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Notes from behind the news: Sunday Sirens blues break

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Curtis Salgado, 2013 International Blues Entertainer of the Year, will take the big stage at the end of the night, when the DB Cooper Music Festival touches down at the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – How about taking a Sunday sirens mini-break with me?

A week of watching and waiting for an east end river to give up the body of a 5-year-old, a super serious wreck in Centralia on Friday night that left two people critically hurt, and then news this morning that an arson investigation team is looking into a house fire that destroyed much of a family’s belongings …

I’m not waiting all the way to Aug. 2 for the sirens break, the all-day party at the fairgrounds that is the DB Cooper Music Festival.

Lewis County Sirens.com is co-media sponsor of the event, in part because I think we all need a time out where we simply have fun.

I’m taking five minutes right now to turn off the trauma, drama and disaster and listen to a tune, taking my mind elsewhere, at least briefly.

The 2013 International Blues Entertainer of the Year, Curtis Salgado, who inspired John Belushi to create The Blues Brothers, has some good ones.

Salgado will take the big stage at the end of the night, when the festival touches down at the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds.

His people call him a harmonica icon who plays each and every show like it’s the most important gig of his career.

He’s been playing professionally since the late 1960s, his band touring with the likes of Santana and The Steve Miller Band. His bio describes some of his musical and vocal influences as Otis Redding, O.V. Wright, Johnnie Taylor and Muddy Waters.

Born in Everett, Wash., and raised in Eugene, Ore., one of his early groups called the Nighthawks toured the Northwest; next he was with The Robert Cray Band, and then it just kept getting better, his people say.

Check out Salgado’s “Born All Over” [2] with me, now, for just a few moments.

We can listen to more from him on Aug. 2, in person, at the festival that is stacking up to be THE event of the summer for those from Seattle to Portland and beyond.

Tickets are available now, here [3]. See the line up that will play three stages, here [4]

P.S. If you’re a Blues Brothers fan, you can find out more about how the two met when Belushi was in Eugene filming Animal House, and how that all transpired, here [5]