{"id":13433,"date":"2017-10-17T05:30:06","date_gmt":"2017-10-17T09:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=13433"},"modified":"2017-10-09T11:38:02","modified_gmt":"2017-10-09T15:38:02","slug":"a-chat-with-river-valley-blues-fest-headliners-janiva-magness-and-grady-champion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/10\/17\/a-chat-with-river-valley-blues-fest-headliners-janiva-magness-and-grady-champion\/","title":{"rendered":"A Chat with River Valley Blues Fest Headliners Janiva Magness and Grady Champion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Growing quickly from a 2015 local event in a bar ten miles outside of town to its current form \u2013 a two-day event featuring world-class talent \u2013 this year’s River Valley Blues Festival boasted a lineup featuring internationally-touring headliners Grady Champion and Janiva Magness. The festival took place August 19 and 20 at Salvage Station.<\/p>\n

\"\"Champion of the Blues
\n<\/b>Blues has its roots firmly in the tradition of African Americans; it’s arguably the \u201cblackest\u201d of all musical forms. But Grady Champion isn’t surprised when he learns that he is the only person of color on the bill for the River Valley Blues Festival. \u201cA lot of festivals that we play are gonna be predominantly white performers,\u201d he says. While he admits that his own fan base is largely white, he says, \u201cif a young African-American has got an option to play blues or to play something else, he sees it\u2019s difficult to make a living playing the blues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Champion’s take on the blues begins with familiar, solid influences \u2013 in conversation, he mentions John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy and Johnny Winter \u2013 and applies a sensibility that draws from gospel and hip-hop. \u201cA lot of the older blues guys always said that you can\u2019t really sing the blues unless you’ve been to church,\u201d says Champion, who grew up in small-town Mississippi, one of a family of 28 children. \u201cWhat we did every Sunday was go to church, and we got it in us first.\u201d<\/p>\n

His immersion in hip-hop would come much later. In the early 1990s he began his musical career as a rapper, branding himself MC Gold. Looking back on that period, Champion believes it helped create a foundation for the blues he sings and plays today. \u201cBeing a rapper really gave me the upper hand as far as writing stories and lyrics,\u201d he says, noting that that background gives his music a \u201cbit of a different feel.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it all grows from the same place,\u201d Champion says.<\/p>\n

Winner of the 2010 International Blues Challenge and a multiple Blues Music Awards nominee, Grady Champion has released nine albums to date; his newest, One of a Kind<\/i>, will be released in September. Champion’s original music is based more upon \u201cfeel\u201d than preconceived notions about what is or isn’t blues. <\/p>\n

\u201cSome people push the non-growth of blues,\u201d Champion says. He says that the marketplace \u201cforce-feeds artists that basically sit down and play; they probably just read off a paper. They think blues is just 12 bars, sitting down, no energy.\u201d He says his brand of blues is steeped in a tradition of high energy. \u201cWhen I get on that stage,\u201d Champion says, \u201cThey’re gonna know, ‘Oh, this<\/i> is the blues.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nHard-won Happiness<\/b>
\nThough Janiva Magness is white, she comes by her blues honestly. Both her parents took their own lives when she was young; as a subsequent foster teen, she had a hard life that at age 17 included giving up a baby for adoption. <\/p>\n

Magness would eventually find solace singing the blues, though her recording career wouldn’t begin until the singer was in her mid 30s. She has released twelve albums \u2013 her newest EP, Blue Again<\/i> is due later this year \u2013 yet for many years Magness sang songs written by others. But beginning with her Grammy-winning 2016 album Love Wins Again<\/i>, she put her efforts into songwriting. Sharing stories from her struggles \u201cmakes for the possibility for connection with other human beings,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

And with that sharing comes healing. \u201cSometimes it’s incremental little millimeters at a time,\u201d she says, \u201cand sometimes it’s huge leaps. But it’s still forward motion.\u201d<\/p>\n

But with that forward motion can still come a look back at the artists who have influenced Magness. She describes the upcoming Blue Again<\/i> EP \u2013 which she’ll preview at the festival \u2013 as \u201ca pretty potent collection of some of my favorite covers and artists: Etta [James], Bo [Diddley], Nina [Simone] and more. It’s raw and right back to the taproot for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two Days of Music<\/b>
\nAhead of the event, organizer Zuzu Welsh told me that this year’s River City Blues Festival would feature seven local acts in addition to Magness (Saturday’s headliner) and Champion (Sunday’s festival closer), including Ashley Heath, Paper Crowns, Moses Jones, Dirty Badgers, Roots & Dore, Virginia & the Slims, all hosted by the Zuzu Welsh Band.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing quickly from a 2015 local event in a bar ten miles outside of town to its current form \u2013 a two-day event featuring world-class talent \u2013 this year’s River […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13436,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41],"tags":[237,3212,2699,3213],"class_list":["post-13433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-interview","tag-asheville","tag-grady-champion","tag-janiva-magness","tag-river-city-blues-festival","cat-9-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13437,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13433\/revisions\/13437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}