Sunday, November 07, 2010

13 Months o' Music

After attending the fantastic performance of world-famous bluesman Robert Cray last evening at Jesse Hall on the MU campus, I stopped to reflect upon the incredible series of shows I've been lucky enough to see in the past year or so. It started last fall with a show at the Blue Note featuring singer/songwriters Robert Earl Keene and Todd Snyder. Then at the Roots'n' Blues festival in Columbia, I got to see blues legend Booker T and rockabilly phenom Junior Brown.

This past spring, Bethany scored tickets to see the greatest blues singer of all time: Mr. B.B. King at Jesse Hall. At this year's Roots 'n'Blues, I took Alex to his first concert to see Anders Osborne, a New Orleans-based blues guitarist whom I had seen several years eariler in St. Louis (which I ranked at that time as the single best concert I had ever been to.)

Last night's show took the cake though. On Friday, Bethany received an email offer for half-price tickets to see Robert Cray. We jumped at the chance and when we arrived at the ticket window to redeem our coupon one-half hour prior to the start of the show, we nabbed two tickets in the center section--in the fourth row! And the blues legend did not disappoint.

If you are unfamiliar with any of the artists I just mentioned, do yourself a favor and check them out. All have at least a little bit of the blues in them. A couple have a lot. A couple have an alternative country twang. A couple have some jazzy undertones. All are incredible musicians and entertainers.

CDs are great, iPods are pretty neat, but watching a live show featuring your favorite artist can't be beat. So take out your earbuds, get together with a couple buds, have a few Buds, and go see a concert. You'll be glad you did.