Wijk bij Duurstede has a very enthusiastic active blues association. In addition to the festival, Blues in Wijk, where concerts take place in the various pubs of the city, there are also regular concerts in the Calypso theater in the city.
In addition to many national guests, the living legend of the Chicago blues John Primer & The Little Boogie Boy Bluesband was a guest.
John has been booked by Bee Music Agency for years and this will be the last tour of Rob Koning and John Primer. The question is whether John Primer will ever come to the Netherlands again because he will be 80 years old in March. Partly because of this I drove from Oss to Wijk bij Duurstede because it was more than 15 years ago that I saw him.
The Calypso theater was filled to the last person and saw The Little Boogie Boy Bluesband start the set. Primer came on after 1 song. You can’t tell that he is almost 80. There is a fresh man who easily picks up a dropped pick from the ground with his guitar around his neck.
The show was not really surprising. John knows exactly what the audience wants, old classics.
Primer has a good voice for his performance. I regularly listen to his concerts in Chicago on YouTube and I have heard him sing less. From the start with, among other things, a 7-minute “Hoochie Coochie Man” with wonderful solos, it was a big party until the break.
Nice change with a wonderful slow version of “Rainy night in Georgia” that was concluded with a fantastic solo.
The feeling is still in the fingers of this old hand. The first hour flew by. At the beginning of the break, Primer chatted quietly with the audience before going to the dressing room for a well-deserved rest.
The Little Boogie Boy Bluesband started the second set with 1 song again but the great master quickly came back on. The usual audience participation did not go completely as it should.
The audience did not know the lyrics of “Since I met you baby”, but Primer solved this professionally, which is a laugh. After “Same old blues” and a wonderful “Mustang Sally” came the killer song of the evening for me “Imagine”.
The audience thought it was fantastic but as a blues purist I would have preferred to hear a Magic Slim song from his latest album “Slow Blues”. Fortunately “Every day i have the blues” followed quickly.
Primer played without a setlist and after a request for “Little red rooster” he played the song after several rooster jokes with his legs and guitar. As an encore, of course, a Muddy Waters song followed, “Got my mojo working”. I have to say honestly that I do miss the harmonica with these kinds of songs.
