Day 11 - Milwaukee, WI - Chicago, IL

"Come on . . .baby don't you want to go . . .
Come on . . . baby don't you want to go . . .
To that same old place . . . Sweet Home Chicago"

Perhaps the most well known and most covered blues song of all time - originally credited to Robert Johnson.

Well I was keen to get to Chicago in one sense and less so in another.

Keen because I wanted to get back to a blues city and hear some live music and less keen because Chicago is the end of the line, the end of the road, and while not quite the end of my vacation, the end of the excitement and the great unknown of the road...

Driving a thousand miles in the last two days and more than 3,000 in the past 10 days unfortunately has taken its toll. My back is wrecked and the last 100 miles to Chicago were agony...

When I got out of the rental car at the depot I had driven 3,302 miles across America - much of it on Highway 61. I gathered up my guitars and cases and headed off to wait for a cab to take me into the Windy City which I wrote about last year when I started my journey across Route 66 here.

Like last year, my cab driver into town was an Arab - a Palestinian - and we talked about the Middle East, what it means to be Palestinian, his children and the world at large. He was a nice man.

When the darkness took over from day I headed to Buddy Guy's Blues Club to listen to some music and drink some beer. My back was still killing me so I took a cab from my hotel.

Chico Banks was the main act - son of guitarist Jessie Banks - a Chicago blues guitar player born and bred. He is technically one of the most accomplished and naturally talented guitarists I have ever heard or seen, but as a musician and a band member he sucked.

Let me explain . . .

I believe there are two aspects to a musician - technical ability and something which I would call "feeling". Feeling includes balance, respect, understanding, sensitivity, modesty, appropriateness and so on.

Even the greatest technician will fail to be a great musician if he doesn't have feeling - while a much less competent technician can excel if he has feeling (look a Bob Dylan - hardly Pavarotti in terms of vocals!).

Chico Banks is a show-off, an egotist and insecure. Sure his two handed fret hammering, lightning fast arpeggios and Hendrix style solos were impressive technically - but that's all they were. They didn't move me. Worse still he left his band and his audience behind while he went somewhere on the stage with his guitar and just did his thing. This was nothing short of masturbation and it really pissed me off.

Every now and again, he would shut the hell up and let his band play. The rhythm / second guitarist - a much less extrovert character - played some beautiful blues solos. Tender, expressive, understated and restrained where they needed to be. I wanted to hear more of him. But I wanted to hear a whole lot less of Chico - which is a shame. With his talent he could achieve legend status in music, but with his soul, he'll never be more than a blues club show off who missed the boat and the point.

Funnily enough, when I left the club. one of the staff asked me what I thought of the band. I told him and he agreed with my analysis. Nice to know I'm not the only one who heard it the way I did - although there were a bunch of French tourists in the bar who though Chico was God - boy did he love that!

He also spent the time in between songs talking at length about ow much "shit" he had smoked and how he was "hot" and "horny" and that the band were a bunch of "motherf*&kers" etc. It was designed to "shock" and be "bluesy". Instead it was childish and had nothing to do with anything other than being foul mouthed and cheap.

I didn't like Chico. In case you didn't notice.

I went back to my hotel and thought about the things I'd learned and felt on this trip.

Here are the top 10 things (there are more, but in the stream of consciousness that is this blog at this precise moment, these are all you're getting.)

1. The Blues is immense, complex, deep and powerful and I love it.

2. I will never, ever, in my lifetime be anything more than a vaguely competent blues player, but I will get to spend the rest of it becoming an increasingly appreciative and knowledgeable connoisseur of the genre.

3. I thought I knew something about music before I set off. Coming back I realise how little I know and how much more there is to learn. This trip marks the beginning of a deeper musical journey for me and has provided huge stimulus.

4. Black bluesmen of Buddy Guy's generation and older lived the blues in its birth in America. They also lived the lives that bred the music based on its African roots. White people of that era did not live the same way or come from the same place so they will never play the blues the same way, because it's not in them the same way. Young people, black or white, can only imitate the masters, but they can also extend the life and development of the blues. That is a responsibility.

5. Music is the most therapeutic thing for a man's soul. Period.

6. Family is important. It is one of the most important contextual aspects of the lives we lead. We can never escape where we come from. Nor should we.

7. America is a place of huge diversity and scale that is becoming ever more homogenised and smaller. Just like the planet.

8. Difference is necessary and delicious. Contrast provides the definitions of life. I saw and lived so many contrasts on this trip that my mind is full.

9. People are inherently nice. From Dick Waterman who gave of his time so generously, to "Red" and her kind heart in Clarksdale, other Clarksdale people like Ronnie at the guitar shop, Gary W. Miller and Bobby at the Delta Amusement bar - all good people. Right down to a Sudanese cab driver here today in Chicago who when I said "Shokran" in Arabic to say thank you and explained that I had visited his country, wanted to give me back the cab fare.

10. It's good to get away and see other places, gather some thoughts, learn some new things. There is so much out there to find out about. After trips like this I feel almost as shocked about how little I knew before as I am about how much more there is to find out.

And that's it.

Until the next time - I'll be playing my guitar, and planning my return to Clarksdale and the Mississippi Delta.