Brewing company to host blues fest

Santa Fe’s going to be a little blue this weekend.
But that’s the way Mike Koster intended it.

Koster is the director of Southwest Roots Music, the organization that’s bringing four blues artists to the Santa Fe Brewing Company on Saturday for the Santa Fe Blues Festival.

“Nobody has done an all-blues fest in Santa Fe before, so this one is starting out pretty small, because it’s an indoor festival,” he said. “We have four bands playing, two are national and two are New Mexico bands. The idea is to throw this out there and see if people respond to an all-blues fest, and if they do, we’ll do something bigger next year.”

Jake Leary, one of the performers for the festival, is traveling from Memphis, Tenn. to help inaugurate the event. Leary said one of his first introductions to blues was at a Buddy Guy concert.

“It was right before Buddy Guy had re-emerged with his career,” Leary said. “It was when he was just playing small clubs and I went to one of those shows. It was really tiny and so I was sitting maybe five feet away from him. And he asked me and my dad if he could sit his drink down at our table because it was so close.”
Leary said he went though his Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix phase before he realized blues was more his thing. Despite the genre of his music, Leary said he plays music best when he’s in a good mood.

“I guess in some aspect you do kind of have to (be blue), but not every time you’re playing it,” he said. “When you’re depressed you don’t play very good music. And the expression of blues music comes from an inner problem or angst or whatever, but I think you have to have some problems somewhere along
the line.”

Also performing at the festival are

T Model Ford, Soul Kitchen and Marc Malin and Harmonica Mike Country Blues Review. Koster said he received a lot of calls requesting that Soul Kitchen be in the lineup.

“We have an advisory committee, and we’ll go out and ask people who they want to play,” he said. “We also solicit by e-mail. Soul Kitchen was by far the most mentioned in terms of New Mexico bands.”
Koster said people from Albuquerque can take the Rail Runner and get off at the New Mexico State Road 599 stop.

*Santa Fe Blues Festival
Santa Fe Brewing Company
35 Fire Place
Saturday
For tickets, visit TicketsSantaFe.org
$23 in advance, $28 at the door
All ages

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