Deja Blues eyes road to Memphis

The road to Memphis is a bumpy one. For some, the journey to the blues starts at a busted-up bar on the side of the highway. For others, in the crossroads. Maybe sweet home Chicago, or the bayou.

And then, for some, it starts at the Red Maple Inn in Guilford. OK, yeah, maybe not as poetically resonant as, say, a juke joint on Beale Street. But for Deja Blues, a Bangor-area blues four-piece, it got them started on the road to Memphis – literally and figuratively.

“You wouldn’t think there’d be a lot of blues fans in Guilford, but it turned out they didn’t know they were until we started to play the blues,” said Dan Ober, aka Dan-O, lead singer for the band. “I started a blues jam up there in the late ’90s, and that’s how I met all the guys.”

Ober, guitarist Toby Williams and drummer Jimmy Rorden have played together on and off since then. In 2005 the three began to play out seriously as Deja Blues, adding bassist Tony Nedick in 2006 and performing regularly at Carolina Sports and Spirits in downtown Bangor, where they will play tonight and tomorrow. Last December, Deja Blues put together a self-titled album of its favorite blues songs, which is available at all of its shows.

“We just want to help keep the blues in the forefront of people’s minds,” said Ober. “The genre is old, and so many of the great men and women who pioneered it are dying off. People need to keep it alive, and if we can bring that to this area, then we’re happy. We just love to play.”

Like many, Ober was first introduced to the blues through bands such as the Allman Brothers and Led Zeppelin. From those groups, he discovered Muddy Waters, Lightning Hopkins and Buddy Guy. He never looked back. And now, he and the rest of Deja Blues are once again competing in the Road to Memphis competition, an international blues battle of the bands sponsored by The Blues Foundation.

The Maine Blues Society, the state’s chapter of the Blues Foundation, is run by North Atlantic Blues Festival founder Paul Benjamin. They will sponsor the Maine competition, to be held this year on Sunday, April 20 at the Time Out Pub in Rockland. The solo-duo competition will be held on Sunday, April 27, also at the Time Out.

Last year’s winners, Matt and the Barnburners, went to Memphis for several days last summer to compete with more than 156 bands from around the world. This year, Deja Blues is hoping to be the one to go, though the band members are happy just to play with fellow Mainer blues-a-holics.

“We lost by three-quarters of a point last year,” said Ober. “We were planning to eat breakfast at the Blue Plate Cafe [a famous Memphis breakfast joint] on Wednesday morning. Instead we ate someplace in Maine!”

No hard feelings, though, of course – as Ober says, the Maine blues scene is like a family.

“The whole blues community in Maine is very close knit,” he said. “We all love to see each other play and support each other. It’s all about the music.”

Deja Blues will play 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 21 and 22, at Carolina Sports and Spirits on Union Street in Bangor. For more information, visit www.dejabluez.com.

Supporting acts

I did about a quadruple take when I looked at www.sha-la.com/festival, the Web site for the upcoming Shangri-La Festival, to be held Aug. 1, 2 and 3 at the Blue Hill Fairgrounds. Why? Because organizers Joel and Joshua Raymond just announced that Southern Culture on the Skids, a fantastic rockabilly-surf band, are playing. If you’ve listened to WKIT 100.3 in the past, oh, 10 years, then you know the song “Camel Walk,” which is one of my favorite party songs of all time. Southern Culture is set for the fest, along with just-announced acts Erin McKeown, Jeff Daniels (yes, that Jeff Daniels), Celtic rockers the Barra MacNeils and bluegrass band the Infamous Stringdusters. Visit the aforementioned Web site each day for new band announcements – the Raymonds promise an eclectic lineup with some really big names. On April 15, the full array will be in place, and early bird tickets will go on sale. Very exciting.

eburnham@bangordailynews.net