Page 27 - Akae Beka

Barefoot Workshops Capture the Blues
I relocated to Clarksdale in 2002. Around 2004, I met an
impassioned filmmaker and teacher named Chandler Griffin,
originally from Jackson, MS, but living in New York City. The
blues had started coming back to Clarksdale in a reliable way,
and tourism was starting to grow as a result. Griffin planned
to bring a two-week film workshop to Clarksdale to capture the
often untold stories (and by default, music) of the Mississippi
Delta. Soon after, he did – again and again for a decade. Not
all the films are “blues” films, but many of the best are, and
most of the other stories live within the culture, if not the music.
Go to www.barefootworkshops.org, and click on the Video
Gallery to watch films for free. In particular, check out The New
Roxy, A Blues Redemption, LaLa Land, Just Monkey, Son & Son,
Devil Showed Me How, Early Time, The Real Deal, Babies Got
the Blues, Black & Blues, The Music Maker, All This Blues, It’s M for Mississippi & We Juke Up in Here!
Just a Feeling and Knockdown. You’ll meet everyone from street
musician Foster “Mr. Tater” Wiley and folk-artist bluesman Konkel and I spent many long weekends searching for the
James “Super Chikan” Johnson, to Mississippi boogieman real deal, the authentic, the deepest blues. Along the way, we
Jimbo Mathus and even the blues fanatic who owns Cat Head made great blues friends and experienced situations that led us
(yours truly). to turn to each other and say simply, “That’s ‘The Project’!” It
became code for what we thought would make great film. And
Hard Times so, in 2008, we lined up some sponsors, withdrew a bunch of
One of the workshop cash from our bank accounts and set out on the ultimate seven-
assistants I met during those day blues road trip through North Mississippi.
first filmings was Mississippi The idea was to make the blues world here seem just as
cameraman extraordinaire approachable as it really is – full of Southern hospitality and
Damien Blaylock. A short time hints of danger hanging with blues characters from another time
later, I brought Mississippi- and place. Among the living dinosaurs in what became the Blues
born Big George Brock to a Music Award-winning movie M for Mississippi, were “Cadillac”
(I’ll just say it) ridiculous, all- John Nolden (still with us today at 93 years old), “Mississippi
star blues album recording Marvel” (still can’t give his real name since he had one foot
session up in Memphis. Long in juke joints and the other in the church house), L.C. Ulmer
story short, martial arts actor (perhaps the film’s biggest “discovery”), Robert “Bilbo” Walker
Steven Seagal was bringing (in the performance Chuck Berry didn’t want you to see), James
in the best of the old school “T-Model” Ford (“I got to go to Parchman”), Wesley “Junebug”
to back him up on a CD. Jefferson (the first to pass away after the film’s release) and others.
That story is for another time,
except to say that Blaylock was there trying to capture the whole
crazy thing on film for a mutual producer-friend David Hughes.
That evidence footage sits in a vault to this day.
Anyway, I was impressed with Blaylock as both a filmmaker
and a person, so I hired him to film what became Hard Times –
the blues story of Big George Brock. Check out a clip on YouTube
and buy it at www.cathead.biz.
About the time Hard Times was coming out, I met a fellow
blues lover in my Cat Head store. His name was Jeff Konkel,
and after a weekend of moonshine and juke joints, he pledged
to return in two weeks to start a blues record label. He did – the
aptly named Broke & Hungry Records. As I worked with Big
George Brock, Konkel worked with the then super-obscure Jimmy
“Duck” Holmes, slowly helping to bring the Bentonia bluesman
out of the shadows. Terry "Harmonica" Bean plays at Red's Lounge during We Juke Up in Here!
filming. Photo by Lou Bopp

Blues Festival Guide 2020 25