Of the many musical genres and subgenres springing back to (almost) post-pandemic life on the local live music scene, blues has been slow to reemerge. We did get a hardy, jammy dose of Hot Tuna’s special psychedelic blues at the Lobero recently, and the public airspace has been nicely blues-wafted by the rich homegrown blues scene, including the stalwart Morganfield Burnett and Tom Ball and Kenny Sultan up at Cold Spring Tavern on Sunday afternoons.
Still, the blues concert scene has been wanting, and that’s about to change. The Santa Barbara Blues Society rightly touts its status as the oldest continuous blues society in the nation and has made our town safe for blues of a high order for years. It’s been a quiet time in Society life, but the organization soon breaks out of its pandemic dormancy (pandormancy?) with a show at the Community Arts Workshop on Sunday afternoon, September 25. On the bill are the bands Paradise Kings, East Valley Road, and Rent Party Blues Band, with proceeds benefiting the families of two towering blues-linked musicians from Santa Barbara who recently passed — Byl Carruthers and Tom Murray.
This week’s pressing blues news comes in the form of a living legend, Tab Benoit, poised to shake the Lobero Theater rafters on September 2. Benoit brings along his distinctive, Louisiana-spiced and Delta blues language to his music as a whip-smart guitarist and solid singer, along with the acclaim embedded in an award collection, including two B.B. King Entertainer of the Year plaudits from the Blues Music Awards.