DIGITAL BLUES

The new St. Louis Blues Net uses a new medium to promote our hometown brand of an old art form

Comments (0) By Randall Roberts Wednesday, Dec 15 1999

While all of us trendies move from genre to genre lapping up the current craze with the attention span of a litter of kittens, the St. Louis blues scene keeps chugging along, single-mindedly focused on those 12 bars. And if it seems to most that the scene is the same now as it was 20 years ago, one peek at www.stlblues.net should set you straight.

The St. Louis Blues Net is the recently unveiled project of local blues afficionado Dave Beardsley, and within the site is a load of info on the local scene. Says Beardsley: "The purpose of it is to promote local music through the Internet -- globally, hopefully. So we've geared it around artists and venues, and my goal is to get public awareness to musicians that they have this resource available, and they can just send me a bio and a picture and it's there. It's a free service."

In addition to pumping the local talent, the Blues Net has some fantastic interviews with local blues legends Clayton Love, Bennie Smith, Barbara Carr, Tommy Bankhead and James Crutchfield and with their younger brethren Leroy Pierson and Art Dwyer (of the Soulard Blues Band).

"We've taken it about a third of the way to where we're headed, we've got a lot of plans for it," says Beardsley. These plans include both MP3 files and video streaming. For now, the site is filled with local blues history and recent information.

Send all local tapes, tips, discs and detritus to "Radar Station," c/o The Riverfront Times, 6358 Delmar Blvd., Suite 200, St. Louis, MO 63130. E-mail: Radarstation@rftstl.com.