BELFAST — Carlene Perkins Thornton of Liberty had been singing lead vocals with the Juke Rockets for a little over a year when the band won a statewide competition last fall and a trip to the 29th annual International Blues Competition in Memphis, Tenn.

The IBC was held last week, and though the Juke Rockets were knocked out in the early rounds, it didn't stop the band from having a great time. PenBayPilot caught up with Perkins Thornton, who was back at work in Belfast Tuesday but took a few minutes to talk about the trip, the state of the blues today, and the international reach of the music she never tires of.  

It seems like the Juke Rockets are well known in Maine, had you traveled outside of the state to play before this?

No, not at all.

So what was it like going to Memphis?

Oh my God, that was just amazing. We met some incredible people. The bands were just outrageous, the amount of talent that was there was incredible. We put on a great show. I felt really proud when we came off that stage, we really did what we needed to do. 

What was the structure of the competition?

They set it up in different venues around the city. There were supposed to be 160 bands, though I don't know if all of them came. They chose so many acts per venue to compete and the winners of that went on to the semi-finals. And then the winners of that went on to the finale.

Where did you play?

We played at a place called The Flying Saucer, and the winning group, the one that won the whole thing (the Selwyn Birchwood Band) played with us. That was their venue for the first two nights, so I don't feel quite so bad about losing the competition. They were amazing. And actually, they'll be coming up here this summer. We're really pleased. They're such a nice bunch of guys.

(Thornton said the Selwyn Birchwood Band is scheduled to be an opening act on the main stage at the North Atlantic Blues Festival in Rockland this summer) 

Saturday night when we're up on the street in Rockland doing the club crawl, hopefully they're going to come up and jam with us a little bit out on the street. That would be awesome. 

The IBC is partly billed as a way for regional acts to break onto larger stages. Did you make any connections while you were down there?

We made a lot of connections. We ended up being on a live radio broadcast. The host was Vinny Marini, he does a live broadcast down there. We were lucky. We were just bringing him a CD. We sent Tim [Woitowitz, the Juke Rockets' drummer] up and next thing we know, he was running out out saying, "C'mon up, they want to interview us." It was just little snippets. We were played in three states: Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, so we were pleased with that.

From looking at your Facebook page, you announced that you hadn't made the semi-finals but it didn't seem like there was any break in the fun.

There was no break in the fun. It was amazing. We were able to go see other venues, go check out people and watch their performances, and they had a lot of different jams. I was fortunate enough to be invited to play in an all-women in blues jam. All these talented women. Except for ... you're going to find this funny. They got there and we didn't have any female drummers there yet so my drummer, Tim, got to sit in with the women. I don't know if you want to put this in there but they granted him his honorary set of ovaries for that day. It was awesome.

And they had some wonderful performers. There was a woman whose album is number four on the blues chart, Pam Taylor, she was there. Women from all over the world were there.

Reading the list on the IBC website, it almost seems like the Olympics of blues.

It really was. There were people from Spain and Italy and Israel and Sweden and Denmark and Norway. Croatia sent 23 bands.

Twenty-three bands? I thought each place only got to send one band.

I guess it's just like the United States where there are so many different areas. I don't know much about Croatia but I know there were 23 different bands from Croatia, so it must be just like the States, here, y'know?

Can you hear the differences?

I was amazed, because some of these people can't speak English, but you wouldn't know it when they were singing. They even had the dialects correct. It was crazy. Barcelona, Spain ... They were just from everywhere. Everywhere.

It probably used to seem more strange but when I think of Tampa/St Petersburg [the Selwyn Birchwood Band is from Tampa], I don't think of the blues.

But who would think of the blues in Maine either?

So you were in Memphis, which gets described as the Mecca of blues. Obviously Delta Blues originates in that area and then there was this migration and evolution of it in Chicago and the Piedmont style, but does it stop at some point? Are you doing something historical or is it still evolving?

I think it's still evolving. This year they had a youth showcase down there that has their own contest. And the youths that showcased were from all over the world. This was the first year they did a women in blues event and now they want to make it a yearly thing. It's just growing. They had to add more venues because they had so many more bands. The number of bands has just grown and grown and grown. And every band has their own interpretation of the blues. Some may be more jazz, some more rock, some rockabilly blues, some old straight blues. There's just so many forms of it, so I guess it's just [a question of] what you like.

The times I've been down to Rockland [for the North Atlantic Blues Festival], it's great for the first four hours and then all of a sudden something snaps and I can't hear another one, four, five chord progression. Do you ever get blues-ed out?

No, we went for five days, not just hours. It was days. Yeah, it was amazing. So I guess it's just really gotta be your thing. I just didn't want to come home. None of us wanted to come home.

How would you describe your take on the blues?

It's more a high octane blues. We're not the old, old type blues. We want people to get up and move and dance and just feel good with it.

Do you have some shows lined up now that you're back?

I think we have 41 shows booked for the year already. So, we're pretty excited. We really learned a lot in Memphis. Were going to take a lot from this. And we're going to go for it again this year, and hopefully go down again next year.

Any other plans for traveling now that you've done it?

We're talking about that. We're going to sit down and talk about how far we want to go, where we're willing to travel. We all have full-time jobs. So, y'know, if you want to travel you have to work it around work, too.

That's the blues, though, isn't it.

Yeah, we all have our day jobs.

(The Juke Rockets have one demo recording for sale and are planning to record a full-length CD soon. To contact the band or get information about show dates, find them on Facebook, here.)

 Ethan Andrews can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com