In a blues scene crowded with stale, formulaic bar bands, Fat Possum Records has carved a niche by nurturing artists whose off-center styles are too raw for mainstream tastes. This weekend, Robert Cage, Elmo Williams, Hezekiah Early, and the 75-year-old T-Model Ford, whose recent disc “Pee Wee Get My Gun” was a 1997 critical favorite, bring the label’s “Eye Scratchers and Ball Kickers” tour to the 1998 Chicago Blues Festival. You can catch them at 1 p.m. at the Front Porch stage and 3:30 at the Juke Joint stage on Saturday. (For a complete Blues Festival schedule, see the Music listings.)
Q. So what about your reputation as a “wild man”?
A. I’m sorta easy to get along with, but I don’t like people to do me dirty. I’m in too bad a shape to go to jail again, I’m trying to stay out of there. If they make me mad, I’ll have to go back, so I’m gonna stay around the house, play my music, drink me a little corn whiskey … long as they don’t hit me, I’m all right.
Q. And you took up the guitar as an adult?
A. I never been to school a day in my life. When I got to 6 years old, I was plowin’ a mule with the grown men. I had to do that, or my daddy’d put the limb on me! I’m glad he made something outta me … If I’d started playing the guitar when I was young, like I’m playing now, I’d have been dead.
Q. Why do you say that?
A. Maaaan … you ever sit down and hear me play the blues? I could make them women do anything, with that guitar. I’m not a fighter, I’m a lover man. I make the moon rise two hours late.
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