Anna Webber – Los Angeles Photographer

Beaux Loy shoot outtake with John Webber, Web designer of beauxloy.com (Webberdesign.net)

What’s the first place you look when you need the Austin Skyline to be the backdrop of a photograph? Building rooftops proved to be inaccessible. Same with apartments. Though we did not try that too hard.

And by a stroke of genius, I thought… Parking Structure. Duh.

And so it goes, we met Beaux Loy and his sassy little manager Bridget Zeuner up on top of a (church) parking structure in Austin’s downtown. We were immediately comfortable with eachother and concocting the look and tone of the shoot.

Beaux was slightly comfortable around the camera, but one of my favorite subjects who gave it all he’s got.

Beaux Loy

Lee “Scratch” Perry
@ the El Rey
September 3
72 year-old Lee “Scratch” Perry wasn’t scratching anything down at the El Rey last Wednesday, but he did tickle the hell out of the crowd’s olfactory nerve from up on-stage. It’s kind of like Lee Scratch-and-sniff after he lights up his half dozen or so incense sticks during the first song, which he proceeds to secure to the top of his baseball cap that had been festooned to the T with trinkets, medals, pins—and not without—the jimmy-rigged metal incense holder. But, as it goes, the hat appropriately matched the rings on every finger, his adorned mic set, emblazoned with the same sort of arrangement as the hat fabulously held. His over-stuffed, over-spacious Lucky Charms bomber jacket, and the bulky leather boots tatted with patches and paint, etc., quite enhanced the legendary old dude.

But he’s not just any old dude.
He’s one of them granddad rarities attributed to reggae at its rising, having helped form it tough at its roots.
Being one whose musical talents have assisted quite notably in the generation of reggae and dub sounds, Perry has also produced albums for Bob Marley & the Wailers, The Heptones, and other reggae spear headers.
The band Perry’s got behind him now is comprised of youthful, twenty, maybe thirty-somethings, none at all as dark as he, displaying outright that soul doesn’t come in colors. They jibed it, absolutely.  Lee Scratch has still got it.
-Anna Webber

Long Beach Blues Festival
Aug 29-30

The LBC Blues Festival is no place for the mainstream teens and twenty-somethings in search of the last killer all-day summer festival. You won’t (or you shouldn’t) be laying out those hot dance moves you’d learned watching youtube and perfecting all summer long, they would confound the soul man next to you (his reaction however, would have been quite the expressive one and would have made it worth trying), you won’t be asking for healthy vegetarian food options (but the stunning bewilderment behind Rayband Wayfarers would have made it equally worth your effort), you won’t be battling for front and center (they’ll just let you have it), and if you’re a cute girl used to the attention, you’re last on the list to get called up on stage to get a guitar solo rubbed on your torso. But you will most definitely be paying $8 a beer, perhaps falling asleep after your second beverage since you’ve now spent all your cash, relaxed after having flossed out the Kettle Corn from your teeth using world class down-home Texas BBQ, and sweating out your malt liquor in 90 degree weather.
What could be fun about this, you ask?
You would have effectively stumbled on a piece of Blues history, and in no way past its characteristic class and caliber in terms of energy and adept execution. Countless songs started here with blues legends like Chuck Berry, Booker T. Jones, Taj Mahal, British Bluesman John Mayall, 95 year-old keyboard player Pinetop Perkins, Eddie Floyd, Charlie Musselwhite; songs you’ve heard innumerable times, brought to you either by the source or by qualified performers channeling the greats. The quality and texture of which, never compromised.
One of the greatest pleasures of this 29th annual blues voodoo experience was the discovering of 20 year-old blues slide guitarist Robert Francis. Learned at age 13 by great blues shaman Ry Cooder, the killer performance by he and his band made plain that blues still has a future, yet.
Absolutely.

-Anna Webber