It’s been decades since Chris Cain played the Zoo Bar.
The Bay Area bluesman was a Zoo regular in the late ’80s, ’90s and early 2000s, often starting his tours with a Lincoln stop. But he hasn’t been back for nearly 20 years.
“I miss it, man. The Zoo Bar was like one of my favorite places always,†Cain said. “I didn’t have a vehicle for travel. So I just seemed to play more around California and in this area unless they flew us there for something. But I wasn't renting vans and stuff. So there was a whole period where I wasn't really traveling to like the places where you would go and play.â€
So it’s something of an event that Cain will return to Lincoln on Thursday to play ZooFest on the Fourth of July. And he’ll be bringing with him songs from his soon-to-be-released album “Good Intentions Gone Bad.â€
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That album, arguably the best of Cain’s career, is made up of 13 songs, recorded with his touring band, along with a three-piece horn section that funnels Cain’s passionate guitar and best-ever vocals into a set of blues rooted in Memphis, Tennessee.
That’s more than appropriate as Memphis is where Cain’s blues roots are located. He didn’t grow up there. But his father, who he pays tribute to on "Blues For My Dad,†was a Beale Street fixture and educated young Chris on the city, the blues and guitar.
“When I was 8 years old, he showed me the first thing ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go’ in the key of E,†Cain said. “My dad was a gas because he was a truck driver. He wasn’t a musician. But he figured out a set of tunes and he’d put on his tie and go out and play a set.â€
Not only did Cain’s father introduce him to the guitar, he took the boy out to see the artists who made the records.
“We never missed B.B. King,†said Cain, whose first King show came when he was just 4 years old. “He’d come here every year, before ‘The Thrill Is Gone.’ He knew when these guys were playing those tiny clubs. I got to meet a lot of people that I really loved, just because of him being like a Black gentleman in a suit, they would think he's with the bands. We could just come and go, and meet like Albert King, Freddie King, many, many people.â€
Cain’s father’s record collection served as the pre-teen guitarist’s workbook, to speak.
“Anything my dad liked, I wanted to try and do,†he said. “I’d take his B.B. King records in my room and I would be doing my thing and he’d go, ‘Hey, dude, that sounds like B.B. King.’ I’d float in the air for like two weeks after he would say that.
“My dad had all the good records. He had a really loud hi-fi. He was just on top of it. So I got to hear the great stuff when I was just a kid. And my mom took me to see the Beatles on a school day. That’s what my folks were like. I was very lucky in that way.â€
Cain studied music at San Jose City College and was soon teaching jazz improvisation there. Over the next 20 years, he’d also master piano, bass guitar, clarinet, alto and tenor saxophone and blended jazz into the blues he’s played since he was a kid to create his distinctive, fiery-with-feeling guitar style.
“When I started my first band in 1987, I was 30-something,†he said. "I'd never really done that before. I borrowed money to make ‘Late Night City Blues’ because I wanted to get dates around town. So I made the record and then this whole thing happened. We were at the W.C. Handy Awards, touring all this stuff I didn’t plan. It’s just like it snowballed. It was a really trippy experience.â€
“Late Night City Blues†received four nominations for what are now known as the Blues Music Awards and pulled Cain and his band out of the Bay Area to Europe — and across the U.S. with stop No. 1 on a tour usually the long, narrow club on North 14th Street in Lincoln.
“It was a beautiful thing because it was like the first gig we could play,†Can said. “When we’d go on these tours, Nebraska was first, there was nothing closer that we could play. So we’d be starting off the tour right, always the Zoo Bar. It was a gas man.â€
At the vast majority of shows then and now Cain plays his beloved Gibson ES-335 guitar named Melba that he’s had since 1990 — a guitar featured prominently in the new book “Gibson ES Believers." He also plugs into an equally beloved Music Man RD 112 amp he’s had since 1987.
And Thursday, he’ll be playing songs from throughout his career, some from “Raisin’ Cain,†his 2021 Alligator Records that garnered four 2022 Blues Music Award nominations, including album of the year and best guitarist.
And he’ll be bringing songs from “Good Intentions Gone Bad,†which is set for release July 19, including “Still Drinking Straight Tequila,†a reflective take on his 1997 classic inspired by a conversation with Alligator’s president Bruce Iglauer.
“‘Drinking Straight Tequila’ is my hit, people love that tune,†Cain said. “I was talking to Bruce and said, 'I wish I could record it again for Alligator.' He said, ‘You could record something like ‘Still Drinking Straight Tequila’. I go, 'OK,' and I took that idea and made the tune. I thought it’s still got to be in the key of E, so it's going to have that feel but it’s going to be a little different. I think people will like it, too.â€
So are you going to play both songs?
“Now I will,†he said. “It'll be a tequila weekend. I should get a sponsor, Don Julio or something.â€
With or without a sponsor, Cain’s happy to be returning to Lincoln and happy he doesn’t have to find a way to back a trailer into the alley behind the Zoo.
"I would walk back to play the Zoo Bar,†Cain said. “I love Pete (Zoo owner Pete Watters). I love those guys from the first day I went there to play. I love the folks that come out. I love the hotel they put us up in. It’s just all a good thing, man.â€
The Zoo Bar's annual ZooFest returns on Thursday, July 4. Here's a schedule and the lineup for the three-day music festival.Â
Schedule and tickets
Where:Â 14th Street between P and O streets. Gate at 14th and O streets.
When:Â July 4-6.
Tickets: Advance tickets are $30, July 4; $50, July 5 and July 6. Three-day pass: $110. Advance tickets available at . Tickets are also available at the Zoo Bar. Day-of-show tickets are $40, July 4; $50, July 5 and July 6.
Lineup
Thursday
3 p.m., Blues Project.
5 p.m., Chris Cain.
7 p.m., Selwyn Birchwood.
9 p.m., S***hook with four weekly live karaoke winners.
July 5
5 p.m., Jimmy Carpenter Band.
7 p.m., Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears.
9 p.m., Ruthie Foster.
11 p.m., A Ferocious Jungle Cat.
July 6
3 p.m., Lloyd McCarter & the Honky Tonk Revival.
5 p.m., Keisha Pratt featuring Kevin Burke.
7 p.m., The Paladins.
9 p.m., The Soul Rebels.
11 p.m., The Midland Band (Steely Dan tribute).