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After a gap of five long years Mark and Rick returned to Clarksdale to perform at the 2011 Juke Joint Festival.
“I really felt like I needed to recharge and reconnect with the motherload”, Mark says. “Five years is too long to leave it, especially as some of the area’s best known players have passed on in the last year or two.”
 What was originally going to be a full-band trip end up being a duo trip through various reasons, but Mark and Rick have plenty of musical friends over in Clarksdale so they knew they could put a rhythm section together for their festival slot. They didn’t travel alone though – Dave Walker, sax and harp player with one of Mark’s other bands the Maxwell Street Blues Band, came with them as did Mark’s sister Jan and bro-in-law Derek. “I’ve told them so much about the previous trips that they decided they had to come and experience the South for themselves”.
After spending the first night in Memphis, the group headed down to the Shackup Inn in Clarksdale and then hit the town for the night. They caught up with Mike Myers and his family in the Club 2000 and listened to the band, which had Terry “Big T” Williams on bass and his cousin Iceman on drums. “In the break, Big T invited us up to play a few numbers and we had fun playing with the great local musicians as well as Mike from Canada, an Australian drummer – Matt, I think his name was – and Dave who got up to blow some harp too. A really international gathering. Blues is a global language, we hit the groove and we made music.”
On the day of the festival, the Clarksdale residents and many people from out of town filled the streets. “It’s more than a music festival. It’s also the end of the planting season so there’s a great celebratory theme to the day, with a strong family and community feeling. Also, it was great to see how much the town had changed in five years. There are a lot more businesses, the Shackup Inn has expanded, and there’s a very optimistic feel for the future of the town.” And what about the Sons of the Delta gig? Who was the rhythm section? “My good friends Mike and Stevie Myers from Ottawa and I have kept in touch since I first met them back in 2005 and when I was over in Ottawa last September we made plans to meet up at the festival. So when we knew Ade couldn’t make the trip, Stevie was an obvious choice to play bass with us. We couldn’t get hold of BJ, the drummer that both our bands have played with before, but there’s a great Clarksdale drummer called Lee Andrew Williams Jnr. who was happy to step in.”
 Mark joined the Myers Brothers Blues Band on harp and later in the afternoon the Sons of the Delta played their set, with a guest appearance on one song by Dave Walker on harp. Despite Rick's rain coat in the photo the weather was great. So good, in fact, that Mark had to go and buy a Kangol to keep the sun off his red head. Check out YouTube for videos of both the Myers Brothers Blues Band set and the Sons of the Delta set.
“A great time was had by all. Best of all, only local bands play on the night schedule so our bit was done and we were able to get our festival wristbands, drink beer and move around the venues enjoying the wonderful music along with the crowd. We ended up back at the Shackup and watched Lightnin' Malcolm & Cameron Kimbrough deliver a blistering hill country set until 3.45am when we crawled, stewed, back to our shack.
 Mike, his wife Annette and son Adam, had to head back to Ottawa on Sunday, but Stevie and his wife Laura were still in town so everyone chilled out at the boys shack at the Shackup Inn for a while before heading to the end-of-festival jam at Red’s Lounge, a real-deal juke joint in town. Mark and Stevie got up and played a few numbers, much to the delight of the host Terry “harmonica” Bean. There’s a video of one of the tracks they played here.
“We’re planning on doing it all again next year – I’m not leaving it another five years! Far too long."
  
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