'Coahoma Comes to Sonoma' Blues Fest This Weekend

Bill Bowker will admit that there's not a lot of similarity between Coahoma County, Mississippi and Sonoma County, California.

"Other than the name? No. The weather? No. It's flat there, and for so many  years cotton was king." We're talking at the Wine Country Radio headquarters on Standish Road south of Santa Rosa. There's an old Northern Pacific railcar attached to the building, and it's been partitioned into several offices. As signature radio personality of KRSH-FM, Bowker gets the end with no way out.

He's been doing a blues show on Sonoma County radio for over 30 years, since he moved here in 1979; it's currently aired Sunday evenings from 7 - 9, right after Charlie Musselwhite's own blues show. Bowker often serves as MC at the Russian River Jazz and Blues Festival in September, and he produced a Blues Concert at the Sonoma County Fair for many years, though the last one was in 2010.

This year, he's taking his interest and knowledge of the blues in a slightly different direction, organizing a two-day mini-festival called the Coahoma to Sonoma Mississippi Blues Festival on August 19 & 20, with the assist and hospitality of in Petaluma.

Even if you're a fan of the blues - Buddy Guy, BB King, Muddy Waters or Stevie Ray Vaughan - you may never heard of Coahoma.  You can be forgiven - it's the northern Mississippi county whose seat is Clarksdale.

If you've never heard of Clarksdale, forgiveness will be harder to come by.

"I've been going to Mississippi for quite some time, to Clarksdale specifically since the days maybe ten, eleven years ago when I went out with to the Blues Music Awards in Memphis," says Bowker in his distinctive hesitation baritone. "We went down to stay with some friends of his in Clarksdale. And really just fell in love with the place."

You could say Clarksdale is little more than a crossroads in the Mississippi Yazoo Delta, but in blues terms that's saying a lot. Highway 61 runs right through town, and U.S. Highway 49 crosses here from east to west. It is, or claims to be, the site of the legendary "crossroads" where Tommy Johnson sold his soul to the devil to learn to play the blues. Fans of "O Brother Where Art Thou," take note.

John Lee Hooker was born here, and there's a John Lee Hooker Avenue right downtown. Muddy Waters grew up on the Stovall Plantation just to the west, Robert Johnson surely played its street corners, Ike Turner drove from his Clarksdale home to Memphis to record "Rocket 88" in 1951, a song widely believed to be the first true rock'n'roll recording. Sam Cooke was also born here, Bessie Smith died here, but the blues lives on.

"It's kind of a Mecca, if you want to use that word," says Bowker. "It's real, it's not phonied up at all, it's unique.  There's something there." Such as several "juke joints" or blues clubs, including the Morgan Freeman co-owned Ground Zero, as well as the Delta Blues Museum partially funded by Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top.

The impetus for this month's mini-fest has long been percolating for Bowker. "The idea was just to expose the Delta Blues to the Sonoma County audience," and that in a nutshell is the connection between Coahoma and Sonoma.

Two Mississippi blues musicians will be coming out for the two-day festival at Lagunitas in Petaluma, Lightnin' Malcolm and Watermelon Slim. Neither of them was born there, but both have become proponents of the northern Mississippi style of blues, especially the so-called "Hill Country" blues of Junior Kimbrough, Jessie Mae Hemphill and R.L. Burnside.

The two-day event will feature both performers on both days, with Lightnin' Malcolm playing an acoustic set on Sunday and with an electric band on Monday. As well as the raw working man's blues of Watermelon Slim, other performers include Coyote Slim, a country blues player currently living in Sonoma County; David Jacobs-Strain, a virtuosic slide guitar player and storyteller; and the Coahoma to Sonoma Blues All-Stars, with Sarah Baker, Steve Pile, Donny Maderos and Gary Silva.

The venue is the, a grassy knoll facing a small stage. Lagunitas' sponsorship is a natural - not only because of owner Tony Magee's enthusiasm for the music (he does a very respectable set of Mississippi John Hurt), but because the local craft brewery is expanding its distribution into the Southern States market.

On Sunday, Aug. 19, the noon to 8 p.m. event is an blues party for all ages at Lagunitas, with no tickets required. For the Monday, Aug. 20 amphitheater concert for ages 21 and older, the doors open at 4:20, for some inexplicable reason, and music starts around 5. (Update: tickets are now gone for the Aug. 20 show.)