Birmingham, City Stages Rocked

I should have posted this sooner. I'm not good with set lists, sorry. But the whole weekend at City Stages was incredible. We didn't linger around long on Sunday, but by then we'd already started off with Joe B on Friday night and continued on with Blind Melon, North Miss Allstars/Hill Country Revue, Buddy Guy, Ben Harper, Jamie McLean, and the last act we watched was a teenage jazz band (the guitar player had stood with us all weekend).

This is a top-notch festival. Every act was excellent within their own genre of music. Everyone played their hearts out, albeit only for an hour (except the last acts each night).

Joe sounded great. He had an enthusiastic crowd that started off a little small but quickly built. Many folks were trying to get into town still and figure out the road closings. But everyone who walked up were pretty happy at Joe's performance.

Here's an article from http://www.al.com/citystages

City Stages review: Joe Bonamassa
by Jim Dunn -- The Birmingham News
Friday June 13, 2008, 7:22 PM

Joe Bonamassa
(Friday at 6:15 p.m., Miller Lite Stage)

Guitar phenom Joe Bonamassa opened up the Miller Lite Stage with a jaw-droppingly hot set Friday evening. Bonamassa swung from Stevie Ray Vaughan-like blues rock to greasy straight-ahead blues as good as anything to ever come out of Clarksdale, Miss. Bonamassa's blistering solo on "Woke Up Dreaming" made you feel empathetic for his poor, abused frets and strings.
Crowds and rock 'n' roll get evening going at City Stages