They brought the blues to Baghdad.
“Bluzapalooza,” the first blues concert tour for the troops in Iraq and Kuwait, wrapped up and headed for home this week after what Memphis harmonica player Billy Gibson and tour manager Steve Simon said was a marvelous, if occasionally harrowing, time in the war zone.
Reached in Kuwait, Gibson, 39, said the highlight was “just meeting the actual troops and seeing the looks on their faces as we got a chance to play music for them . . . We brought that vibe to Iraq.”
Simon said that when he pitched the idea of blues in Baghdad to an Army colonel, “He said, 'You must be kidding. Nobody wants to go there.' But we did.”
Gibsons said that at the last show Monday, “Sirens went off and we all had to run out of this gymnasium into bunkers because this was a rocket attack. The rockets landed 200 meters from where we were. You felt the ground shake.”
But when the all-clear was sounded, “We went back in and finished our show. It was surreal – and real.”
The 13-member tour included Bobby Rush and his band from Jackson, Miss.; singer Janiva Magness of Los Angeles; and Tony Braunagel and the Phantom Blues Band, also from Los Angeles.
