Kim Massie Tuesday

Tonight, we finally made the pilgrimage back to Beale on Broadway to listen to Kim Massie sing.

To understand the significance we must turn back time to April 10th, 2010, nearly two years ago. I wrote about it then. Saori and I were in St.Louis for the first time, being courted by the school in their big open house. Our student host who picked us up at the airport, Bloom, insisted that no matter what we decided about Wash U, we had to hear this one woman sing. So he crammed a bunch of us in two cars and drove us to an abandoned part of the downtown, close to the river and the the train tracks and the stadium, around 10 o'clock at night. Silvino was there too. It was an amazing night.

Tonight, Silvino returned with us and this time, I drove, and we were able to get a table in the back so we didn't have to stand. Beale on Broadway is a roadhouse, really. A few beers on tap, a good selection of bottles, and a tiny stage. But it plays live blues 7 nights a week, and Kim Massie on tuesdays.

My only problem is the clientele. In the heart of one of most black areas of the metropolis, the only black people are the ones on the stage and the bouncer. Why they have a bouncer is beyond me- the median age looked to be about 40, and most people dressed like the second richest quintile. I don't have a problem with the "House of Blues" (or Cotton Club) phenomena as much as I have a problem with their musical tastes. I loves me some good blues, but those boomers love them some bad generational rock, and the band seriously plays for requests.

Don't get me wrong, Kim Massie is still phenomenal, regardless if she's singing "Whole Lotta Love," but I just wish we could stay on point musically. It's kind of like going to hear Aretha Franklin live in concert and people keep requesting ABBA songs.

What I'm wondering, and I wondered this before, when I went to the Blues festival in Webster grove and the streets were filled with middle agers, what I wondered was:

Where are the people my age? Is blues music just not on the radar? Is it not cool because its something that was really big to the gen Xers? It's really good music, it's much more accessible than say, jazz, and St.Louis is one of the three big river cities known from its blues scene. Miles Davis recorded Kind of Blue less than three miles from here. Ok, I can believe that some twenty-somethings go to the electropop/rap clubs, some go to Death Cab for Cutie concerts, and many stay home, but I'm surprised that for a generation supposed to be more open minded, we're still the youngest in the blues bar.