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There are tons of books & YouTube teachers ready to teach you how to play blues on piano or guitar. But where would you play it if you could?
The number of 'blues' oriented venues (bars) in a major metro area where one might get a gig can be counted on 2 fingers if you look around hard enough. And even those might be 'open mic' joints where you won't be paid anything, even if people in the audience who didn't buy a ticket or pay a cover charge liked your music. Read about the blues and it's heyday was first half of the 20th century. B.B. King was pretty much the last well known blues artist, and he was rarely on TV after that.
Jazz clubs? Also few and far between. There's rock and country and that's about it for live performances. Even rock isn't what it used to be, but there will always be people ready to dance to live music at the honky tonk. Large cities will have restaurants with musical acts playing cover and/or original songs, but not the blues. Why would anyone want to learn the blues? So they can play their friends piano if they get invited to a party once in a blue moon? Practice for years for that? No way!
5 Answers
- pianomanLv 78 months ago
The Blues is still appreciated in clubs in the french quarters here in New Orleans.
- ?Lv 72 years ago
The list of places you likely can't play blues is actually shorter, like "dance clubs" that go for rap/hip-hop. Country bars, rock bars, even metal gigs allow one or two basic blues to be snuck in. It's just good stuff, and the amped-up dirty West Chicago style is solid in many modern gigs.
Most of the musicians I've gigged with do good blues, whether or not you ever heard them do it on stage. The patterns and riffs are the bed-rock of so much modern stuff it's ridiculous.
A straight blues gig? Sure, that's pretty rare. That's why one should keep learning, and play more stuff just to gig. I've loved kicked-up blues since discovering Freddie King in the early 1960's, but have never learned enough to get me through three or four sets of it. Point blank, like metal, it gets boring if that's all you got. But pull one out of your hat in a good crowd, and the other musicians there, even the dudes with the cowboy hats, will go "Whoa! That was fine stuff, man!". Good enough.
One for you, from Robert Johnson, 1936, then covered by Elmore James in 1951, then done here by a hard-living Irishman, Gary Moore.
"Easy" song...
- ?Lv 72 years ago
Sorry. The San Francisco bay area makes everything you say false. This weekend, not very far from my house:
- Anonymous2 years ago
there are several blues clubs in my city. sorry you are having trouble finding gigs. have you tried busking?
- martinLv 72 years ago
The most fun is with someone else who likes that kind of music and also plays the guitar.
