OAKLAND’S own blues legend in the making, “Seasick” Steve Gene Wold left his East Bay hometown at a young age, living a hobo life until he was sucked into the ’60s music scene by friends like Janis Joplin. But even after making a name for himself as a musician and engineer within the Seattle grunge scene (and later producing Modest Mouse), he was virtually unknown until a fateful U.K. TV appearance in 2007 launched his extremely unlikely run-in with fame. Within a year, he was releasing his major-label debut, I Started Out With Nothin and I Still Got Most of It Left, and selling out venues like the Royal Albert Hall and Belfast’s Grand Opera House across Europe. He continues to make most of his own instruments, and has no explanation for his rise from obscurity. For outsiders, too, it might all seem hard to understand, until you see Seasick Steve whip through “Save Me” on the “one-string diddley bo” he designed himself. To watch a solitary man whip up a sound that vicious and powerful on a single string is to remember why Robert Johnson scared people, why the devil is always hanging around blues legends, and why rock & roll has been ripping off Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf for more than half a century. Like the late R.L. Burnside, another blues legend who came out of nowhere well into his career, Seasick Steve has inspired a following because, more than any other genre, blues needs heroes, and he has the right stuff.
Tuesday at 8:30pm
$10.
