Is the festival named after Robert Palmers Deep Blues book?
CJ: Yeah. It’s also a nod to the 1981 film. Robert Palmer was in there, and it was produced by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. It was kind of the first look by anybody into that area of music, guys like CeDell Davis, these guys down [in the South] who were totally obscure and overlooked and ignored by the mainstream. It’s not smooth. It’s not Chicago. There’s a thousand different blues festivals out there, and essentially none of them would have anything to do with any of these people. That’s changing a little bit. Italian blues duo Dirty TrainloadD: What possessed you to start up your own festival? CJ: Well, I’m 46, and I’ve been a music fan all my life. Several years back I saw a Johnny Winter show and T-Model Ford opened up for him. By learning about T-Model Ford I got into Fat Possum, and through those artists I found Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside and the whole North Mississippi thing that’s been going on. That’s how I got really interested in this really rough and punk blues,
