 Nashvegas BluesStacy Mitchhart as a teen-ager was equally devoted to basketball and guitar. He quickly realized that basketball is a tall man’s game, so he stuck with guitar.
At first he played rock covers and only little bits of the blues. But Mitchhart realized that the blues songs he played were the ones that made him sweat. So that’s where he began to put his focus. In 1996 he made the move to Nashville from his hometown of Cincinnati. He posted up at a small club downtown and grinded out four shows a night for six or seven years. Today he mostly playing on the road, wearing flashy outfits and gold rings, and doing his best to entertain people who love the blues. “Nashvegas Blues,” a doc all about Mitchhart and what it’s like to live knee-deep in the blues, is now showing exclusively on The Documentary Channel and for sale in the DOCStore. Director Tim Hardiman takes you backstage, and onto the tour bus, and into the home life of this determined man. You’ll find out that corporate gigs pay well, but they’re never really fun to play. And learn how much travel and patience it takes to make it as a professional musician. “I’m not looking at doing what I do this week,” Mitchhart says in the film. “I’m looking at it as a career 20 years from now … I’m damned determined to just keep moving on.” A great moment comes when director Hardiman takes Mitchhart back to visit a small blues club in Louisville. It was called Shirley Mae’s. Mitchhart played there every Sunday night for a year. “He came in with his Dixieland bit,” Mae recalls in “Nashvegas Blues.” “They was hard on him. They was rough. Man, he played that first Sunday, we could not believe this … ‘Are You Black?’” It’s also cool when Hardiman takes the time to trace Mitchhart’s career back to the early days of sing-a-longs with his dad, when the two of them croon for a home movie camera on a song called “Salty Dog.” Then later in the documentary things start to look up when Mitchhart gets an important e-mail from the Netherlands. A famous blues entertainer from Holland, Andre Hazes, has heard his Mitchhart’s music and wants to fly him and his band over to Amsterdam to play a couple of shows with him in front of 30,000 people. The two musicians get along like brothers. We find out that Hazes for a long time in the Netherlands was only popular with the working class. The upper class, however, took notice after a documentary came out about he and his blues music. Now he’s playing huge gigs like the ones he invited Mitchhart to participate in. Maybe “Nashvegas Blues” will do the same thing for Mitchhart. One thing is for sure. If he’s got some momentum, he’s gonna build on it. By Gregory Crofton
* You can view a trailer or Purchase a DVD at our DOCStore !
*Upcoming Air dates on DISH channel 197 (all times are EST): Nov. 13th at 8pm Nov. 13th at 11pm Nov. 19th at 6:45pm Dec. 01st at 4am Dec. 04th at 4:50am Dec. 12th at 8pm Dec. 12th at 11pm Dec. 18th at 3:00am Jan. 28th at 9:50pm - Times are subject to change, please check our online scheduler for the latest updates here !! - Air dates for other partner channels can be located at:
|
