Barrelhouse Bonni Sings the Blues
Barrelhouse
Blues
from Nov/Dec issue of The Americana
Rhythm Magazine
I had a reader tell
me, ‘hey, don’t forget about the blues.’
Hey, I love the blues! There’s plenty of it in and
around the valley. And here’s your chance to get a
unique serving of it. On Saturday, November 18th the Art
Group of Shenandoah County will be hosting Art Of The
Blues. And among the entertainers on tap will be a most
unique musician, Bonnie McKeown, better know as
“Barrelhouse” Bonnie.
“The blues is a music that was created by African
Americans to cope with hard times, and its music that
I’ve loved since I was in college,” Bonnie told
me. “I grew up during the soul era, and I loved
Motown. And somebody told me, ‘hey if you like this
stuff, you ought to try Johnny Lee Hooker.’ And so I
learned what the Blues was. But I really didn’t know
that much about it. I never thought I could play it
because my background isn’t there. You know, when
you feel it you can play it. I think there’s a roll
for a lot of people to play the blues, but for it to be
authentic, the real soul of the blues comes out of the
African American Communities.”
Bonnie’s passion for the music fueled her desire to
really immerse herself into the study of it. “I
really wanted to study that community,” she said,
“and be part of that community to really understand
the music itself. Being from West Virginia, I decided to
move to Chicago, because obviously there is a much bigger
African American community here (in Chicago). There are
just so many black musicians in Chicago to hang around
with.”
But the Philadelphia born, West Virginia raised McKeown
quickly learned that there is truly basis for the passion
behind blues music. “I was in Chicago for two years,
and I’ve had enough. I’m moving back (to
Charleston, West Virginia). It’s been two years of
eye opening experiences; Living where they live, hanging
around those musicians.”
It Ain’t So Easy
They say blues is a simple music to learn to play,
“but it’s a hard music to play well,”
Bonnie said. “The element of getting the feeling
into it, the soul into it, that’s what people miss.
Like in Jazz, you can be technically good at it. But the
blues requires that you put yourself into it. And
I’m still working on that, because I get scared
sometimes. You know, you have to show yourself to people,
your inner feelings, and it’s not something everyone
can do, even if they’re a good musician. The blues
musicians come out of a very rough background. They have
to get their feelings out and that’s why they do it
so well.”
The blues can be credited as the basis of American
popular music today. “But the blues musicians are
still not getting their due,” she said.
“You’ve got one or two high profile musicians
like BB King and Buddy Guy, but there are plenty of
people that play better than Buddy Guy right here in
Chicago today, and they are simply not getting their due.
Blues is a cultural resource. And the musicians a lot
like our Appalachian old timers, are dieing out. People
have set out to capture their music (Appalachian) on
recordings to preserve it for the future so people can
learn it. But for some reason they don’t think
it’s as necessary for the blues. I think plenty of
people would take it up as an art form if it were
economically rewarding. But what I’ve found is that
these musicians are taken advantage of still today. And
they still have all the problems of living in the Ghetto.
And so to get yourself together personally in the face of
a lot of adversity, it’s very difficult. I’ve
found it not to be possible (to survive that way) for me
at this point. That’s why I’m moving back.
It’s that bad. The white rock-blues bands have under
cut and under bid the real blues guys and have gotten all
the club gigs. This town is merciless, and it’s sad.”
Blues In A Barrelhouse
So Bonnie takes all these experiences and brings them
together into her music and her performances. She prefers
the Barrelhouse style because of its roots and
authenticity.
“I went to the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins WV
to learn how to play the blues. You know, they have these
weeks that you can go learn how to play different kinds
of music. Well, they have a blues week and the blues
piano teachers were people like Ann Rabson, and some of
the uppity blues women. One of the teachers was talking
about how he used to play in a Barrelhouse. If
you’ve seen the move The Color Purple, that scene
with the juke joint, that’s pretty much like how it
was. It was usually very primitive shacks that the
African Americans in the south throw up to recreate in.
The only night they had off was Saturday night from
working in the cotton fields, or lumber yards. And they
would all go to these Barrelhouses and throw a huge party.
And a lot of times the only bar was a plank stretched
across two barrels – which gave it the name
Barrelhouse. So the kind of piano I aspire to play is
this all night long boogie woogie style. It’s not
frantic but it’s this rhythmic style. And you can
still find it sometimes down south. Like Willie King, a
combination of old time juke and soul. I love that stuff,
trance, one chord stuff.”
“Music is a life giving force and it helped me when
I was down. That’s why a lot of people listen to the
blues. It’s better than drugs. It’s a good
thing that won’t harm your body. You can listen to
it and feel better. The blues is not sad music. It’s
music that’s based on a hard time, but a lot of
times they’ll turn it around and make fun of it and
make an upbeat little ditty tune to go with it. And
that’s the way the blues is.”
I was born in Philadelphia but I spent half my life in
rural West Virginia. My family runs a summer resort there.
We had a difference of opinion and so I lost my job there
eight years ago.
I took piano lessons when I was a kid. Once I learned
some of the traditional, classical music, I started
improvising on chord progressions. Of course my teachers
didn’t like it. But there was no teachers at that
time to teach improvisation. And so later when I was a
teenager I took up folk guitar, because it was the folk
craze going on. So I learned to play the guitar and I
learned a little about chords. Then I got my high school
teacher to teach me chords on the piano. That was all the
information I had to draw on to learn to play the blues.
But the rest has to do with feeling and rhythm.
Live music is under threat everywhere, all forms of it.
But I believe there is an answer to it. But it’s
going to take a cooperation between tourism entities and
non prophet organizations interested in preserving live
music. It all has to be coordinated together, advertising,
artist and venue compensation, and educating the public.
This cuts across all live music formats. If the tourism
people would understand what kind of attraction live
music is and would get together with these list keepers (community
music colanders), and help promote the live music in
their communities. These lists are gold but not many
people know about them. Live music is competition with
computers and TV, DVD players. People have become couch
potatoes and we need to help them understand that
they’re missing out on this live art form. If live
music is lost, we’re going to really loose a very
important element to our culture, not just the blues but
all forms of live music. To see the artist live, the
unpredictability, is what is fun. You see what the
players on stage are doing and how they cope with
adversity and how they work together. It’s like
watching a baseball game. There’s a level of
unpredictability and spontaneity there. It’s part of
the fun. And how people reach out to your feelings, you
can’t get that on a recorded CD. If we could form a
Society For Preservation Of Live American Music (SPLAM)
in every community then we could make sure that live
music survives for future generations.
Did your passion come from Chicago ….
You put little funny asides even into the sad songs.
It’s helped me to survive and a lot of other people
to survive tough times. Because of the way the society is
right now it like everything that is old is just
discarded. Now the Hip Hop people are complaining about
the same thing. How hip hop has been taken over by the
mainstream culture. Now it’s no longer the
expression of black rage which is how it started out.
Now’s it just imitated and purveyed that culture as
the lowest common denominator and smutty. So what started
out as a form of protest music is now no longer a
representation of the culture that created it. It’s
just like the blues. It’s been perverted. This
culture takes everything and waters it down and perverts
it. You have to build up an alternative system right
beside the old system. But you have to do it with people
that have standing in the community who want to build up
the local economy.
I hope to do some blues teaching in WVA when I return and
just continue to do my thing. www.barrelhousebonni.com
She co-produced
a highly acclaimed album with Chicago
blues singer-drummer Larry Taylor, which
is now on the ballot for a Grammy
nomination.
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