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I learned about the festival a few years ago from fellow HCS employee and music lover, Tom Canning. Tom is more than just your average music lover; he’s an audiophile who’s passionate about high quality vinyl pressings. In the age of CDs and digital downloads, vinyl is a distant memory to most of us and a completely foreign concept to today’s youth. Tom’s been purchasing his vinyl from a small music house in Salina for years. Acoustic Sounds has built a reputation on re-mastering all kinds of music onto high quality vinyl, focusing particularly on old Blues artists.
Approximately 15 years ago, Acoustic Sounds bought an old abandoned church in Salina with the intention of using it as a warehouse for the vinyl catalog. However, these guys being sound engineer types realized that the church had extremely good acoustics. They ran tests on the building and found that the acoustics were similar to Abbey Road Studios in London where the Beatles recorded many of their albums. Instead of turning the church into the warehouse, the guys at Acoustic Sounds put a recording booth in the back and used the altar for a stage. This lead to the brilliant decision to bring in the old blues masters to record them live instead of re-mastering.
One thing lead to another and Acoustic Sounds created the Blues Masters at the Crossroads festival which is a weekend long Blues concert every October. Tom and I had been talking about taking this trip for years but this year things finally fell into place.
In addition to Tom and myself, my old college dorm mates Tommy Barrow and Bryant Miller joined us. Bryant lives in Kansas City now with his family so after a short flight to Atlanta to pick up Tommy, the three of us flew to Kansas City. Bryant picked us up at the airport and after a much needed run by a local Kansas City Barbecue joint to secure some dinner (Burnt Ends for me), we crashed at the Miller house for the night.
The next morning, we met one of Bryant’s sons and said our goodbyes to him and Bryant’s wife as they would not be joining us for the remainder of our guys’ weekend. Our trip toward Salina led us west through the tall grass prairie and the Flint Hills. Beautiful, rolling countryside, full of hawks and from the looks of it there won’t be any soybean shortage in the near future.
We made a pit stop at Kansas State University to meet Bryant’s other son, a computer whiz who is working on a program in conjunction with Stanford University regarding “folding proteins.” I have no idea what “folding proteins” is but he did show us some pictures on his computer, which he built himself. Like I said he’s a computer whiz. “Folding proteins” turned into a punch line of sorts for the rest of the trip. You had to be there.
It was late Friday afternoon when we pulled up to the church in Salina where the concert was to be. We snuck in the side door to get a look and nobody seemed to care. The vibe was very casual and laid back. When we finally queued up in the line out front we realized that we were one of the few first-timers’. Most of the folks were from nearby Wichita or Kansas City and they were all extremely nice, like small town mid-western nice, like Twilight Zone nice.
We got seats in the second row and in between sets, you could go down to the big basement where all the musicians were hanging around. It was like a big “Meet and Greet,” but very casual with no pretensions. Everyone was happy to be playing and jamming together. Saturday night was the same.
The music was a whole ‘nother story. From 94 year old Honeyboy Edwards, to 18 year old monster axeman Marquise Knox, the Blues Masters were truly at the Crossroads. This was the Blues in its truest form from singular flat-picking Delta style to electric Chicago to hard Texas shuffling to Zydeco.
I don’t have the musical knowledge to write about it coherently (like folding proteins) but I know it felt good and you knew you were hearing the blues being mastered.
It’s already got me thinking about next year. In addition to being an audiophile, Tom Canning is also a great photographer. Below are just a few of the hundreds of photos taken over the course of the weekend. If you are interested in learning more about the festival or the music, do a search on Youtube for the artists and I guarantee you’ll be impressed.
Posted by Robert Gibson
Robert, a Senior Project Manager and LEED AP, began his career with Hennessy nearly 15 years ago as a Project Superintendent. In addition to his love of travel and music, Robert is an avid fisherman who makes a mean smoked Kingfish spread.
The old converted church where the festival took place.
Tommy Barrow, Robert Gibson and Bryant Miller in front of the stage. Tom Canning was behind the camera.
Marquise Knox (18) and Honeyboy Edwards (94)
Marquise Knox with Major Handy's band playing in front of the stained glass windows of the arch way.
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