Blues musicians join together for Sunday sessions at Port Cape

The line between Bruce Zimmerman's blues band at Port Cape Girardeau on Sunday nights and its audience is as porous as the band's membership roster. Nine musicians, a number that changes by whim and the presence of their peers in the crowd, sit a mere yard from the first row of tables. They brush shoulders with entering customers and howl into microphones that, should they tip, would break beer glasses on the tables across the aisle. The saxophone players may shuffle aside for either a guest guitarist called up from the audience or a beer-mug-bearing waitress pushing through to the tables by the door.

"There's intimacy with the audience because they're right in your face," Zimmerman said. "Like having a big old party in your living room."

Once the guitarists have tuned their strings, the sax players have slicked their reeds, and everyone has tested the speakers and cleared their throats, Zimmerman says something short and grateful into the microphone and mouths close throughout the room. This is one of the few live music shows that makes people listen.

More than 15 years ago Zimmerman was half of a blues duo nicknamed Whitey and Slick that played at Port Cape and venues around Cape Girardeau. The years have funneled musicians into the group in what Zimmerman calls a "controlled jam." He invites people to play in a kind of open mic for pre-screened musicians.

They're a cover band for songs that, Zimmerman says, are obscure. He listed a few of the artists in their bag -- Muddy Waters, Johnny Copeland and Roy Orbison. The group ventures into Motown on occasion and, after the 10 p.m. intermission, they might strum a few country songs. Sometimes singer Ruth Sauerbrunn-Winstead will saunter between the tables crooning "Georgia on my Mind."

At root, though, they are a blues band. Zimmerman, slight soft-spoken, hedging shyness, growls, hoots and bellows the blues. He innovates noise as creatively with his lungs as with his pick.

Danny Rees, dressed in a black leather beret and a sleeveless shirt, taps his single snare and bounces with the beat. He jumps rhythmically even during slower, more melodic songs and hollers to an audience peppered with head nodders and table thumpers.

"When you look out across the crowd they are involved in what you're doing," Rees said. "We'll do a song and everybody will sing along and become one band."

Beside him Don Greenwood's hands blur in the space between his congas beneath and his expressionless face above. Except for his hands, he is a stoic contrast to Rees' energy.

Zimmerman announces the song's key before they begin. The layers of sound coalesce as the players find their places, sometimes signaling the key in a kind of sign language to those who could not hear Zimmerman. They might point to an eye, for example, to signify the key of "C."

"Or you'll raise a middle finger for 'find it yourself,'" harmonica player Les Lindey said.

Their performances are nothing if not improvised. Solos spring seamlessly from the ends of verses. Jeff Hankins' keyboard may yield to Ralph McDonald's saxophone with only applause to punctuate the transition. Lindey's solos blend the harmonica's usual mournful wail with guttural notes reminiscent of an asthmatic cowboy clearing his throat in a dust storm.

McDonald and Paul Johnson are the band's saxophone players. Johnson, a student and the youngest member of the group, plays solos rife with scales and crosses musical styles from the blues to a jazz sound in the tradition of Charlie Parker.

"There's a certain power I feel when I perform here," he said. "It's hard to describe. There are always people responding to the music, dancing, even the bartenders prefer working Sunday nights."

McDonald blows longer notes and anchors the solo to the melody of the verses. He is a hulking man who wears black shades even in the dimness of the bar. The band, he said, is his home away from home.

Theirs is the kind of music that makes you forget where you are, but a camera flash will bring you back, or one table's solo-inspired applause will remind you.

Zimmerman sings, "Have you ever been mistreated? You know what I'm talking about./Have you ever been mistreated? People you know just what I'm talking about./Worked five years for one woman and she had the nerve to put me out."

Dean Winstead's bass vibrates the seat of the chair. The closing notes can't clear the mesh covering the speakers before hands come together in the audience. Rees runs around in front of his drum, steps onto a chair and whacks the final count while jumping down to close the set.

Their fans, often stretched out in every chair and standing shoulder to shoulder along the bar and in front of the video golf game and the jukebox, are the testament to this band's success.

"I haven't heard any band that plays with as much passion as they do. They interact with the crowd incredibly well," said Notre Dame Regional High School teacher Adam Cox.

Leona Stoffregen came from Delta, Mo., to hear them play. "I can't miss it," she said. "It tears me up if I miss it. They're down to earth, got that music down pat and they know what they're doing."

rgoodier@semissourian.com

335-6611 extension 127