INTERVIEW: Jimmy “Duck” Holmes & Ryan Lee Crosby Bring Bentonia Blues to the Meadowlark Festival
09/13 @ Meadowlark Music Festival, Stone Ridge
Photo by Ben Foy
“I don’t need nothing but an amplifier and a microphone. I don’t need all Those extra knobs and extra effects. I didn’t learn that way. If you’re going to do the true blues, why put all the extra effects to it? You’re taking away from the real deal Blues. if that’s what the young people want to do, that’s fine, but I don’t do that.”
With a genre of music as influential and explored as the blues, you wouldn’t think there would be something new to discover. Well, that’s the case with Bentonia blues, originating from Bentonia, Mississippi with the first known recordings dating back to 1931. Enter Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, the owner of the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, Mississippi, which is the oldest operational juke joint in the state – at 79 years old, he is one of the last stewards of this unique style of blues.
Holmes never recorded until he was well into his fifties. Since then, he has been nominated for a Grammy, collaborated with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, and has played all over the country. Luckily for us Capital Region folks, we’ll have a chance to see him when he plays The Meadowlark Festival, a roots music festival happening at Stone Ridge Orchards in Stone Ridge, NY (11 miles SW of Kingston), along with his protege, Ryan Lee Crosby, on September 14th. This will be the first time that Holmes will be playing in the Northeast in roughly fifteen years, and in anticipation of this performance, we spoke on the phone with him, along with Crosby.
The Bentonia blues is said to be pioneered by Henry Stuckey, a World War I veteran who, unfortunately, was never actually recorded, though this style was passed on through the years by the likes of Skip James, Jack Owens, and, of course, Holmes. What makes this style so unique is that it is fairly self-contained, with shared songs, tunings, and styles.
“Jack Owens couldn’t make an egg, but he could tune a guitar to the spec(ification),” Holmes noted about his contemporary. “He didn’t know one string from the other, simply calling the big string the low end and the top string the high end. He was a natural born talent. [Other blues musicians] talk about twelve bar blues, but the guys that started [Bentonia style] didn’t know nothing about twelve bar blues – they knew how to play the guitar and they knew how to do the turnaround based on their feeling.”
As it turns out, Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys had taken interest in the Bentonia style and sought out someone he could learn from and explore the style more, which led him to Holmes. This led to Auerbach producing an album featuring Holmes called Cypress Grove, released in 2019. When I asked about the album, Holmes stated, “What he told me, was that out of all of the blues music, there was something about the Bentonia sound that he wanted to be a part of and wanted to record it. He searched the planet for someone who could play the Bentonia style and found me.”
Holmes also spoke about the challenges of amplification in the early days of Bentonia blues, sometimes playing in juke joints and other places with dirt floors. This led to the style being played hard and loud, with loud vocals in order to be heard so that the folks in the audience could dance.
“I don’t need nothing but an amplifier and a microphone,” Holmes said. “I don’t need all those extra knobs and extra effects. I didn’t learn that way. If you’re going to do the true blues, why put all the extra effects to it? You’re taking away from the real deal blues. If that’s what the young people want to do that’s fine, but I don’t do that.”
As for Crosby’s journey with the Bentonia style, he had planned a trip down to the Blue Front Cafe, and met Holmes after becoming intrigued by the style and the Blue Front Cafe. From there, they formed a friendship and, as it turns out, Crosby has a natural feel for things. As for his admiration for Holmes, he went on to say, “The Meadowlark Festival is a great opportunity for anyone in the Northeast who is interested in tried and true music. Blues is the foundation for all music as I hear it – it's really a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear Jimmy in the Hudson Valley. It’s something worth acknowledging.”
For more information on The Meadowlark Festival, visit their website at Meadowlark Music Festival.