On Sunday, June 19th, The Mainstay in Rock Hall offers a special Father’s Day concert celebration with blues band Mark Hummel and the Blues Survivors. Showtime is at 7:00 p.m.
Long-time bandleader Mark Hummel started playing in bands when he was 14 in the “ghetto” clubs in the San Francisco area “where the real, exciting blues was to be found” according to him. In 1977, at the age of 18, he decided to pursue a career in blues music and formed his band, the Blues Survivors. By 1984 he began a life of non-stop touring of the United States, Canada, and Europe, sharing stages with the likes of blues giants Charles Brown, Charlie Musselwhite, Brownie McGhee, Eddie Taylor, and Jimmy Rogers. Hummel and his band are still on the road about 150 days of the year.
With more than 30 blues recordings, including the 2013 Grammy nominated release “Remembering Little Walter,” Hummel is considered one of the premier blues harmonica players of his generation. The music critic of the Chicago Sun-Times remarked that “Hummel plays the harmonica with the fat, full sound that made Little Walter sound almost like a saxophonist rather than a harp man”. Blues Revue Magazine commented that “Mark Hummel is one of a handful of the Best Players ever on the instrument. He is a harmonica God”.
Hummel describes his playing as follows: “I’ve always tried to do a cross section of tempos and styles in my music – fast songs, slow songs, rhumbas, boogaloos, shuffles, flat tires, Chicago Blues, West Coast Jump. Texas Blues Swing, New Orleans R&B, delta blues, soul music and soe funky beats thrown in here and there”.
Hummel also put together the first Blues Harmonica Blowout in 1991at Ashkenaz, a live music and dance venue in Berkeley. Each performer performed a 20-to-30 minute set and everyone jammed together with Hummel’s Blues Survivors band backing them. Over the next five years, the Blowout grew to become a multi-venue, four-night festival circulating in the Bay area’s best known music clubs.
Advance tickets are $20, and are available at www.mainstayrockhall.org. Telephone reservations are also accepted by calling 410-639-9133. The Mainstay is located at 5753 N. Main Street in Rock Hall. It receives funding from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Kent Cultural Alliance.
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