RHAPSODIES IN BLUE

For someone about to headline a blues festival, John Bigham sure is reluctant to identify himself with the genre — or any genre, for that matter.

He has a legitimate claim to musical diversity. He’s played with Miles Davis and Eminem, Bruce Hornsby and Everlast. As guitarist and keyboard player for rock/funk/ska band Fishbone, he shared Lollapalooza’s main stage with Alice in Chains and Primus.

The eponymous debut of his current band, The Soul of John Black, blended hip-hop, funk and, yes, soul.

But when this sonic butterfly lights in Colorado Springs for Saturday’s Blues Under the Bridge show, he’ll be returning home — at least musically.

“I’m from Chicago,” Bigham said. “You hear blues on the radio all the time. I grew up listening to it. Rock music is more like something I found; blues is more like something that was there.”

Bigham’s band will likely be the least traditional act at this new one-day blues festival. The Soul of John Black will join Mississippi-born Robert Belfour and locals John-Alex Mason and the Jake Loggins Band.

The concert was conceived by Don Goede of Smokemuse, a design studio that fronts on the Depot Arts District parking lot where the concert will be held.

Goede was impressed by last September’s Flaunt fashion show, staged in the same lot.

“It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in Colorado Springs,” Goede says. “I’m totally diggin’ on the energy. I pretty much decided to do a series of concerts.”

To his knowledge, Blues Under the Bridge will be the first concert ever held in the city-owned lot under the Colorado Avenue bridge.

If all goes well, he envisions a near future in which everything from avant-garde music festivals to symphony performances can share the quirky space.

“If this combination works, there’s all kinds of things (we can do).”

On the subject of all kinds of things, Bigham doesn’t plan to limit Saturday’s set to songs from his latest album, “The Good Girl Blues” (see review below).

He figures that’s OK, since the tradition of blues has itself been built on change.

“When Muddy Waters went to Chicago, he started playing the electric blues,” he says, “and now there’s a thing called ‘The Chicago blues.’”

We’ll see if he can electrify a thing called “Blues Under the Bridge.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0183 or christopher.short@gazette.com

details

Blues Under the Bridge

When: 6 p.m. Saturday

Where: Beneath the Colorado Avenue bridge

Tickets: $20 or $25 at the door

On the Web: www.bluesunderthebridge.com

Lineup: 6:30 p.m. — John-Alex Mason 8 p.m. — The Jake Loggins Band 9:30 p.m. — Robert Belfour 11:00 p.m. — The Soul of John Black

Free parking at Antlers garage. Take a chair and a blanket; no pets allowed.

CD REVIEW THE GOOD GIRL BLUES

The Soul of John Black’s new blues album, due out Tuesday, meanders from subgenre to subgenre, from the spiritual-inspired opener, “The Hole,” to the slidey, elastic “Swamp Thang.”

All along, it threatens a tangential trip to some other genre altogether, but never snaps its tether. If a listener didn’t know better, this could easily be the work of a blues man dabbling in various styles, rather than the other way around — an impressive feat. John Bigham’s soulful voice imbues the whole affair with gravity and humor at the same time, and his restrained guitar work covers a wide range with seemingly little effort.

Then there’s the rhythm section, which ties it all together with some big, bouncy bass. The case may say blues, but your booty will hear hip-hop.

Bigham, incidentally, also plays drums.

The bad news? Many of the songs are underwritten and repetitive, running about a minute too long. It’s a small complaint, but it makes the album most suitable for listening to while doing something else. In fact, it would best complement a specific something else, one that’s not polite to mention in a family newspaper.

All in all, “Good Girl” is just the kind of album that could bring the blues to a wider audience. Of course, Bigham and his band will likely have moved on to another style by then.

CHRISTOPHER SHORT, THE GAZETTE