JB "Blues Masters" contest, the experience of a finalist (Page 1 of 3)

Hello All, My Name is Steve Balkun like i said in an earlier post i was one of the "lucky 10" to be chosen by Joe to be a finalist in Guitar Centers "Blues Masters" competition/contest. I want to say hello and glad to see so much chatter over this event and all the finalists, be it good or bad, happy or sad, glad or mad, whatever. I am writing to maybe give you some insight on how everything went from the "inside", beginning to end(from my point of view anyhow). It may help to answer some of the many questions and concerns many of you are expressing, whether you were in the contest or not. It also may bring up some new questions about exactly what the contest was really all about. And also give some of you die hard fans an interesting perspective on what it all was really like to have this very personal "experience" playing with Joe. i'd like to give as detailed an account of the entire contest/event as i can so I'm going to just start typing and bear with me if some of my thoughts and explanations are a little long winded or scattered. And remember this is all just from my point of view and from my personal experiences talking and being with with the other contestants, guitar center crew, Joe, the band, the fans and everyone involved.

First off a bit of backgroud about me:
Im 26 years old from West Hartford, CT. Ive been playing guitar since i was 16. I like all kinds of music and play all kinds of music, but I'm a huge blues lover and most everything i do is rooted deep in blues. I have a passion for playing music, and blues music especially, because its fun and makes me feel good and i can make other people feel good too. Which i think is my duty as a human with musical abilities, to help others feel good.
      My early influences are , id say, typical of a young blues/rock guitar player these days. Introduced to the blues through Hendrix, Stevie Ray, Clapton, Zeppelin, The Doors etc. and then discovering Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Elmore James, Albert King and the whole gang. I also grew up as a kid in the 90's and love Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Primus, Sublime and all that good stuff too. My Favorite guitar player is John Frusciante. And i have a great affection of old funk and soul. But my musical direction lately has more and more been driven by inspiration from the true blues masters like Son House, Charlie Patton, Bukka White, Big Joe Williams, Robert Johnson etc. Also, as I've been learning to play slide guitar more, I'm a big fan of guys like Johnny Winter, Eric Sardinas, Derek Trucks and Duane Allman. And being a more "modern" blues man myself i love the more modern rock/blues stuff like Gary Clark jr., Jack White, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Rev. Peyton. And of course i have always respected and loved what Joe Bonamassa has done, I've always agreed with and admired his take on an updated or modern style of blues, todays kind of blues, but still with an immense respect for the traditions of the past.
    I am also a certified professional luthier, I run a small custom/repair guitar shop called Balkun Guitars. The majority of the guitars I use to perform with are my own hand made custom instruments, but that's sort of besides the point here.

The beginning, entering the contest:
       Although I've been/am in many bands, More recently i have started out as a solo act, playing a more stripped down "delta" blues style of music and I was fortunate enough to enter and win the 2012 Connecticut Blues Society's solo/duo Blues Challenge and represent Connecticut at the 2013 International Blues Challenge in Memphis earlier this year as a solo act. I ended up as a top 8 finalist in the largest, most intense blues competition in the world, a real true blues competition with the best of the best from around the world. It was unbelievable and an extreme test of myself as a musician, performer, and person. But after that whole event I swore I was done with competitions for a while when, on the way home from memphis I got an email from guitar center about this blues contest, with non other than Joe Bonamassa, wow, pretty cool I thought. So thats when i heard of it and soon after decided to play along with some of the tunes and possibly enter. Even though it was Joe Bonamassa doing this contest it was still a Guitar Center contest and i was a little wary of that, as i had been in their 'king of the blues' and 'battle of the blues' competitions, where I won the store rounds each year, and then had some strange experiences with judges the next rounds. But, thats how it went and I figured this one would have to be better because it was actually Joe, seemingly, involved directly with it. And I thought it to just be cool to get to jam over Joe's tunes even though they aren't typical "blues" in a contest named "blues masters" but like i said i am open to a wide interpretation of modern blues.
     I decided to pick the tune "Blue and Evil' I always liked that tune. I haven't been playing slide guitar very long, but I thought it would be a cool opportunity to yet again test my limits and push myself to do something different, try something new, with this thing and see what I could do. I had also just recently designed and built a cool new electric resonator guitar that I was excited to start experimenting with, and what do ya know right in the intro video for the contest Joe says he thought it'd be cool to see someone do a take with a "dobro" to one of his tunes. So it was even more convincing that I should try that out, instead of playing my standard albert king/hendrix/stevie ray/buddy guy influenced style blues stuff.
    I worked out some parts, as the advice on the GC page was to not just solo over everything but to make the tune your own, as joe said "fingerprinting" it to your own style/tune.
So thats how I approached it and I took a few takes, and chose the last one for my video. Which can explain some of the "out of tune"-ness, but also I am known to play out of tune sometimes, I don't mind it. Many of the greats got away with it, I love that stuff, I'm sort of a warts-and-all type of player. I like how that take sounds personally, and realize it may not be some others cup-o-tea. But that's the sound of me testing my boundaries, straight from my soul, taking a chance doing something new even if its not "perfect". After all, as Beethoven is quoted, "to play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable."

