Johnny Winter
Aside from Johnny Winter‘s posthumous award for Best Blues Album for his Step Back – the late guitarslinger’s first Grammy win for his own music, despite three of the albums he produced for Muddy Waters having won Grammys a few decades back – and six-time Grammy winner Buddy Guy being recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award, there wasn’t nearly as much blues music being celebrated at this weekend’s Grammy Awards as we had hoped there might be. Roseanne Cash bested triple nominee Keb’ Mo’ in two of the categories (Best Americana Album and Best Americana Performance, where she also beat out a joint offering from Gregg Allman and Taj Mahal) in which Keb’ was nominated, while Beck won out in the third category, for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical. Keb’ was of course gracious, posting on social media that his “award” was to be honored by his peers with nominations in three categories and that he was honored to be a nominee in the same categories as Roseanne Cash. Still, it would have been nice to see Keb’ take home at least one award; let’s just hope it doesn’t take quite as long to happen for Keb’ as it did for Johnny Winter…
Above is a picture of Winter we snapped at last year’s inaugural Lancaster Roots & Blues Festival a year ago this month, just a few months before his death.
And below are a few of our favorite photos from this year’s festival in Lancaster that took place over the weekend, with more pictures and notes on the performances to come in the days ahead.
Corey Harris
Joe Louis Walker
Kim Simmonds & Savoy Brown
Mac Arnold
Popa Chubby
Blind Boy Paxton