Summer Season

Wow, our summer season is well under way and so far it's been a blast as always. Some of the coolest festivals so far have been St. Louis Bluesfest and The Bluesfest Internationale in Windsor, Canada. We played with Devon Allman and Johnny Winter to about 10,000 people and man what a rush!
I met Devon briefly backstage. He seems a pretty decent sort. He watched our set from side stage and came up later and remarked that he thought we were "kickin some ass up there". LOL! Yea, well it's kinda what we do. ;-)

Honeytribe came on and after a slow start due to the rain that started they really ramped things up. They are more a Rock/Jamband than blues but still a very cool act. The Bass player uses a lot of effects to do interesting space sound stuff while Devon sings and plays guitar.

Johnny Winter is 71 years old and still can play like a SOB! He IS the original Guitar Hero, even pre dating Hendrix by a couple years.
He made his way out on his own to a chair at center stage where he sat down and strapped on his guitar to a thunderous round of applause. He then counted off the 1...2..., 1234 and proceeded to just KILL the place. I learned a lot of licks from JW records and it was really cool to see him still able to throw down at that age. I hope I get to live that long and still be playing the big stage.

We stayed till the end with a bus load of friends and fans who came with us. It was our first "Blues Bus" trip and it definitley won't be the last. Everybody was so cool and had such a good time.
Jim, a friend and fan from way back brought a huge bottle of Nassau Royale which is a tasty carmel flavored Rum.
He passed it around the bus watching as people took a shot and were surprised to find how smooth and tasty it was. These were a really cool group of folks and we got em VIP tickets so they could be right down front as we did our thing.

Next few days we started seeing the buzz of people from our performance. Lots of pics and reviews that said we really ripped it up. We made a big impression and I gotta admit the band was having some fun.
Keyboard man Dave was especially impressive on some of the tunes. We like to throw back an forth on a few songs to just see what happens and I gotta admit he was especially hot at Windsor and the crowd about lost their minds. Yea Dave!

But my favorite review was from a gent they call "Lippo". He was down front all through the show taking pics and came up to us afterwards and said hi. Next day I get a message that he's posted pics and wrote a small blurb about the show on his Flickr page so I go to look and check out the pics when I came across this in his review...
"It's Sunday night at Bluesfest and Rusty Wright was probably the smokin'-est guitar player there this night. Devon Allman and Johnny Winter were pretty cool too.... "
I about fell out a my chair and shot coffee out my nose, LOL!
The nicest compliment you can get as a musician is when a complete stranger is impressed enough with your performance that they would say something like that and post it to the world.
I would never presume to say it but it's nice that he felt that way and all I can say is "Thanks, I'm honored".

I'll keep doing my best to keep making that kind of impression, not for the sake of ego but for the sake of the music and the love I have for it. All I ever wanted from life was a chance to show folks that I got a lot of musical love and I want to give it to them...and I ain't stoppin now.
Talk to ya,
Rusty