“If Greaseland Studios is our office, Poor House is our living room,” said Kid Andersen, neatly summing up the deep ties between the Bay Area’s preeminent blues and roots music recording facility and San Jose’s venerable New Orleans juke joint and eatery.
On Saturday, Andersen brings the work he’s been doing at the office to Poor House Bistro for an all-day Big Easy Block Party & Beer Fest celebrating the 10th year of the Little Village Foundation (the music is free with an RSVP, while the beer fest requires tickets).
Founded by veteran blues keyboardist Jim Pugh, who just finished a four-night run at the SFJAZZ Center with Taj Mahal, the nonprofit label has helped turned Greaseland into the Bay Area’s ground zero for blues, while boosting the careers of a wide array of roots music artists otherwise overlooked by the music business.
The block party lineup highlights the impressive body of music recorded by the Norwegian-born Andersen, who’s also an acclaimed guitarist and producer. The outdoor main stage on W. St. John Street brings a blast of blues to Little Italy with headliner Rick Estrin and The Night Cats, fresh off of earning yet another Blues Music Award (for band of the year), with special guest vocalist and harp player Kyle Rowland.
Led by Andersen, the Greaseland All-Star Band backs up incendiary San Jose guitarist Chris Cain, who’s featured next month at the Monterey Jazz Festival, and twangy guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Maurice Tani, a Little Village mainstay. The Greaseland band also joins blues belter Alabama Mike with Nia Cephas, a gifted Oakland singer/songwriter and recent Little Village discovery.
Rising Louisiana guitar star D.K. Harrell, whose 2024 debut album for Little Village, “The Right Man,” led to a Blues Music Award for best emerging artist last year, plays his first Poor House show on the heels of his new Alligator Records release “Talkin’ Heavy.”
“We write a lot of songs together,” said Andersen, who produced Harrell’s new Alligator album. “Talking about what he was hoping to do when we were recording the Little Village record, he said ‘I want to get some better gigs, afford to have a regular band.’ Very modest. Now he’s on the cover of Guitar Player magazine and he’s played places I’ve never been.”
The Poor House stage features a similarly loaded Little Village roster, with guitarist Mighty Mike Schermer, the Bollywood blues of harpist Aki Kumar, and vocalists Marina Crouse and John Blues Boyd, “which is how I’ll start my day at noon,” Andersen said. “Aki and Schermer have their own bands, but the Greaseland band is also backing up D.K., Chris Cain, and Alabama Mike.”
Even before Andersen hits the stage with Boyd, he’ll be lugging over a lot of the gear for the two stages. And after all the other sets, he performs with Rick Estrin and the Nightcats, his primary gig as a guitarist since 2008.
His founding role with Estrin’s band makes his Greaseland output all the more impressive. Andersen has recorded some 250 albums in his home studio, which brims with a menagerie of string instruments.
“I’m trying to be selective these days, finding joy in learning to say no,” he said. “I only want to do stuff I want to do, and even that’s too much.”
The block party showcases his fruitful relationship with Little Village, but blues isn’t the only thing on tap at the celebration. A concurrent beer festival features some 40 different draft brews, including Gordon Biersch, a local institution also represented by brewery co-founder and trombonist Dan Gordon, who performs at 1 p.m. with All Things Swamp on the street stage.
“All the beer sold goes to support the label and pay for the artists,” said Poor House Bistro proprietor Jay Meduri.
In highlighting other neighborhood restaurants and attractions, like the Little Italy San Jose Cultural Center & Museum, he sees the block party as another step in settling into the district. The original Poor House Bistro opened in 2005 when he transformed the Meduri family home into a venue and restaurant celebrating Crescent City culture.
Google’s purchase of the land presented a tough decision, and he ended up moving the entire structure several blocks north to its present location in 2022. With more neighbors around, he said, “We close down at 9 p.m. instead of 10 p.m., making sure we didn’t come in strong.”
With a blues jam on Wednesdays, Meduri’s PHB Famiglia Band on Thursdays, and a rotating roster of blues acts on the weekends, the joint is usually jumping. The New Orleans Sunday brunches tend to feature jazz artists, while the afternoon sets “can be any type of music, blues, rock, reggae, country. As always, it’s free.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at [email protected].
BIG EASY BLOCK PARTY & BREW FEST
When & where: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Aug. 30 in San Jose’s Little Italy district;
Tickets: Free admission; poorhousebistro.com
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