New York, NY (Top40 Charts) BluesFest returns to The O2 in London in October with a stellar line-up that includes the best-selling duo in music history
Daryl Hall & John Oates, award-winning soul and R&B outfit The Doobie Brothers, legendary hitmakers Chic and Nile Rodgers, ten-time Grammy-winning
Chaka Khan and chart-topping US crooner Chris Isaak.
The festival has also confirmed that a previously announced concert from Steely Dan, whose co-founding member Walter Becker passed away this month, will proceed as scheduled. The band are lined up to close the festival on a double bill with The
Doobie Brothers on Sunday October 29th and
Donald Fagen made the following statement:
"Walter Becker was my friend, my writing partner and my bandmate since we met as students at Bard College in 1967. We started writing nutty little tunes on an upright piano in a small sitting room in the lobby of Ward Manor, a mouldering old mansion on the Hudson River that the college used as a dorm.
We liked a lot of the same things: jazz (from the twenties through the mid-sixties), W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, science fiction, Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut,
Thomas Berger, and Robert Altman films come to mind. Also soul music and
Chicago blues.
Walter had a very rough childhood - I'll spare you the details. Luckily, he was smart as a whip, an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter. He was cynical about human nature, including his own, and hysterically funny. Like a lot of kids from fractured families, he had the knack of creative mimicry, reading people's hidden psychology and transforming what he saw into bubbly, incisive art. He used to write letters (never meant to be sent) in my wife Libby's singular voice that made the three of us collapse with laughter.
His habits got the best of him by the end of the seventies, and we lost touch for a while. In the eighties, when I was putting together the NY Rock and Soul Review with Libby, we hooked up again, revived the
Steely Dan concept and developed another terrific band.
I intend to keep the music we created together alive as long as I can with the
Steely Dan band."
Also appearing on the bill this year will be Anglo-Italian singer-songwriter Jack Savoretti and revered American blues-rock outfits Gov't Muleand
Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band.
BluesFest 2017 will run from Friday October 27th - Sunday 29th and will once again utilise all areas of The O2 complex, including the 14000-capacity
Arena and Indigo at The O2.
Launched in 2011, BluesFest fast became one of Europe's leading roots music festivals and has since presented concerts from an array of stars from the worlds of blues, jazz, soul, pop and r&b including BB King, Van Morrison, Robert Plant,
Bobby Womack, Gregory Porter, Elvis Costello,
Dave Matthews Band, Bad Company, Jeff Beck, Mary J. Blige, Robert Cray, Tedeschi Trucks, Ronnie Wood, Maxwell, Mavis Staples,
George Benson, Jamie Cullum,
Tom Jones and
Little Steven & The
Disciples Of Soul.
BluesFest 2017:
Friday October 27th
Chic feat. Nile Rodgers plus special guest Chaka Khan
The O2 Arena
Jack Savoretti
Indigo at The O2
Saturday October 28th
Daryl Hall & John Oates plus special guest Chris Isaak
The O2 Arena
Gov't Mule +
Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band plus support from JD & The Straight Shot
Indigo At The O2
Sunday October 29th
Steely Dan plus special guests The Doobie Brothers
The O2 Arena
Tickets are available from www.bluesfest.co.uk
