BoPoMoFo @ Roxy Roots

Blues lovers finally have a place in Taipei to call their own, with the recent opening of Roxy Roots. Located in the heart of Taipei’s Xinyi district, Roxy Roots is dedicated to blues, reggae and other roots music, and local Chicago-blues style band BoPoMoFo took to the stage on Saturday to play a blistering couple of sets.

D.C. Rapier on harp | BoPoMoFo @ Roxy Roots

BoPoMoFo, blending Chicago blues, soul and R & B, are made up of Chicago native DC Rapier on vocals, harmonica, tenor sax and guitar; Japanese guitar virtuoso Aki “The Flame” Ikeda, Daisuke ‘Dafu’ Neishi on drums, Canadian Michael ‘Steel-fingers’ Tennant on bass and  Klaus ‘Mr Fixer’ Tseng on keyboards.

Aki Ikeda on guitar | BoPoMoFo @ Roxy Roots

Klaus Tseng on keyboards and Mike Tennant on bass | BoPoMoFo @ Roxy Roots

Daisuke ‘Dafu’ Neishi on drums | BoPoMoFo @ Roxy Roots

With a set featuring classics such as Freddie King’s “Hideaway” (a personal favorite of mine) through to originals, BoPoMoFo brought their brand of blues to a fairly decent crowd who braved the rain from typhoon Morakot to come out on Taiwanese Father’s Day. Special guest Conor Prunty jammed with the band for a few songs, trading harmonica licks with DC.

Conor Prunty on harp | BoPoMoFo @ Roxy Roots

DC Rapier is also founder and president of the Blues Society on Taiwan who will be presenting the sixth annual Blues Bash in mid November.  Saturday November 14th will see the bash taking place at the Dream Community in Shijhih, and Sunday the 15th at Huashan Cultural Park in central Taipei.

BoPoMoFo @ Roxy Roots

Klaus Tseng | BoPoMoFo @ Roxy Roots

I highly recommend you catch a BoPoMoFo gig if you can.  Join their Facebook group here and you will be kept up to date on future gigs. If you’re a blues lover, you don’t want to miss them. Here’s a few more pictures – shooting details at the end.

DC Rapier on tenor sax | BoPoMoFo @ Roxy Roots

BoPoMoFo @ Roxy Roots

These were all shot with a Canon 5D Mark II and either the 70-200mm f4L lens. ISO varied between 1600 and 3200, aperture was either f4 or f5.6 and shutter speeds ranged between 1/60 and 1/200. As well, a 580 EXII speedlight with Honl 1/4″ gridspot or 1/8″ gridspot was used to direct some light into the faces, particularly for DC and Aki.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 06:00. It is filed under Music and tagged with blues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.