Grammy Reflections

As the Grammy excitement was going on, I was working on recording guitar parts for an interesting project at home, deep in a world of guitar, creating original parts that complement the songs, and focused on it completely. Now I’ve come up for air to find exciting aspects of the Grammy Awards. I’m thrilled that Bobby Rush won, he’s a legend who deserves to be recognized that way too. But I have been working recently with the Last Waltz 40 Tour with musicians who are well-known in the Americana World. It’s been fun and educational to play to their audiences. It seems to me that they receive the Blues I play on the Last Waltz shows well and there should be more overlap than there is between Blues and Americana. The fans are similar soulful music lovers. Illustrating that situation is this photo from December at Blind Willie’s with me and William Bell, who was in the audience. He won the Americana Grammy this year for his fine album “This Is Where I Live.” He is also nominated for Blues Music Awards and I bet he wins some. He is a Soul Music legend with hits from the early 1960s and is revered in that world too. Could it be, should it be, that soulful music lovers can get beyond the categories and find new and exciting music that way? From my recent perspective, I think so. What do you think?