Pull open the door to the Blue Note Grill in Durham, and you’re likely to be met with wailing blues and the rich smell of barbecue. And friends. Some you know and some you’ve yet to meet, in a crowd so welcoming no one stays a stranger for long.
For 15 years now, the Blue Note Grill has been home to a mélange of dancers and musicians, both local and nationally touring. Guitarist Samantha Fish plays here when she’s on the East Coast. So do California’s Teresa James and the Rhythm Tramps, and guitarist Walter Trout. It’s the home of the Triangle Blues Society and host to competitions that send regional musicians to blues competitions and onward to the national road. But more than that, the grill is a gathering place. A home. A found family for musicians, dancers, and lovers of barbecue.
It’s a place of unselfconsciousness, of being yourself, whether that’s wailing on a mouth harp or hitting the dance floor for athletic swing or sultry blues, or maybe dancing more like the inflatable guy outside a used car store. It doesn’t matter, because here, you’re family…