Everywhere you look these days, it’s Bobby Lindstrom, Bobby Lindstrom, Bobby Lindstrom.
The Bend-based blues/rock singer-songwriter seems to get more gigs ’round here than just about anyone else.
So we decided to write about him!
This week, Bobby’s playing four shows in five nights. My colleague David Jasper met up with him earlier this week and found about his background and the clarity that comes with being clean and sober.
When he was 17, (Lindstrom) and a friend attended a recording seminar at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and decided to hitchhike from there to Oxnard, Calif. “His cousin lived there, and he wasn’t home. We sat out on his porch, and I started playing the blues, just like that,” Lindstrom said. “I’m like, ‘Dude! Check this out! This is so easy, man.’ After that I started listening to B.B. King, Jimmy Reed, Taj Mahal, Little Richard.”
He’s been writing and playing the blues ever since. The hale, 58-year-old father of a 31-year-old son, Lindstrom describes himself as a recovering addict. He’s had a rebellious tendency and an addictive personality from childhood — “long before I found drugs,” he said — and has been clean and sober since 1995.
Following rehab, Lindstrom launched into a flurry of writing and recording, and has released a string of six albums since 1999. His most recent two are 2010’s “Hungry, Cold & Blue” and “Bring It On,” released last year. A disc of blues standards is slated for release this year. (Lindstrom’s albums are available at www.reverbnation.com/bobbylindstrom.)
“It’s been curious watching myself, as I learn to write and play and start to get some success. Success is the strangest thing for a recovering addict. All of a sudden, everything is working,” he said. “The last couple of years, everything that I’ve been through is starting to make sense. It’s starting to come into focus.”
I hope you’ll click here and read the whole thing.
Boots Riley and The Coup
For my Feedback column this week, I spent Saturday night taking in some hip-hop: The Coup, Busdriver and Buck 65 at Bend WinterFest. Here’s an excerpt:
To paraphrase that great, graceful star of stage and screen known as Meat Loaf, I would do anything for a quality hip-hop show in Bend … even that.
And by “that” I mean “traipse around Bend’s west side on a bone-chilling February night to see three interesting and imaginative rappers perform in a town that has experienced a dearth of good hip-hop in recent months.”
Even that, I would do.
Let’s get this out of the way: Saturday night was cold. So, so cold. Cold enough that my brilliant plan to park at the Century Center, walk a mile or so to Bend WinterFest to see Oakland-based funk-hop group The Coup on an outdoor stage in the Old Mill District, and then walk back to the Century Center for an indoor afterparty show by oddball rappers Busdriver and Buck 65 didn’t seem so brilliant at about 9:45 p.m., as I trudged along Simpson Avenue, teeth chattering.
What can I say? I don’t look at weather forecasts.
I promise the whole thing isn’t about me. In fact, the rest is about the shows. Read the whole thing by clicking here.
Also in this week’s music section: G. Love & Special Sauce return to the Domino Room, Greensky Bluegrass is back in town tonight, and a ton of locals: Five Pint Mary, Rural Demons, Blackflowers Blacksun, Johnny Forrest, Boxcar Stringband, Flannel Bandana. Plus we’ve got a photo album of Third Seven’s tour of Europe right here. He’ll play a homecoming show Monday.
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