Growing up and becoming a musician in Chicago gave Steve Arvey a Ph.D in blues music – learning on the job with some of the great players from the Chicago blues heyday.
Playing with guys like Hubert Sumlin, Johnny Littlejohn, Honeyboy Edwards, and a host of others, Arvey knows where the blues came from and how the pieces are supposed to be put together.
Arvey on cigar box guitar
“When I play, I like it to sound authentic. It’s what I learned from working and traveling with these great musicians,” Arvey told me, during a phone call from his current home in Sarasota.
He brings that experience, along with a hot, 5-piece band, to the Side Door this Friday, for a show he’s calling: The Art of the Blues. He promises that it will be a musical history lesson that you can dance to.
“I’m not going to talk much, because this is such a good band,’ he said. “People will hear a lot of New Orleans, also hear some mambo rhythms – they had a big influence. And we’ll go to the West Side of Chicago for some Magic Sam and Otis Rush.”
There will be Arvey playing both standard electric guitars and the primitive cigar box guitar, plus his current partner in music, pianist Bill Buchman. The rest of the band includes Tony Smith, on harmonica, Sean Doolittle, drums and Mike Dempsey, bass.
I heard Steve on his cigar box guitar in the Side Door during an earlier show. It’s raw and powerful stuff. The sound harkens back to the day when musicians couldn’t afford a real guitar, so they figured out how to make their own.
Steve still visits and plays in Chicago, but he moved here permanently in 2007. He thanks WMNF’s Mo Blues Monday DJ, Larry Lisk, with introducing him to the area in 2005 when he brought him down for a gig.
So thanks to Larry, the Side Door audience will get a blues education you can dance to on Friday night. For tickets, you can contact our box office by phone at 727 822-3590, or follow this link.
1 comment
Sounds very interesting, might have to check this out.