Digging deep into the blues

If there was one thing the third annual Deep Blues Festival had going for itself this past weekend that other blues events don't have enough of, it was character.

Character, as in: Mississippi blues vet T-Model Ford, 89, voraciously hitting on women in the crowd Friday night at the Cabooze in Minneapolis, where most of the four-day music fest took place.

Character, as in: a burly, intimidating, 40-something foot-stomping guitarist purportedly from Hell's Fringe, Okla., named Bloody Ol' Mule flipping off the audience Saturday afternoon seconds before saying (with a straight face), "All my songs are love songs."

Character, as in: local legend Spider John Koerner telling Saturday's crowd the recipe of his personally concocted highball, which he calls a Lower Manhattan; and the fact that Koerner, 70, and a Twin Cities band half his age, A Night in the Box, played the same classic Leadbelly song, "Midnight Special," on separate days.

And character, as in: the weather turning a cool 60 degrees in July for an urban fest that's based off sweltering, rural blues from the other end of the Mississippi River.

"This is still the Mississippi Delta, isn't it?" joked Memphis-based bluesman Johnny Lowebow, who -- talk about character -- sells guitars made out of cigar boxes and broom sticks.

Like a lot of the performers who drove up the fabled Hwy. 61 to get here, Lowebow said he feels more at home at the Minneapolis festival than at other events down south.

"Most of the mainstream blues fests are too narrow-minded," he said. "This is the one festival that puts all of us misfits together."

The misfits in this case fit together well, even when they were as wildly different as noisy Tennessee organ/drums blues-punk duo the Black Diamond Heavies vs. washtub- and washboard-based acoustic Minneapolis trio the Brass Kings vs. all-female North Carolina garage-rock duo the Moaners. The defining trait in all cases was music that's raw, gritty and rough around the edges musically and lyrically.

Alas, that wide berth of acts is still too narrow a niche to draw much of an audience. Only a few hundred people came and went throughout the festival's 40-hour, 70-act lineup. The biggest turnout was for T-Model Ford. It's always the ladies' men who draw well.

"You better put your women on a string," Ford warned the guys in the audience.

Here's more of the Deep Blues character.

Saddest lyric: "Nobody loves me but my mother / And sometimes I think she be jiving me too," sung in a low bellow by gum-chewing Mississippi vet Elmo Williams, 76.

Scariest lyric: "I'm gonna take you down to the river / I'm gonna take you by the throat," by one-man band Poopdeflex, from Fort Wayne, Ind.

Least surprising cover song: "Skinny Woman," an ode to women with "meat that shakes" made famous by late Mississippi grunter R.L. Burnside. Among those who played it were Indiana duo Left Lane Cruiser (a maniacal electric version), Burnside's old sideman Kenny Brown (on acoustic slide-guitar) and R.L.'s truly gifted grandson Kent Burnside (thick and funky).

Most surprising cover: "I Wanna Be Your Dog," the Stooges' punk classic, which was recast as a howling, snaking blues romp by cigar-box-led duo Purgatory Hill, whose leader Pat MacDonald was the one guy in the fest who's ever really tasted commercial success (his old duo Timbuk 3 landed the mid-'80s hit "The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades"). Of course, he ignored the hit here.

chrisr@startribune.com • 612-673-4658