The Contest process:
   Like many of you that entered the contest I went through the same pains, effort and work to put together my video, submit it, and then as much as I hated to, hound my friends and family, their friends and family, and their friends friends of friends, family, neighbors, cats, dogs. Everyone I could to get to watch that thing. I noticed that if you watched the video they only gave you a point, but if you "shared" it, it seemed to give you more points. I'm not sure if that was exactly true or what, but I started sharing that sucker all over the place, and accumulated a fair amount of points and views. I believe I ended up like 25th on the list or something. Also I will add that many of us(the finalists) did bring up the fact right to the GC people that the yoov contest platform for the videos was pretty awful, GC people tended to agree.

The Selection and announcement of the finalists:
   I, also like many of you, waited a long time to find out about the finalists. I actually starTed following this forum during the contest to find out more and to and see what other people were doing/saying. And when it was time around "early june" when the results were supposed to be announced I was watching this forum almost everyday to see if anyone knew anything. But as time went on I figured nothing came of it, they must have picked other people, and I was cool with it. I still really enjoyed the challenge of doing something new and getting a lot of people to see/watch it and a lot of people really dug it, made me happy, and made others happy. So that was good enough for me. It also made me feel good about the direction I was going musically, opened up some new ideas of what I could do with the slide guitar/heavy delta blues style stuff I had been heading towards.
   But just as I was starting to focus on the many other projects I have going on in my life like recording an EP, building new guitars, playing and booking shows, traveling and living, I received and e-mail from guitar center asking for my phone number. I thought hmmm maybe?? the next day I received a phone call from the guitar center people, asking for more of my info. They had to "check me out" confirm that I was not a "professional", and no I do not make even close to $20,000 a year playing music. which was their only standard for not being pro. So they called me a few days later and confirmed to me that I had been chosen as one of the 10 finalists, a surreal thought. And we were told we couldn't tell anyone, broadcast it on the internet anywhere or anything, GC had to do the official announcement. As I quickly got over the initial shock and realized what an opportunity was ahead of me it was hard not to say anything as you can imagine.
    So, they finally announced the finalists. I was still kind of surprised I got picked, and I saw the other guys that got picked and I had remembered seeing a bunch of their videos up and rather enjoying most of them. But It was a bit disheartening to come back to this forum and see what people were saying of the finalists, much of which was in a negative view. But I am all for difference of opinion and taste, so I figured most people just didn't find the same joy in these guys as I seemed to, or in my performing/style personally. But ya can't please everybody.
   
The Trip, preparation for finals:
    All of the finalists were notified with only about 3 weeks 'til the event. Maybe not even 3 weeks. It was a lot to prepare for in under 3 weeks. Thankfully for me the date fell on a weekend that I was completely free, some of the other guys had to completely re-arrange their lives to be there. I personally had never been to California or the west coast, so I was thrilled just for the chance to see a new place and have a new adventure. And I got to bring along my girlfriend and my parents and share the adventure with them too. As far as I was concerned anything other than that was just gravy, icing on the cake.
I, like all of the finalists, Practiced and prepared for the whole 2 and a half weeks before the show. I had specifically asked and been told, as did the other finalists, that the arrangement of the tune would be the same as the recording we played to. So that's what I practiced. Although i know the live version of "Blue and Evil" is a completely different than on Joe's recorded version, so i did practice that too just incase.

Arriving in LA for the finals:
     I was flown into LA the day before the finals, which was great so i could adjust to the time warp of jet lag, and relax a bit. I was picked up at the airport by a limo driver holding a sign with my name, just like in the movies, it was a freakin trip. What a first impression on L.A. Got driven to the hotel, and then presented with a packet  from GC of information about what all was going to happen at the finals. Also, surprised to find a generous "per-diem" gift card for use anyways we pleased from GC. Things were just getting better and better , like i said all just icing on the cake. So I chilled out and practiced a bit more before heading to sleep.

