Friday is Day 2 of our adventures in the city. We were not in any hurry this morning. Rich wanted to do breakfast burritos at a place we saw last night. So we trekked back up to Adams. It turns out that the Taco Al Fresco was run by an Eastern European couple. They didn’t seem to know much about what a burrito was. After some negotiating the language differences, we got our chorizo burritos and fresh fruit. They were surprisingly tasty.
After breakfast, we went down the street to Books a Million. I don’t see many bookstores these days. I wanted to browse through the shelves. I saw lots of stuff, but nothing I had to have. Rich found a Bill Bryson book he hadn’t read and decided to buy it. We needed to find the restrooms and were directed out into the hallway of the main building. There were these beautiful high-ceilinged marble walls in Art Deco. We went downstairs to find that the locked bathrooms were for the people who worked in the building. The free bathrooms were in the cafeteria. Now the cafeteria was all chrome, glass and Art Deco. It was too pretty to eat in there.
Heading back to the hotel, we took Wabash. This lead us right past Buddy Guy’s Legends club. There was also a Harold’s Chicken Shack. We had wanted to try Harold’s, but most of the locations aren’t in places I felt comfortable driving. This was an excellent find. We finished the walk to the hotel and got our stuff for the day. With three-legged chairs over our shoulders, we headed down to the fest.
We stopped at the Mississippi Juke Joint Stage first to listen to Terry Harmonica Bean play. Terry comes highly recommended by Roger Stolli at Cat Head Records. At the last Juke Joint Festival, Terry was one of the headliners. He was all alone on stage since his band didn’t travel up from the Delta with him. His music was awesome though. This is what blues would sound like back in the day. We really enjoyed the show. Roger was right about Terry.
I pulled Rich over to the Crossroads stage to hear Toronzo Cannon. I had been enjoying the music he played on Bluesville. I thought it might be good to see him in person. And it was. He was more than entertaining and gave the crowd quite a show. He even walked off stage and down in the crowd as he played one of the numbers. I tried to buy a CD, but they sold out very quickly.
Now the Juke Joint Stage was out in the bright sunshine. The Crossroads Stage was deep in the trees and very shady. I was quite warm sitting at one and a little chilly sitting at the other. The only other problem was that I might have gotten a little sun burnt for my time listening to Terry. It is vacation after all.
We decided to get a late lunch and headed back to the hotel to drop our stuff. Then it was back to Harold’s for some chicken. This was blues music after all. What’s blues without some chicken. The menu had chicken livers, which are my favorite. Rich got chicken and okra. There were hushpuppies also and I can’t resist those. We ate our fill and watched the bicycle cops pull over people for using the bike lane as an extra traffic lane. Never saw a cop on a bicycle pull over a pickup truck before.
After lunch, we headed back to the fest. At the Juke Joint Stage, John Primer and his band were just coming on. The place was packed and people kept on coming in. This is in the afternoon and people had been drinking for a while. A small group of people came in and stood in front of the group where we were sitting. Pretty soon, there were word exchange about blocked views and it almost came to blows. I was seeing a lot of inconsiderate behavior on the part of a lot of people.
Then there was drunk chick was giving her husband (or boyfriend) a lap dance with practically every song. She kept standing up dancing and making some very erotic moves. I know she was getting into the music, but I didn’t pay extra to see any of that. They finally left and it got back to being a PG rated show.
The main show at the Pavilion was starting up. We picked up our chairs and joined about a billion other people over there. Now this is where we had our first date. Or I should correct that to say where I made it my first date with Rich. He just wanted someone to go down to the festival with him and I was the only one who raised my hand. I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to really ask me out, so I let him pay for everything. Luckily, we talked the entire day without running out of too much to say. I had a good time. Rich must have also, because he called 3 months later. I was on the road and he is a little bit cautious to jump into things.
As I said, a billion people showed up in the field right outside the Pavilion. We had our spots so we could see the big screen. Ernest “Guitar” Roy was first up. He had played the very first Blues Fest back in 1983. I had come to see Irma Thomas though. She has such a wonderful voice. She was joking about the cool weather. She had to go out and buy a coat since it was 90 when she left home in Louisiana earlier in the day. Chicago has that way about.
The only bad thing about the show was all the cigar smoke. I swear, it smelled like a bunch of skunks. I don’t know what they were smoking, but it was worst cigar smoke I’ve ever smelled.
Motorola has a set of offices on Michigan Ave. I never knew where the building was until today. Sitting at the Pavilion, you can clearly see the Motorola sign above the stage and the trees. So the sun is setting between the buildings, I see the Motorola sign, I’m listening to Irma Thomas belting out soul songs, and the air stinks. Maybe it was time to go.
We came back to the hotel once again to drop off our stuff. We thought we’d go over to Buddy Guy’s, grab some food, and hopefully listen to some blues. Unfortunately, it was packed at the tables. The guy at the door said standing room only. I hadn’t been there so I convinced Rich to go in. He got a beer and we listened to the music. It was OK, but now I can say I’ve been there. We soon headed out and went back up by the hotel to Kitty O’Shea’s. We got some fish and chips and a couple of beers.
We were waiting on food and talking. I asked Rich if he was going into the Intel house there at the Blues Fest. He said he knew enough about technology. The lady sitting besides us chimed in that she wished she knew more. We talked a bit and then her dinner mate returned to the table. I could help but listen to them a bit. She appeared to be an editor trying to improve her networking. The older gentleman appeared to be an editor for one of the local publishing houses. Printers Row is about two blocks west of where we are staying. I thought that was cool that I understand what they were saying.
From there, we called it a night. My feet hurt from walking. My ears are full of music still. I think it was a pretty full day. We get up and do it again tomorrow.
