Ford Driving the Mystic Mile

Blues sounds better from a chair, right?

In the mid-80's and early 90's I was bitten by the blues-rock bug. Stevie Ray Vaughan kicked off those festivities - I grabbed every album that guitar slinger put out and listened relentlessly. Other artists I admired at the time were Jeff Healey, Jimmy Vaughan, some Robert Cray, and a California lad named Robben Ford. Ford really caught my ear with his jazz-inflected electric blues-rock, which had quite a distinct sound from Stevie's. While these two guitarists shared a little of the jazz influence, Ford took it to another level and made it more a part of his overall fusion style. 

The one Ford album I owned back in the 90's was Mystic Mile. I played that nearly as much as my Stevie CDs, but as my interest in the blues genre waned in the mid-to-late 90's, I let many of these albums go. It wasn't a tough decision; this stuff simply ran its course with me and I moved on to other musical obsessions, namely rap, jazz, electronica, and opera. Yes, you read that right.

I can barely recall the music now, but I believe Busted Up and Politician (a cover of the song by Cream) were favourites off the Mystic Mile album.

And I was lucky enough to catch Robben Ford in concert in '95, at the peak of my interest in his music. Opening act Sonny Landreth wasn't quite my thing but it was interesting enough to warm up the crowd for the blazing, energetic Ford performance. The show was definitely a drinking party, but it was also a chance for every local guitarist to study at the feet of this master picker who was named one of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of the 20th Century" by Musician magazine.

Here's the ticket stub: