Steven Mets Konopka, 1950-2019

Plus, A Brief History Of The Old Farts Blues Jam (OFBJ)

Steve Konopka, aka Fuzzy to musicians, was born May 14, 1950 and died August 28, 2019.

I met Steve playing at the OFBJ (Old Farts Blues Jam) maybe 10-12 years ago.

• I first played at the OFBJ in January, 2006 at the American Legion off S. Broadway. I met Lindsay Olive, David Harrod, Donnie Crisp. Bob Hopps, Steve Moore (RIP).
• Spring 2006 the OFBJ moved to High Life Lounge, formerly Lynagh's Concert Hall, later Cosmic Charlie's, on Woodland. I met Patty Butcher and others there.
• After a couple of months it moved 3 doors to Lynagh's, where it stayed for 18 months.
• Then it moved (in, what, Fall 2007?) to O'Neil's for 4.5 years. During that time, the house band was the Here For The Party Band: David Harrod on harp & vocals, Lindsay Olive on guitar, Erik Shields on drums, Bob Hopps on keys & vocals, and Michael Anderson or Matt Noell on bass & vocals.

Here's the oldest picture I can find of Steve at a jam: O'Neil's January, 2012. Steve Parrish on drums, Steven Poe on guitar, me on guitar & vocals, Fuzzy on Harp, Keith Hubbard on keys, and that looks like Jimmy Olive on bass?

[Note, I loaded all these pictures in X-large size so you could make out the faces. Most of them got cropped on the right. So please click on a photo and look at them in camera roll mode to see the whole pic.]

Here's another pic from March, 2012. Lindsay Olive on guitar, me on guitar & vocals, Erik Shields on drums, Fuzzy, Michael Anderson aka Cheesehead on bass, and the OFBJ long-time keyboard player, Bob Hopps. Bob is also an excellent blues guitar player, harpist, and vocalist.

• After O'Neil's, the OFBJ moved downtown to Cheapside for a few months.
• It was at Paulie's Toasted Barrel downtown on Main St. for a year or so around 2013.
• Then it moved to Patchen Pub for maybe a year?

Here's a pic from Patchen Pub, October 1014. Brent Carter (playing Johnny Cash) on my Flying V, Mighty Joe Linville on sax. Gordon Parks on bass, probably SkyJack Miller on drums, Fuzzy, most excellent young guitarist Jeff Adams, and Jerry Woodyard playing the flattop.

• The jam then morphed into Sherman House Presents the Lexington Blues Jam booked by Matt Noell. It was at Shamrocks on Patchen outside Sunday evenings for 2 years.

Here's a pic of Steve (& me) at Shamrocks July 2015. Great shirt!

Spring & Summer of 2013 I ran the Tuesday Night Rock & Roll Party at Henry Clay Public House downtown on Upper. Here's Steve playing with Lexington blues legend Teedee Young - & his son, who is now part of his band. Logan Lay is on bass.

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After Fall 2016, there was no blues jam in Lexington for 10 months. I was missing my playing time, so I approached Steve about doing a duo, me on guitar & vocals, him on harp. He had played a few duo gigs before with Richard Mattingly. I chose Steve because of the 10 or so harp players I had played with, Steve was by far the most versatile. He could find a harp part on almost anything. No offense, but most harp players want to play nothing but blues.

A Digitech Vocalist Live 3 sang harmony with me on 1/3 of the songs (and did autotune on all the songs). I also used a Boss RC-30 Looper on a few songs.

We named ourselves, very imaginatively, Steve & Chris. My older brother is named Steve, so I had heard "Steve & Chris" for all my young life.

We pretty quickly got 50 songs - enough for a 4 hour gig. That grew to 90. So we moved 45 to a Duo Other book. But Steve and I were both horrible about holding the list down. The final count was 122, ha ha!

We rehearsed in the music area of my basement. We tried songs out live at Coralee's Open Mic, which was at Willie's Locally Known on Southland, then Cosmic Charlie's on National, and then The Burl. Coralee was always very encouraging and supportive. After Coralee moved to Nashville, we switched to the Red Barn Radio Open Mic, now Listen Locally Open Mic, at Twisted Cork off of Clay's Mill, Sunday, 5:30-9:00. We played there lots of weeks - 25 set lists in my app - until Steve started to weaken in Summer 2019.

We also played at LexJam, the 2nd Saturday of the month, 1-5, currently at Ranada's on Old Vine. Steve played at LexJam for ~15 years. Steve loved LexJam and LexJam loved Steve. Rennie Neubecker who runs LexJam seemed to be hit particularly hard by the loss of Steve. Steve & I last played at LexJam July 13, 2019.

Here's the poster Rennie made for the memorial they had for Steve.

We played our first gig at J. Render's Southern Table & Grill May 2017, thanks to the GM there, my musical friend Josh Brown. They were having a special fixed price dinner paired with local Alltech beers, with master brewer Ken Lee - "The Beer of Bourbon Country". We got the dinner and beers for our pay, yay! We passed the audition, and played J. Renders several more times. Here's a pic from that 1st night.

We decided that Steve would wear a baseball cap rather than going with 2 straw hats. LOL! Here we are playing indoors there in November.

We also played Grillfish and Patchen Pub, and here's a pic from Big Blue Martini.

The next year, 2018, we played J. Render's, Shamrocks, Squires, and The Cellar. They liked us everywhere we played, but the same thing happened at Patchen Pub & The Cellar: their in-house music critic, a 30-something dude probably in a band, noticed that we were old! Need younger blood!

Here is the link to the Steve & Chris YouTube channel. 7 videos, 2 of originals from the basement, 2 from Big Blue Martini, 1 from J. Renders, 2 from Grillfish.

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Meanwhile, Matt Noell got Sherman House Presents (formerly known as the OFBJ) started again Spring 2017.

• It was at Life Brewpub off of Richmond Rd. for a couple of months maybe. I remember my daughter Erica who lives in Brooklyn came out and got to talk with Steve.
• It then moved to Lynagh's and stayed until December 2018. The original house band was Roger Barber on drums, Matt Noell on bass, David Ponder & Brent Carter on guitar. I took over for Ponder in Spring 2018.
• In Summer 2017, Dane Sadler started the Blues & Groove Jam at Squires, Sunday 7:30-10:30. So we had 2 jams/week for a while, yay! That jam is still going strong. Boogie G. (George Burdette) and J.J. Davis alternate weeks on bass. Both are monster players on bass & vocals, & J.J. also is an unbelievable lead guitarist - Hendrix + Van Halen licks. I've filled in for Dane a few times.

Here's 2 pix of Steve at Squire's playing with Teedee again on June 23, 2019. Teedee is playing my St. Vincent Signature. Dane on guitar, Mighty Joe Linville on sax, and Erik Shields on drums.

The last time Steve played out was at Squires on July 28, 2019, 1 month to the day before he died. I think this pic is from the month before. Erik Shields on drums.

Here's a couple more pix from those last few months. I love this selfie that Haywood Ferguson took. You can clearly see Steve projecting harpiness into Jerry Mayfield, who's projecting it on to Haywood.

Haywood greatly respected Steve's playing and had been learning from Steve for the last year or so. Steve told me several times, he couldn't believe how he would show or tell Haywood something for the harp, and next time Haywood would be doing it. Haywood did Steve & Chris songs with me at LexJam, Twisted Cork, and Steve's memorial. Thanks Haywood!

Here's 1 from April. A good pic of Steve IMO.

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My wife & I had both picked up nasty colds on Tuesday, so when Julie called on Wednesday August 28, 10:30 am to tell me Steve had died at 6 am, I could not offer to come over. I went by the following Monday, & Julie asked me to put together music for Steve's memorial - it is what he would have wanted. "How big a band?" "The bigger the better", Julie sez.

I told her 20-25 musicians, we got 19 signed up. Plus, King William Allen was there but did not want to sign up and play. We had 2 electric guitar + 1 acoustic electric amps, 5 mics on stage. We didn't get the 4 piece horn section we were shooting for (the fuzzyhorns), but the 2 horns we got, Mighty Joe Linville on tenor sax and Kevin Sparks on trumpet, acquitted themselves famously.

The memorial was Saturday, September 21, 3-5. We started setting up at 2 but still started 15 minutes late. We went a little over. It was at Clark Legacy Center, 601 E. Brannon Rd, Nicholasville. Past all the Brannon Crossing development, on the left.

Here's a pic without the horns. Len Wujcik on harp, Vanessa Davis on my electric classical + vocals, Ron Northrip on my bass, David Ponder on my Strat + vocals, Brent Carter on his Les Paul. David & Brent totally helped out playing guitar for the last hour. They love to play together, having played in Thirstin Howl with Sherri McGee & Matt Noell. Ron did me a double solid, taking over for me on bass (our planned bass player was a no-show) so I could work the list, and finishing out the afternoon without getting to play any guitar. Thanks David, Brent, & Ron!

Steve & I knew Vanessa from the Twisted Cork open mic. She has a fabulous voice, has written many most excellent original songs, and is a great guitarist. She is a star at the Twisted Cork open mic. It was really nice of her to come out and get that side of Steve's recent music represented.

Here's the full effect, with the fuzzyhorns on the left. That's Randy Ethridge aka Woody on drums. He was from Richmond, moved to FL 4-5 years ago. He was back up for the funeral, that same day, of his 25 YO daughter claimed by the opioid epidemic. A completely tragic loss. He came out to get some musical healing, I think he did.

Here's everyone who signed up. The original list got soaked & smeared by the 1/2 pint of Maker's Mark in my gig bag that decided to sacrifice itself to the gods, so I had to recopy it.

From the time Julie appointed me music director I was sweating bullets that it would go well. But it did go well, Julie, the kids, and her family all enjoyed it. We finished with all the musicians, including 4 harp players trading off riffs, on stage, doing "I Shall Be Released". Brent Carter told me he had to put his sunglasses on during the song, because he was tearing up. I saw Julie singing along, and many others.

Another thing at the end that was completely heart-warming was David Harrod giving out 3 harps to young ones there. Haywood was trying to get them all playing in the finale.

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Here's what I posted to Steve's Tribute Wall.

I met Steve 10 years ago playing out at blues jams. He and I started playing in a duo around 3 years ago. My concept of our collaboration was: I would play guitar and sing and keep the songs going so Steve could play beautiful blues harp over them. He could find a beautiful harp part for pretty much anything. Everybody at the jams loved Steve; he was very encouraging to the less experienced players and was happy to act as a mentor - although he was surprised when they actually used the things he taught them. He did not have a mean bone in his body. I still several times a day think "I need to ask Steve about that" or "Steve needs to hear this song". I hope he stays with me for a long time - he will be a good influence. My deepest condolences to his family.

I had not thought of this beforehand, it just came out as I was writing it. But I've thought of it several times since then, and discussed it with people. When someone dies, as we all do, we still have them in our minds. I still think several times a day, "I need to ask Steve that" or "I bet Steve likes this song, I can't wait to hear what he does on harp with it." After people like this die, I think we sometimes try to let our recognition of these occurrences time out, because they make us sad when we realize the person is gone.

But, I think I will try to keep Steve alive in my head. He was one of the nicest people I ever met. He didn't have a mean bone in his body. I think he was always a good influence on me, so I will try and keep that influence around.

But NO Ancient Alien Astronauts! Steve loved that show, I finally watched an episode and, no way!

I have a Steve-shaped hole in my life. I can't imagine how big that hole is for Julie & the kids, Jesse & Rose. But I think his presence in our minds will be a positive influence for as long as any of us can remember.

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Penultimately, here's 1 final pic of Steve: from the album cover of "Come Round Baby" by The Stella-Vees, 2007, 16 tracks. Steve was joined by Steve Parrish on drums, Jason Lockwood on guitar & vocals. Lindsay Olive told me he played bass on the album, I have no idea who the bass player in the picture is.

I burned 6 copies of the album and took them to the memorial. 5 were taken, yay! Anytime a track from this album comes up on shuffle play out of 20,000 songs in my iTunes, I immediately recognize Steve's harp.

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And finally here is the song about Steve that Dr. Kevin Holm-Hudson wrote in 1 day. Dr. Kevin is a regular & star at Twisted Cork, and a prolific songwriter (and a UK music professor and a member of The Twiggenburys). He woke up in the morning with 2 lines about Steve and wrote 5 verses that day. It was very moving, both at Twisted Cork and LexJam.