Houston Ain’t Singing The Blues
Blast Furnace Blues Festival Preview
By Mark Demko, ArtsQuest Senior Director of Communications
As a lifelong resident of the Houston area, Trudy Lynn has seen a lot during her nearly seven decades in the Bayou City. Nothing, however, could have prepared her for the destruction wrought by Hurricane Harvey last fall.
“We’ve had storms and things here, but they weren’t ever as devastating as that storm was,” says Lynn, one of the headliners of this year’s Blast Furnace Blues Festival at SteelStacks.
According to the Houston Music Hall of Famer and five-time Blues Music Award nominee, Harvey hit the community hard, including some of the musicians and clubs. Rock Romano, a longtime friend and colleague of Lynn’s, had his Red Shack Recording Studio damaged by flooding, while Lynn, herself, sustained home damage as a result of the gale force winds.
“I had a pecan tree fall across the back of the house–one of the bedrooms and the roof fell in,” she says.
The silver lining amid all the devastation? The Houston community came together en masse to help out those in need. At Romano’s studio, for example, friends and neighbors worked side by side to clean up and get the business back in action.
“It was just amazing to see,” Lynn says. “Everybody pulled together. It didn’t make no difference – color, size, creed or what – everybody pulled together and helped one another out.”
From March 23-25, Blast Furnace Blues attendees will have an opportunity to hear a number of artists from the Houston area music scene when they perform at the festival. In all, seven of the 19 artists at this year’s event hail from Southeast Texas including Step Rideau & the Zydeco Outlaws, Steve Krase Band, The Mighty Orq, Brad Absher & Swamp Royale, boogie woogie piano player Ezra Charles and steel guitarist John Egan.
ArtsQuest Chief Programming Officer Patrick Brogan, who’s responsible for booking Blast Furnace Blues, says the idea for bringing in nearly 40 percent of this year’s festival lineup from Houston was born after a number of people asked ArtsQuest staff if there was any way it could contribute to hurricane relief efforts.
“We thought that rather than adding to our very robust and demanding programing schedule, we’d look for the right opportunities to partner in some way and offer a relief effort or fundraise for a relief effort,” Brogan says.
In October, leaders of the Lehigh Valley’s Latino community approached ArtsQuest about holding a benefit concert for the victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, and ArtsQuest staff responded by hosting and helping present performances by EnSecuencia, L Urban Orquesta, Orquesta Xariz and others at the Levitt Pavilion on Nov. 5. Around the same time, Brogan was contacted by one of 2017’s Blast Furnace Blues performers, singer Diunna Greenleaf.
“Diunna called me and said, ‘My community needs work here in Houston. Is there anything you can do?’ Brogan recalls. “Blast Furnace Blues, where she had performed the year before, seemed like a natural connection to bring some Houston based artists to.
“It was an opportunity to give them work, which is a paycheck for them as a band. Plus, they are going on to play additional dates here in the Northeast, so they got additional work as a result of the bookings.”
Going one step further, Brogan also eliminated the house’s take on merchandise sales for the Houston area artists during Blast Furnace Blues, allowing them to keep 100 percent of the proceeds.
“This is an area that is very profitable to a touring artist – that’s cash going right into their pockets,” Brogan says. “Performing at Blast Furnace Blues also helps them grow their audience and making new fans, which, we hope, helps to offset some of the lost opportunities back home.”
For Lynn, ArtsQuest’s focus on providing opportunities for Houston-area artists to support their livelihood through performances at SteelStacks came as a surprise. She says it was the first time she has heard of a festival or organization elsewhere trying to do something specifically for her region’s blues artists following the devastation of Hurricane Harvey.
“A lot of people got messed up here in Houston…and a lot of them still are,” she says. “I’m just in awe (over this); I think that is just so wonderful! It really is.”