Day of the finals, meeting the other guys:
    As one might imagine, I couldn't sleep in the day of the finals. I had to wake up early and practice, get ready for the event. After all I'm going to be playing with Joe Bonamassa's band tonight. So, got ready and went down to meet in the hotel lobby with the other finalists as we were told to do and wait for the limo van to pick us up for the show. Upon meeting the other guys for the first time in the hotel lobby, I immediately was relieved and excited to find all of the guys to be extremely friendly and equally as excited for the adventure as I was. We all seemed to hit it off right off the bat like we were old friends, talking guitars, music, Bonamassa, it was nice.
   We all got in the van and rode to the show, continuing to chat and share our experiences with getting there. We had a lot of time to just hang together at the club too. The one thing I must say, that no matter what anybody thought of these guys and their playing, every single one of the finalists were exceptional people and amazing musicians in their own way. With so many "egos" in the music industry and especially associated with guitar players, it was incredible that everyone of these guys was extremely humble and non-egotistical about everything that was happening. We were all there to have fun, to have and share an experience that only the 10 of us were lucky enough to be presented with. We all had something different to offer, and were sharing thoughts and ideas, passing around our guitars to check out, jamming together, and in general just enjoying the moment with each other. Which really is what it was all about, for me, and for most of if not all of the finalists.

The GC crew:
    I would also like to say for as much as I expected Guitar Center to sort of just be in this for the promotion, which obviously some of it was, the Guitar Center crew that was working directly with us as the finalists were amazing. They did everything they could to make us comfortable, feel excited and ready, fed us food, booked our flights and hotels, arranged our rides, organized the whole event, and they flat out just treated us like rock stars for a couple days. I don't know why I didn't expect that, but I am very happy that that is how they handled everything. And for all that are wondering(as far as we were told), yes, it was confirmed by the GC head coordinator that Joe did in fact hand pick the 10 of us, it was not some guitar center secretary that doesn't know anything about guitar. It was Joe himself, and that's why it took so long, he actually reviewed all the top 100. So if you don't agree with the choices, well I guess take it up with Mr. Bonamassa. But the guitar center people, the camera crew, the crew at the venue, everyone involved in making the show happened were amazing and extremely professional.

Rehearsal and Meeting Joe Bonamassa:
    Now some of you in this forum may have had personal experiences with meeting Joe Bonamassa, and all I heard about from everybody that had ever been around him was that he was a cool dude and a good guy. For me I had always gotten that sort of down-to-earth vibe from him and really related a lot to his ideas and styles as regards to music. So I was pretty excited to meet him, as a young musician he's someone I do look up to. This is my experience.
    When we all first walked into the club we were directed right into the green room(backstage) Joe was already there setting stuff up, and said a quick hello as we all passed by. Was pretty cool, at least to me, to see him right there in front of me. a bit star struck maybe. But we all went back stage as Joe and his band set up and sound checked. We were then told, to all of our surprise, that Joe would be playing with us for the finals. We all took a moment to let that sink in….WHAT?! Not only do we not get to play with his band, but he's going to be on stage right next to us backing US up?? crazy, surreal. It was a small stage too, so Joe was practically breathing down the back of our necks as we played, as he "judged" us. No pressure. We all sort of freaked out for a minute and then realized how cool that was and we all almost felt better to have him on stage with us rather than sitting at a table in front of us evaluating everything we do. So we all were cool with it.
    We all got to each have a rehearsal/soundcheck with the band before the show. This was good and bad. It was good because we got the practice, it was bad because Joe and the band decided they would change all of the arrangements. Most of them anyways. This was to "make it fair"(or so was said) so the people with the longer tunes didn't get 7 or 8 minutes while others for 4 or 5. which seemed fair to me. But just another curve ball thrown at us. Which we all accepted though we all had prepared differently. So one by one in the order we were to appear to had rehearsals, it was a bit funny at the time that some of the tunes, the contestants had to actually remind Joe of how they went exactly. Imagine telling joe he's playing HIS song wrong, nerve wracking for those guys to say the least I felt. But they joked about it and got the new arrangements down.
    My song, was changed as well, simplified in ways, which I didn't mind really. And Joe worked out with me that they would play an extended version of the chorus at the end of the tune so that i'd have a nice groove to solo over and get to do my thing for a couple minutes. The arrangement was changed but I liked the idea of the extended solo at the end anyhow, so that was cool. And everyone sounded good in rehearsal. Even with only minutes to learn the new arrangements. 
    But other than those few minutes working out the changed tunes on stage with joe, thats about all the talking we got to do with him. Although now that i think of it he did say to me that he remembered the dissonant slide riff from my video, so he did in fact watch the videos.

