Mojo Station Blues Festival
Trip Start
Jun 15, 2007
1
3
25
Trip End
Sep 05, 2007
Roma,
Italy
Friday, June 22, 2007
(Rome, Thursday, June 21, 2007)-Mojo Station is an adventurous blues radio show conducted by Gianluca Diana on a venerable left-wing FM station where he carries on his personal crusade to turn the people of Roma on to the blues in all its glory.
The high point of Gianluca's musical year is reached with the staging of the Mojo Station Blues Festival, now in its third year, featuring performances by American and Italian blues artists in the concert hall and courtyard of a sprawling entertainment complex that's been rented by Mojo Station for the weekend's festivities.
Last year my man Little Freddie King from New Orleans headlined the event; this year my great friend & comrade Willie King and his band The Liberators have been imported from Freedom Creek, Alabama to share their unique vision of the deep blues with the music-lovers of Rome, and Mark Ritsema & I have been invited to share the bill with Willie and the band.
We met Gianluca and his companion Silvia at the Festival Internazional della Letteratura Resistente in Pitigliano last September when we made an interview together that was later incorporated into a radio program G-L produced for broadcast on Mojo Station. He knew my blues work FATTENING FROGS FOR SNAKES and had other CDs of mine like FULL MOON NIGHT, and our conversation initiated a fast friendship and a series of correspondence which resulted in my invitation to perform at the festival this year. Then he lined up three more blues festival dates for us in Italy, and suddenly we had a lovely two-week tour of Italy on our calendar.
I was really looking forward to seeing Willie King again, and in such a beautiful setting, on what turned out to be only his second trip to Europe. I first met Willie in New Orleans several years ago when he was one of the roots blues artists featured at Eric Cager's Cutting Edge music conference in recognition of the power and impact of Freedom Creek, his first album for Rooster Blues Records. I visited the recording sessions in Memphis for his second album, Living in a New World, preparatory to writing the liner notes for the CD, and we met again one night in Oxford, MS when the Liberators played a rare date at the Two Stick while I was in residence there.
Then Willie invited me to visit and perform at his annual Freedom Creek festival outside of Aliceville, Alabama, and Eric Deaton and Imelda Lee and I drove over from Oxford to honor his invitation and join the splendid cast of rustic blues players and Rural Members who gathered by the creek to make some great music and have their fun in the woods. That was a deeply moving experience for me, to add my poetry to this unique event and return my verses to the cultural soil from which they had sprung. Now we'd be performing together in a foreign land far from home and be treated like visiting royalty throughout our stay in Italy.
Mark & I had Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off in Roma and made the most of it, in my case enjoying some nice walks and spending a lot of time in my little room at the Forte catching up on my writing. The Mojo festival came on Thursday evening, and I got a really special treat when my old friend from Detroit, Lily Morda, and her husband Tim took the train over from their home in Firenze to say hello and catch our show.
Lily's father, Domenick Morda, had been my patron and business partner 25 years ago in Detroit in a venture that involved managing artists, producing blues & jazz concerts at St. Andrews Hall and booking bands in bars, nightclubs and concert facilities all around the Detroit metropolitan area. In the present century, her brother Chris Morda, a terrific guitar player and bandleader in Seattle, serves as my accompanist and musical director when I visit his city.
But it's been at least 20 years since I've seen Lily, who settled in Firenze several years ago and operates a beadworks and retail shop there, and who, as it turns out, is active in the local film society which has expressed a serious interest in screening my movie TWENTY TO LIFE in their fall series. So we got to sit and talk, bring ourselves up to date on the paths our lives have taken, and work out some preliminary ideas for showing my film in Firenze and, hopefully, other venues around Italy where she has connections with the local film societies.
So all in all we had a ball at the Mojo Station Festival, hanging with and digging Willie King & The Liberators, enjoying the company of Lily & Tim, playing a satisfying set of music & verse for a warm and appreciative audience, and meeting the opening act, a country-blues specialist from Worcester, Mass named Jon Short who has become a great new friend and fellow traveler.
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John Sinclair Radio Show #135
Forte Prenestino, Roma with Mojo Station
Wednesday, June 20, 2007 @ 11:00 am- 12:00 noon [20-0717]
http://www.radiofreeamsterdam.com/audio/jsrshow135.mp3
To commemorate my residency at Forte Prenestino in Roma this June, I assembled this program in my little room at the Forte from the recording of an interview made by Gianluca Diana and his companion Silvia in Pitigliano in September 2006 and produced into a program for Mojo Station in Roma, combined with concert recordings from the Blues Scholars concert at Forte Prenestino on 24 April 2006. The Blues Scholars from Rotterdam included Mark Ritsema and Willem van der Wall on guitars, Will Dawson on bass & Reinier Rietveld on drums. The concert was recorded by the Forte Prenestino staff and remixed by Reinier at his 2X2 Studio in Rotterdam. Gianluca uses selections from the Blues Scholars albums Underground Issues and The Delta Sound, excerpts from It's All Good, and tunes by Professor Longhair, Willie King and a great piece by an unidentified artist that closes Gianluca's part of the program.
Playlist #135
[01] RFA ID & John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars 'live' at Forte Prenestino: april in paris
[02] John Sinclair with LangeFrans & Baas B: It's All Good with intro by Gianluca Diana
[03] Gianluca Diana Conversation with John Sinclair re: White Panther Party
[04] John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: Homage to John Coltrane under >
[05] Conversation with John Sinclair re: Black Music & Records >
[06] John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: Consequences >
[07] Conversation with John Sinclair re: Detroit & White Panther Party
[08] John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: Cross Road Blues >
[09] Conversation with John Sinclair re: MC-5
[10] John Sinclair with LangeFrans & Baas B: It's All Good under conversation >
[11] Conversation with John Sinclair re: Blues Scholars
[12] Professor Longhair: Tipitina under conversation with John Sinclair
[13] Willie King: Terrorized > conversation continues re: Willie King
[14] Conversation with John Sinclair re: New Orleans
[15] Professor Longhair: Tipitina > John Sinclair: Cross Road Blues excerpts
[16] Conversation with John Sinclair re: New Orleans continued > RFA
[17] John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: Consequences continued from above >
[18] John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: Blues to You
[19] [Unidentified Artist]: Earth (If Present Trends Continue)
[20] John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars 'live' at Forte Prenestino: friday the 13th
[21] John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars 'live' at Forte Prenestino: brilliant corners
A Joint Production
Hosted by Gianluca Diana for Mojo Station & John Sinclair for Radio Free Amsterdam
Produced, engineered & recorded by Gianluca Diana
Post-production by John Sinclair
Executive Producer: John Sinclair
Mastered & posted by Henk Botwinik
Special thanks to Mojo Station, Antoniello "Rent," Mark Ritsema, Willem vanderWall, Will Dawson & Reinier Rietveld
Sponsored by Hempshopper, Eat at Jo's in the Melkweg and Forte Prenestino
© 2006, 2007 John Sinclair
Podcast by www.RadioFreeAmsterdam.com as #135 on June 25, 2007
-Detroit
August 1, 2007
Comments
BALTO JEFF
I wish I was there