A truly gifted blues artist can be found most days of the week playing at Steve's Place on East Congress, where Detroit's fading charm still exists. Travelin' Blues is completely an independent musician, and has played downtown for over fifteen years.
Travelin' is a both a musician and a storyteller with his own creative interpretation and soulful feelings that are his blues. He can reach back to the roots of plantation music or retrieve the sounds of the Delta blues artist of the early 1900s. Travelin' not only performs the blues, he lives the blues while teaching everyone who gets a chance to witness his show the history and reason for the blues.
Detroit's own Greek Town Blues Man can cut the silence in the room or silence his audience with his varied abilities to also only mimic the feeling of B.B. King, the smoke-house voice of Howlin' Wolf, the country blues of his inspiration Lightnin' Hopkins and the soulful singing of Sam Cooke.
As you watch you will find his voice can be gruff, almost horse when singing raw blues songs of old; he then turns all of sudden into singing smooth soul. Travelin' is one of the few artists of any idiom capable of making his audience laugh and cry while performing the same song.
"I like to match the crowd," he says. "You know, choose songs based on the general atmosphere. If they are mellow, we will be mellow; if they seem at all excited they will get more excitement; if they seem a bit crazy then I'll show them my kind of crazy."
Travelin' spent every summer in the Mississippi Delta where he learned the history of both traditional plantation music and the blues. He used to play his guitar and sing for many who gathered for Sunday meeting or for local celebrations. This is where he began honing his skills as a master blues guitarist and learned early on how to carry the interest of both adults and children.
He grew up the son of a soldier who was stationed in Germany. After being coming home from Europe his father became a chef and worked at the White House. This is where he picked up the art of food preparation. Travelin' is not only a great musician but an awesome cook as well.
"I got into the blues at 13 years old when I heard B.B. King's 'Evil Child,'" said Travelin', "I found my calling in the blues and got with it right away."
At seventeen, he began playing in gospel quartets in various churches through Cleveland -- primarily, Saints of Glory, of Little Rock Baptist Church.
Music has always been in Travelin's life. At thirty, Travelin' left investigative police work to play music full-time. He says he had a dream one night and all the blues legends came to him and told him it was his turn to carry yoke of the blues. From then on he has felt driven to be a true artist of the blues.
"I felt that you find your calling, or just leave it alone, so I finally decided to carry the yoke and make my place in music. I felt, you have to be real with it to make it work. It's sink or swim, and there's a good chance to sink at my age, but I chose to jump for it. I've been playing my brand of the blues for 18 years now," he says.
This blues master has been sought after by commercial record labels. He has been offered, and later rejected deals to on TV that would require leaving Detroit. Living within the treacherous entertainment industry, Travelin' Blues had to turn the lucrative offers away due to a devotion to his personal freedom.
"The feeling of your music stays beautiful if you maintain your freedom. But when you sign away your life, it becomes ugly, owned by someone else. What I do is classic, a bit raw and authentic American heritage music.
I want to stay in the public reach. If I signed those deals, I'd have no freedom. They'll take you out of the public's reach, then you are owned by these wolves, and you have no real friends. I have fought for many years to be simply Travelin' Blues."