The Performances:
    I won't evaluate them one by one, but i'll say that every single one of the finalists were fantastic. Their live performances and passion for playing, along with their great attitudes just blew me away. I was happy to be apart of this group, they all were there having fun, cheering each other on. Never once did I feel anybody was in this to be "better" than anyone else or to beat anyone else. It felt like being on a special team assembled for just one night only, everyone with different skills and personalities, but with the only objective being to rock out as hard and awesome as possible. Not as separate contestants but together as a whole. Many of the contestants were aware of the ill feeling that many of the inter-web world were expressing towards our playing in the submission videos, and many didn't care. We all were the ones there, the ones chosen by Joe. And we were going to have the best time we could with the opportunity we had and show people what a fine and talented group we were.
   I also must mention that, aside from having the tunes changed on us, we also were not given a monitor on stage for us to hear ourselves. Many of us asked the crew for one and they didn't give us one. Not sure why, but the band and joe had all of them I think. So all of us all equally could not hear ourselves on stage, hardly at all. But we all just kind of took it like gentlemen and dealt with it, sometimes you have to deal with awful stage sound live I know, but this was bad. Non-existant sound on stage. It may have sounded great out in the crowd but on stage was a true challenge of our auditory seances. And for the two of us playing slide, it was even harder to guess what the heck our slided notes were sounding like. But just another curveball they threw at us, and we accepted it.
   
My personal performance:
     When it came time for me to perform I was excited, as you can imagine, but focused and ready to go. Ready to get to do my thing and rock out with joe and the band, have fun, and give a good performance. The crowd had a great vibe and energy and I felt comfortable out on stage with this energy. I started into "Blue and Evil' with the shortened intro as practiced in rehearsal, then verse, then chorus, then verse 2, then chorus…all the while feeling more comfortable on stage and just relaxing and having fun with it. I could feel the energy of the crowd enjoying the tune as well too, it was fantastic. I hit some wrong notes, and couldn't hear a lick I was playing but I didn't care, I was having a great time…So intro, verse, chorus, verse 2, chorus 2, then…extended solo section lke we practiced right?…..no…..they stopped…..they ended the song. No extended solo section that we had just rehearsed. As I prepared to really try and let loose and get the energy flowing in the tune and take a nice slide guitar solo, joe signaled to the band to end the tune. Why? I do not know. I looked at him, as you may notice in the video, with a look of slight shock/confusion/befuddlement to see if this were a mistake and they would continue the song, since I had only been playing for a little over 2 and a half minutes, maybe they would go into the solo section and they just hit an unexpected break right then. But no, they all kind of just looked at each other un-confidently and ended the song. I really couldn't believe it, still can't really. I even tried to sort of extend the ending after that with a little feedback hoping maybe just maybe that wasn't the end, maybe I really didn't just get cut off like that. But I did. That was it. And I will never know why that happened. Im not sure if it was a mistake, if the band just messed it up, didn't remember the ending. Or if they just didn't like what i was doing, or they just didn't care what the heck was going on, or what. Either way it was very disappointing. And any way I look at it, for me it was a very unacceptable mistake to make for such a seasoned pro band at such an event. I only played from beginning to end for 2 minutes 46 seconds. Well short of the 5:40 that original the song is, well short of the around 5 minutes we were all promised to keep it "fair". Well short of everybody else's time that they got to perform. I felt robbed, I felt like I didn't even get to do what I was there to do. And what I was there to do wasn't about "winning" at all, for me it was all about the experience, getting this amazing chance to perform with a hero and showcase some of my talents to a lovely crowd and have a good time and help make the crowd have a good time too. Yet, because of this inexplainable "mistake" by the band I was not even afforded that full chance.
    Now, I am a very quiet, relaxed, calm, non-confrontational type of dude. I like to make everybody happy and not complain, so I shook Joe's hand politely and walked off stage. All though at the time inside I felt like smashing my guitar and unleashing the fury of the gods at the band for screwing up my tune, but that is not respectful, or professional at all. Joe said "good job" though I wish I had got some more honest feedback than that, maybe "you were awful" or "that was ok but work on this.." something, anything. But there was no such time for that. I did tell the GC people what happened and they felt bad but once something like that happens, it has happened and there is absolutely nothing to do about it. So I just sat back watched the rest of the amazing performances and accepted my fate that night. It was not meant to be. I was not meant to have my full chance to perform that night.
I'll also note that the band "changed"/ "messed up" / "cut short" a few other guys tunes as well as mine at the finals performance, but mine was by far the most extreme. I know not if this was intentional, a "test" of sorts, but if it was it was a strange way to go about it.

