Waterfront Blues Festival swamps Fourth of July weekend

Published 11:30 am Friday, June 30, 2023

The Waterfront Blues Festival returns to downtown Portland July 1 to 4, ending with a bang on Freedom Day at Waterfront Park.

This year’s lineup could outdo last year’s, with a farewell performance by 86-year-old Buddy Guy (Monday, July 3), who has said this tour will be his “Damn Right Farewell.”

Other hot acts to plan around include Cha Wa, Celisse, Shemekia Copeland and Amythyst Kiah.

Peter Dammann has been organizing the blues fest for the past 30 years. He said that 2022 was a good year considering it was the first big downtown event after the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.

“There was just this intensity and depth to what was happening on our stages. I saw a couple of the best things I’ve ever seen at Waterfront Blues Festival last summer,” Dammann told Pamplin Media.

One was The War and Treaty, a husband-wife gospel act from Albion, Michigan.

“When they just spontaneously jumped in with the Wood Brothers, in this unrehearsed a capella number, that was just riveting, I was close to tears. All of that reminded me there’s a mission here, to lift people up, bring them together, and strengthen the ties of our community.”

(They also jumped into the crowd.)

Doesn’t feel like rain

On Monday, July 3, Dammann said, if you are into guitar, that’s the day. Look for Buddy Guy (9 p.m.), Eric Gales (7 p.m.) and Celisse (6 p.m.) All artists stick to the schedule to the minute. “I’ve been reading some reviews of some recent shows that Buddy Guy’s done. He’s still rolling,” said Damman.

“Eric Gales is maybe the most brilliant electric guitar blues rocker alive, and he may be as good as anybody who’s ever played. Speaking as a guitarist, he’s just on a different level,” said Dammann.

“And Celisse is an Afro-American woman guitarist who’s played with Lizzo and Mariah Carey, but she’s doing her own thing and she’s a really interesting guitar player.” Dammann discovered Celisse on the website of Benson guitar amplifiers, which are made in Portland.

“I was ‘Oh, wow, who is this?’ And in the meantime, she’s started to take off,” he said.

The end

The Fourth of July (Tuesday) will end in fireworks, but also with showstoppers the Mavericks.

“The last time the Mavericks were here, they put on absolutely one of the best shows that any of us have ever seen on the mainstage. They’re just really delightful and fun. Lead singer Raúl Malo is like the Americana world’s equivalent of Pavarotti, he’s got this big voice, and the whole show is eclectic and eccentric. It’s got Americana, some blues in it, some TexMex and some Cubanismo …,” Dammann said.

Locals will be pleased to see cover band Soul Vaccination bringing back Andy Stokes. Dammann calls Stokes “probably the best R&B singer in the Northwest.”

He said opening night (Saturday, July 1) will be powerful, with Los Lonely Boys and Amythyst Kiah. “Amythyst is a young Afro-American singer songwriter, she’s taking off. She was part of Our Native Daughters with Allison Russell, they won a Grammy,” Dammann said.

Red Indian funk

Cha Wa (Monday, July 3) should also be fun. Anyone who has seen New Orleans Indians waking the neighborhood on the TV Show “Treme” will know what they do. In their skeleton suits and feather head dresses, they blend sounds and ethnicities in a way that breaks the standard Black-white American narrative.

Cha Wa play the main stage (5 p.m.) but will also do a Q&A on the Crossroads stage at 9 p.m.

“They’ll talk about the history of Mardi Gras, it’s a really interesting story about how that tradition began and what the roots are. It’s complicated,” Dammann said.

Salt Bae

Blues belter Shemekia Copeland (Sunday, July 2) lives in Oceanside, California, but two of her band members are in New York City and a guitarist, Willie Scandlyn is in Portland.

“Salt in My Wounds,” “Married to the Blues” and “Hit ’Em Back” may be the songs people know after her 25 years in the business, but really anything she sings in Portland should be worth a listen.

Copeland says anyone can dip into her set for a song or two and get a sense of who she is. “So many of my songs say something. You have a good understanding of me listening to my songs.”

She promises “a whole roller coaster of a show,” slow and fast tracks. “Me and my band I’ve had for 25 years, we go out and we do it,” Copeland told Pamplin Media.

Comparing her to anyone — top of mind, Tina Turner — is not really viable. “I pride myself on doing my own thing,” Copeland said. “The best way to be is to be yourself.”

If she wants to rehearse a new song, she texts the band and they work it up remotely. On stage, Copeland has no setlist, and will sometimes cue up the next song with little warning. “I make it up on the fly, I try to feel out the audience.”

Occasionally she improvises vocally, letting the music move her. “Sometimes the words just leave you, so you just keep it rolling,” said Copeland.

Copeland and her husband will be at the blues fest with their 6-year-old son, taking in the sights and sounds in the crowd. She loves playing live, especially this Portland festival.

COVID brought the blues to everyone. Everybody lost something. The recovery continues.

“When you show up and all the fans are there supporting live music, it’s beautiful. These days I get weepy, especially after COVID, because nobody could come out for so long,” said Copeland.

Formula

Blues fest has abandoned the late night shows as it’s too hard for the festival that resumes in the morning.

“I tried to pull this together, so each day is varied enough,” Dammann said.

“If you are a hardcore blues fan, there’s going to be hardcore Chicago blues there, and other flavors of that genre. And every day, I tried to work it out so there’s something on the Front Porch stage or the Crossroads stage.”

Dammann has a formula for fun. “My thought when I first started doing this 30 years ago was like, ‘OK, if I’m going to be down here for four days how do I program so I’m just going to be riveted the whole time?’”

Organizers worked hard to make visiting Waterfront Park a pleasurable experience last year.

“There were a lot of people who hadn’t been to downtown Portland in three years. I’m just not such an optimist that I believe they’re necessarily going to show up, and there was so much negative press and vibe, with the protests and the graffiti and the homeless crisis. I just wasn’t quite sure people were going to walk to Waterfront Park as they have in the past. But we had a good turnout, and the vibe was just one of elation,” Dammann said.

“The weather was so hard on those festivals last year. You know, we were really the first sunny event. People came and they loved it.”

More: waterfrontbluesfest.com.