Sacramento Blues Society put on a show – 2008 Blues Divas – on August 10th.  It was a strange little venue and there weren’t very many people there.  They missed a good show!

Gail Bisho and Criminals of Love, not to be confused with the Gangsters of Love.  The guy playing the interesting bass thingy was her husband.   They teach somewhere.  Nice how I remember all the details.  Blame Beer and an aging mind.  NOTE:  IF YOU KNOW ANY OF THESE DETAILS, LEAVE A COMMENT!!! I’ll update as necessary.

My friend Jill was with me, she said, “Geez, he looks like a dentist.”  And from there on out, that’s all I could see when I looked at him.  Dancing, playing, dentist.  Dammit, Jill!

Gail wrote all their songs, and she’s actually a pretty good songwriter, should maybe be selling them songs in Nashveeel.  They were *that* sort of hooky-pop-country tunes.   Seriously, if someone else would sing them they’d be popular with a large chunk of the nation and she’d be rich.

I’d have to say Gail doesn’t sing much better than I do, but she has fun up on stage.  She also has about as much charisma and stage presence as I do, but playing on stage probably legitimizes her and the dentist for their music students.

Gail and The Dentist Rockin’ It

This is Lisa Phenix and Steve Wall.  Lisa has a Wonderful Voice, sounds like she should be doing folk a la Lucinda Williams rather than blues, but her version of Summertime was smokin’.  I meant to buy her CD while I was there but spaced it.  littlewing-lisaphenix

Steve Wall accompanied her.  He played with the Beer Dawgs and was awesome and more or less stole the show from Lisa.  By awesome, I mean that he played slide almost as good as my hero Roy Rogers.  Maybe as good.  I’m not a music connoisseur but I know what I like.  Steve made my jaw drop.  And he had such fun doing it!   I LOVE LOVE LOVE seeing/hearing great people play up close and personal like this.  I hope I get to see both of them again sometime, singly or together.

And now we pause from our musical adventure to take a moment and make fun of the biker chicks, because life has just been too safe lately.

These were the Iron Cowgirls, and they were having Some Fun.   Now, this isn’t much of a picture, but there are more coming.  I wanted to put this one in here because of the little old man.  We were worried he was going to have a heart attack but he danced and sweated like a man half his age – 50.   He was having a damned good time and danced with all the wimmens.  Later there’s a pic that looks like (I hope) he spilled a drink on his pants.

I have a shirt like the red and black and white one on the right.  I’m going to have to throw it away now. Related: I didn’t get any really great shots of the missing teeth. </catiness>

Back to the music:

Next up was Dana Moret.  She’s fun to watch and has a good voice and presence on stage. She used to sing with Mick Martin and crew, don’t know who she’s with now.  We enjoyed her.  She livened things up.

Lena Mosely —  She’s an old pro and crowd pleaser but I don’t actually know anything about her except that I’d watch her again.  Here’s a little bit about her.

Annie Sampson played last –  She was wonderful.  What a voice!  I’d never heard of her, either, but she’s been around a long time and has sung with every good musician on the planet. That guy on the guitar was good, too, but I don’t know who he was.  If you do, please add a comment and I’ll update.

Sorry (or are you glad?) the people after the biker chicks got such short shrift.  I didn’t take notes and I wrote the first part of this post right after the event, and the second, leaner part too many days later.