The Redwood Coast Music Festival was an ecstatic experience, an overwhelming banquet of music and friendship. (If that seems hyperbolic, I can adopt Eddie Condon’s highest praise, “It didn’t bother me.)
Before we get to the music, something about transportation and the town. If one flies to the festival, the closest airport is Arcata, with two gates, one luggage carousel, an intermittently-closed snack bar: a charming reminder of what air travel must have been in 1958. Eureka is a lovely town, full of restaurants and hand-done murals, intriguing shops. And if one abandons the music for a minute, there are redwoods to marvel at and a splendid down-home town, Trinidad, to explore. This year I did no exploring, because I was greedily trying to see all the music I could.
By my yardstick, I failed in that attempt, seeing only eighteen sets in four days. That might seem like enough, but the RCMF offers one hundred sets and, at times, eight venues simultaneously. It’s head-spinning in its variety, from St. Louis and Chicago and New Orleans blues to zydeco, from Western Swing to Jelly Roll Morton and Chicago hot, with wonderful singers and multi-instrumentalists generously sharing their talents.
Trumpeter James O’Donnell: The Motor City Jazz Maestro
Brian Sheridan