Reflections of the Experience:
   Although at first I was kind of upset about how it all worked out, I still had/have this overrunning feeling of positivity out of this experience. I had expected nothing of this contest, I didn't even expect to get picked as a finalist. But since I did get picked as a finalist I had an expectation of what it was going to be like. I did not expect to win and was not worrying about that. I did however, expect to get an experience of a lifetime to play with an amazing "mega-professional" band, that would really be tight and know the tunes well and have a great time. And I did expect to get my full turn to do my thing. And that did not happen. Though all the finalists, the crew, the GC people, the camera crew everyone involved seemed to be at the top of their games and extremely professional and prepared, the band had a different vibe for me. I felt a strange distancing of Joe and the band from us and a lack of real genuine interest in this whole event. They hardly even looked at us onstage. As if it were something they "had" to do and just wanted to get in, get out, and be done with it as soon as possible. Without any real passion, preparation, or excitement for all that was happening. And I know many of the other guys felt the same, which was so disheartening because all of us had put in so much effort and time for this and were all extremely excited for this. I will never know why the band acted such, why they couldn't remember their own tunes well, or why they cut many of us short, and cut my performance nearly in half, didn't really talk to us much and got out of the place early. It to me its a case of actions speaking volumes, whatever the reasons whatever was going on with them, something was off. This to me didn't seem how I had always pictured Joe's vibe. Im the kind of guy that likes to give people, especially people I like and admire, the benefit of the doubt. I do also understand he is a busy rockstar with much to do, and he's human. So maybe he was having a bad day, or maybe it was a bad deal with guitar center, or maybe he really didn't like us or maybe he didn't want to be there, or was just there for the promotion and paycheck, for whatever reason, who knows, it just seemed off. The excitement everyone else at the event showed, I felt, did not get genuinely shown back from the band. unfortunately.
    And even though the set Joe played after our contest was absolutely rippin', mind blowing, they were supposed to play 3 songs. And only played 2, the whole night ended an hour and a half early. Why couldn't they have played 3 songs for the fans? why couldn't we all have gotten our full tunes? I don't know. I thought we were all supposed to be having fun, did they not have fun? i dont know. Even the way the winner was announced was kind of Joe just sort of half heartedly mumbling and then saying Matt's name. It was very strange to me and the others. Not to take anything away from Matt (winner), I thought he was absolutely great as was everybody, very deserving. Anyone of them could have deserved this. Although if by some fluke I had somehow been chosen the winner I was very much prepared to say i didn't think i deserved it at all.
   But anyhow, like i said, with all that happened, I still feel a great sense of positivity about this. I am extremely proud to have been one of those 10 guys because of the fact of how great those guys were as players and people. It was a true honor to be introduced to them and I now have 9 new friends I would have never met otherwise. They threw curveball after curveball at all of us and all these guys knocked it out of the park every time, responded to all the challenges like pros. We all have already been talking about collaborating on new projects and its just awesome to be connected through this experience with them. And even though Joe and his band cut me off and seemed out of it, which was hard to swallow, I still feel it to be incredibly cool to have even had that opportunity to play with him and the whole band.  It is one thing to meet one of your heroes, it is another to be called to share such a seemingly personal experience, such as playing music together, with them. It is something I won't forget ever. Whether it went the way I had expected or not. It is all a huge learning experience which I believe will prove it's self more valuable than I can even imagine as I go on forward from this.
   Also I am extremely glad, that even though I was up there for not even 3 minutes, I still managed to somehow get across some good feelings and energies to and from the audience. I had many people afterwards from the crowd that had so many great a positive things to say to me, "i thought you were great" "great job" "loved your style" "you were my favorite and i wanted you to win" "i really enjoyed your set" "you're gonna be great" "loved your energy" All of these great compliments from strangers on a performance I absolutely knew was extremely sub par for me or anyone in my situation. But even though I only got 2 minutes 46 seconds, I still managed to do my job as musician and make people feel good, make people happy. Which, even though at the time I was bummed, made me feel good.
And after it all I still got to hang out in beautiful california for a few days. So not a bad deal. and I guess I won a guitar, an amp and some other gear, not too bad either.

So there you have it folks, thats my story. Thats how it all went down for me. And to those of you that are upset and think that this contest wasn't fair to you or you think your video didn't get watched or think you were better and deserved to be there more than any of the finalists or thought all the finalists were awful, just think of how all that happened to us and how you would have handled yourself. These 10 guys were top notch, class acts, super talented and most of all they all played form the heart, I for one highly approve of all of them. And as far as i know so did Mr. Joe Bonamassa.

peace and good music to all!
-Steve Balkun