Ken and Paul on Red Car

A few years back I was shooting a film: "San Diego Give Me The Blues". I'd been living in San Diego for a few years with my wife Carmen. We liked the club scene and at Croce's one night in the Gaslamp I ran across this hep cat, Eric Lieberman, a guitarist who had a band called "Blue Largo". His wife, Alicia Aragon, was the singer and after the show we talked and I thought he was a bright articulate guy who knew a hell of a lot about Jazz and the blues. He did a perfect rendition of T. Bone Walker on the exact model of guitar that the old master played a Gibson 335, 1958 vintage worth at least $20 thousand.

As I got to know him and his musical pals like Sue Palmer, Jonny Viau, Nathan James and Candye Kane (among many others) I had the inspiration to do a documentary about the "Blues Community". While doing research for the film I kept hearing about this group called "King Biscuit" who had ruled San Diego for almost 20 years. They played what is known in the business as "Real Chicago Blues" and traditional delta blues. This group should have been in the "Guinness Book Of World Records" for the volume of musicians that had filtered through the band; some said there were as many as 150 to 200 musicians had come and gone in their time. Ken Schoppmeyer and Paul Cowie were the founding members.

The driving force behind this band and the interest in blues in San Diego, an otherwise insular, white, suburban megalopolis was Ken Schoppmeyer & Paul Cowie. I found Ken and Paul living together on Paul's ranch in Eastern WA next to the Columbia River.

I shot this in Chelan WA in May of 2010, where Ken had moved after returning from South America and going through a particularly bitter divorce. They hadn't talked in over 20 years after their storied break-up in 1984 but Ken and Paul played one last time together, the day and night I filmed them.

Shortly after I filmed this Ken Schoppmeyer returned to San Diego to try and revive his musical career. He stayed with my wife and I for a couple of days and he was thoroughly charming and entertained us with his wit and music. A month later he took his own life in a Motel in Oceanside. Maybe Ken was saying what a lot of people seem unable or refuse to say: The Blues Scene is dead or almost dead. Maybe it can make a comeback one more time.