An Evening to Benefit the Sarasota Chalk Festival, Word of Mouth Restaurant, May 21, 7pm.

Legendary blues musician Bobby Messano will play a benefit for the Sarasota Chalk Festival this Saturday. Event organizers promise an “intimate evening with authentic music.” SRQ spoke with artist, who has recorded and toured with rock acts like Steve Winwood and Peter Criss.

Why are you doing this benefit? It looked like a really cool festival. Anything that will bring artists together to do something like this is really it for me. I’m actually hoping I will be able to come back and go to the actual Chalk Festival. I’ve lived in Woodstock, New York, so the festival looks semi hippy-ish to some degree and it seems great. 

What can people expect at this benefit? I usually do shows with the band. I’ll be playing like it’s a regular show, maybe throw a little bit of some Jimi Hendrix. Actually this is the first acoustic solo record this year, which I have never done. I like to tell stories through my shows. It’s been 40 years of music stories. A night of storytelling and a night of guitar playing and singing. It will basically be a fun night of music and story time. It won’t be traditional straight blues but it will be contemporary blues. Once I start I’ll keep going. Some traditional blues but not much. I have six albums worth of songs that has been out and one has been on the Billboard. What’s cool is that I’ll be doing stuff like this that I can’t really do with the band. 

What made you change from rock to blues?  I made the transition because I wanted to go back to something others were comfortable with when I was younger. I still produce rock acts but I’ve always been a blues rock guy. I’m much more comfortable doing something that was really good when I was younger and I wanted to have more fun and didn't want to worry about wearing spandex and leather. That kind of stuff. And that’s why I “transitioned” styles. Last year was the 25th anniversary of me becoming a contemporary blues artist that was after a 14 year career before that. I feel better—I feel like I can write better stories. There’s a lot of stuff that I wanted to do and so I went back to doing that.

An Evening to Benefit the Sarasota Chalk Festival, Word of Mouth Restaurant, May 21, 7pm.