Inside HILife: ‘2009 Oahu Summer Blues Bash’

Filipino Blues

FL Morris / fmorris@starbulletin.com

By Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.com

For a colorful musical genre so closely related to black folks, the “blues” are all over the rainbow these days. Black, white and brown all over.

And as the Friends of Adam ask rhetorically on their Web site, Can three young Filipino men play the blues?

So well, apparently, that Friends of Adam are the only local blues band to play both of the now annual summer “Blues Bashes” at Anna Bannanas. This year, they’ll join Tell Mama, the Corey Funai Blues Band, Northside Art and the Mixers, and Chris Vandercook with Mark Prados.

Young and Filipino are descriptors rarely used for blues bands, and, like anything blues-related, nothing came easy. When he was just starting out, FOA guitarist Clay Campania – the rest of the band are Ernie Ecraela on bass and Justin Incelda on drums – asked a friend to teach him some hot riffs. He had no idea what the blues sounded like.

“I was never exposed to the blues. My parents didn’t listen to that stuff,” recalled Campania. “Before we actually could get together, he gave me the ‘Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: Jimi Hendrix’ to listen to (and) It absolutely blew me away.

“After that I knew that the blues is what I wanted to play. It just felt good, and it felt right. While searching for more music on Jimi, that’s when I found other bluesmen, and the different styles of blues that they played. From Texas blues, to Chicago blues, and eventually some Delta blues. I just pressed play to see if I could make the sounds that these blues greats were making.”

They included Freddie King, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Robert Johnson, Elmore James, and “recently I’ve been trying to catch up on Johnny Winter and Rory Gallgher.”

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