As the dawn rose on January 1st 2010, few could have guessed that the contemporary blues would experience a vibrant revival during the decade with the emergence of dozens of new popular artists that were reinterpreting the blues and appealing to a broader audience. The previous two decades had been a blues doldrum period with very few blues artists signed to major record labels and the blues music being played on the radio was largely consigned to Sunday mornings. The brief heyday of pop culture attention to blues music in the 1980’s ended with the death of Stevie Ray Vaughan in the spring of 1990. If you didn’t frequent blues clubs in your local market, you heard very little contemporary blues at all!
But two things emerged during the 2010 decade that breathed new life into the blues; the advent of cheap internet streaming and the Do It Yourself blues recording artist. Low cost internet streaming services began to flourish and “mini stations” began to pop up all over North America and Europe spinning contemporary blues. Each individual station only reached 100 to 1000 listeners but as the number of stations grew (largely manned by non profit organizations and individuals), the aggregate audience by my estimation grew to 500, 000 listeners or so per hour worldwide. Not major numbers by terrestrial broadcast standards but more than enough to attract the interest of local blues artists looking for an audience other than the local blues circuit of clubs. And, as the decade wore on, streaming music on your phone became easier and the ability to listen through your car speakers freed urban workers from the drudgery of repetitive classic rock, country, hip hop, pop, and talk radio on the drive to and from work. And to top it off, for a premium, you could listen to the blues on the SiriusXM B.B. King Blues Channel.
At the same time that new audiences and markets for the contemporary blues were emerging in the 2010’s, the costs for artists to record, produce, and release their own music were dropping dramatically. Low cost digital software that works on any computer tied together a slew of instruments and microphones and allowed blues artists to create, produce, and control their own music…..the holy grail of artistic freedom. One of the early adopters of this method of recording is also one of the current stars of the contemporary blues…Joe Bonamassa.
After releasing two studio albums for a major record label but being dissatisfied with the pressure to produce music that he didn’t want to record, Joe set up his own company in 2003. Combining savvy marketing with world class recording and a relentless commitment to touring, by 2009, Joe Bonamassa had attracted the attention of Eric Clapton and laid the groundwork for the explosive growth of his popularity during the 2010’s.
Who were the contemporary blues artists that emerged in the 2010 decade besides Joe Bonamassa? And what artists from the golden age of the blues in the 1950’s continued to thrill audiences 60 years later? I will begin to write about them in the next of a series of articles about the contemporary blues in the 2010’s. I hope you will read along with me!! And PLEASE comment on the article. Were there other major factors that I missed? Are there artists from the 2010 decade that deserve special mention in upcoming articles? Do you think a book about blues artists from the 2010’s would be interesting?
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Ben Vee started out spinning songs on terrestrial radio and at nightclubs back in the 1970’s in his home state of Louisiana. After a career in the construction business, he returned to DJing in 2011. He now hosts two shows each week on http://www.bluesmusicfan.com and writes about the blues at http://www.benveeblues.com from his home in Connecticut. He also has a personal 24 hour stream devoted to the Roadhouse Blues… WRHB as well as a Youtube channel.
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