Page 91 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2018

them – the price may be too steep, they may not be available
or they may not fit the balance he’s working to achieve in the
line-up.
Paul Benjamin produces several festivals each year but may
be most closely associated with the North Atlantic Blues Fest in
his home state of Maine each July. Even though Maine is way
up in the country’s northeast corner, he never has a problem
recruiting artists to venture that far. He said that the way he looks
at it, “It’s Maine, it’s July, it’s on the ocean, it’s great blues and
we serve lobster.” He told us, because of the volume of artist
material he receives, he could book the next five years for the
Maine festival within a week. “Booking is fairly easy to a point,”
Benjamin said, “but it’s picking who you want to play that is the
challenge. I do my homework, bring in strong artists and stay in
the blues realm.”
Along with the challenges facing blues festival promoters
come many special moments. From his 25 years of producing
the festival in Maine, Benjamin easily recalled his favorite
memory; during what would become “Little” Milton Campbell’s
last live performance in 2005 during Hurricane Cindy. “It was
just pouring rain all day; the show went on with 6,000 people
in yellow raincoats,” Benjamin recalled. “Milton came on stage
and thanked the audience for enduring the storm. For a split
second, it stopped raining, the clouds parted, and the sun shone
down on Little Milton on the stage. He said, ‘Look, Paul, we
played out the sun!’ A second later, it started pouring again.”
Little Milton suffered a stroke and passed away a month later.
Slack also shared his favorite festival memory, involving the
beloved Pinetop Perkins. “It was a special occasion because it
was his 95 birthday. I was pretty nervous just hoping nothing
th
would happen; that he wouldn’t get sick. I was so happy when
the day finally came. My wife baked a cake in the shape of
a piano, and Pinetop showed up dressed in a beautiful suit
smoking a cigarette. We gave him the cake on stage, and he
was around for another three years.” Slack told us there are a lot
of rewards after working so hard, after all of the paperwork, all
of the scheduling and managing everything that could go wrong.
“It’s nice when you can sit back, chill with the artists and have a
good conversation.”
The blues festival promoters we caught up with are just a
few of the hundreds who strive to present and preserve the
blues for die-hard followers as well as newly-converted fans
of the genre. They each demonstrate an obvious commitment
to searching out artists deserving of more exposure as well as
recruiting the brightest stars in order to create the line-ups we
love. The devotion of their energy, skills and taste makes them
unsung heroes for keeping the blues alive.

Stacy began her freelance writing career in 2006 with the Kansas
City Blues Society membership magazine. She gained a writing
mentor in 2008 as a result of accosting KBA recipient Don Wilcock
in a Memphis elevator during her first IBC, and now has over
90 published articles. Contact her at luvmyblues@yahoo.com.

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