Just made it

Most bluesmen would have called it a day in Duluth. Not Taj Mahal.

Stranded Sunday afternoon in the birthplace of Bob Dylan and due to close the ninth annual Thunder Bay Blues Festival that night, the legendary guitarist did what any self-respecting star would do – he found the only on-duty cabbie in the Twin Ports area with a passport, gathered his band and his gear together and made his way north along Highway 61.

Three-hundred-and-fifty U.S. dollars and a quick stop at a Grand Marais Dairy Queen later the trio arrived in Thunder Bay, hitting the Marina Park stage about a half-an-hour behind schedule.

Taj Mahal’s drummer, Kester Smith, said the trouble began when the group’s Delta Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Thunder Bay was cancelled.

“What we had to do was get a flight that could get us close to the border, which is the last place we were,” said Smith, not even sure of where he’d landed. “Then we had to get a taxi to come here.”

It’s the second time in two weeks Taj Mahal’s had problems getting to Canada. Attempting to get to Montreal in late June, the band was rerouted through New York and Washington, only to find their flight to Canada had been wiped off the board.

“The next day we got a flight to come up to Canada and our luggage didn’t come.”

It was like déjà vu all over again on Sunday, Smith said, still laughing at the thought of what had transpired.

Once again their luggage was lost, and the three musicians and their crew arrived with their instruments and the clothes on their back. Ironically the change of clothes they were given for after the show – all organizers could find at the last minute – was leftover concert t-shirts from the 2009 Blues Festival, featuring Los Lonely Boys.

Mahal, born Henry Saint Clair Fredericks in Harlem, N.Y., told the Blues Festival crowd that he’d stewed about his predicament for most of the day, but forgot about it as soon as he walked out on stage and saw the estimated 6,000 people in the audience cheering wildly.

“I had to let go of whatever it was and think about the music,” he said, midway through his 90-minute set. “You need to give a big cheer for this wonderful weekend of music.”

Festival organizer Bob Halvorsen, who struggled with border issues on Friday and Saturday, dispatched a pair of trusted colleagues to the Pigeon River crossing on Sunday, and with the full cooperation of customs officials, ensured that the band – who had little time to spare to make the show – was expedited officiously and sent on their way.

Halvorsen said the fact that an artist as revered as Taj Mahal – he’s been ranked among the top five blues musicians in the world – would take a cab to play the show says a lot about the man’s character.

“My first thought was that I was unbelievably shocked that a gentleman who is (68) years old, of that stature in this business, would want to play that badly that he would do that to come to Thunder Bay. That goes to show you just how devoted these people are to their craft and how much they want to come to Thunder Bay and do the right thing,” said Halvorsen, the Community Auditorium’s general manager, adding that there’s a lot of artists he deals with who wouldn’t go half as far to play.

“Some genres of music are up and down in terms of their devotion to the trade. And I can’t say enough about blues artists. Every one of the acts, once they get into Thunder Bay, they’re always the nicest people.”

The cab driver, Nick Berg, an Afghanistan veteran and former armoured car driver, has just 14 days running fares under his belt, only taking the job from a friend because he was unable to find work in his field after securing a university degree last December.

Oddly enough, it’s the second time in those two weeks he’s had to drive someone across the Canadian border.

This time around, the Bayside Taxi driver said he had no idea he was transporting someone who once opened for Otis Redding.

“They told me to come to their airport, you’ve got a fare to Thunder Bay. That was it,” he said. “I didn’t even know what was going on.”

The drive itself, once he remembered the time change at the border and hurried his pace, was uneventful he added, saying his passengers slept most of the way.

He did ask them one thing once he realized what they did for a living.

“I said apparently you’re musicians, because I didn’t know at the time, do you have any music you want to listen to. They said, ‘No.”

After a five-minute pit stop and a quick bite to eat, Berg was on his way back to Minnesota, but he didn’t leave empty-handed. Festival officials promised him a complimentary pair of weekend passes to next year’s show, accommodation included.