about 9 and had a couple more beers while awaiting our time to perform. Joining me was Jukka Juhola from Finland , another Deep Blues Fest performer this year. He had a brand new Lowebow Cigar box guitar to show off. It has three necks, the top two are pool cues with a bass string on the top and three guitar strings on the bottom. Beneath that is a 6 string baritone guitar neck. The bass pickup and guitar pickups have separate outputs so you must use a bass amp and guitar amp at the same time. Jukka was busy practicing on it that afternoon at the hotel, trying to get familiar with it before his performance.

After discussing the schedule with the folks there, it was determined that I Jukka would go on first, after Cornbread the piano blues man was done with his set. Jukka played a very inspiring set of blues that was a cross between the Velvet Underground Sonic Youth and Son House. The crowd enjoyed it and I was able to take several pictures of him with his cigar box guitar. About this time I discovered that my car had been towed. Luckily I had removed all my guitar gear so I could still play the gig. Chris Johnson was kind enough to offer to drive me to pick up my car after the gig at Palmer’s.

Because there was another band after us, I quickly set up my Roland Street Cube portable amp and plugged in. I played a 20 minute set including “that’s No Way For Me To Get Along” and my own signature tune called “Drop Down”. The crowd really seemed to enjoy it, I saw some people dancing and many people were tapping their feet to the beat. I got a great crowd response when I was done and quickly packed up to let the next band play on the other stage.

We watched the band and had another beer while waiting for Chris to return to take me to pick up my car. The people at Palmer’s were a varied bunch, mostly college students although there were some people there that may have been retired. They seemed to enjoy all the music that evening, from piano blues to cigar box guitar hill country blues to more alternative rock. Finally Chris arrived and we picked up my car and headed back to the hotel. What a long day!