I Am the Blues takes the audience on a musical journey through the swamps of the Louisiana Bayou and the juke joints of the Mississippi Delta. Visiting the last original blues devils, many in their 80s, still living in the American deep south and touring the Chitlin' Circuit
“The song I Am the Blues, recorded by Muddy Waters, concerns hard times and their heavy musical articulation. It is about the wounds and the mistreatment and the burden of the players who express the suffering. The film I Am the Blues finds the rough-cut music and the rougher-cut life, in Mississippi and Louisiana, where an appreciation for the dying art of gutbucket blues hangs on.
“Montreal filmmaker Daniel Cross is unobtrusive, letting the cameras roll as obscure players such as Jimmy (Duck) Holmes and more known figures such as Bobby Rush talk candidly about the blood of the music and the stomping grounds of the form.
“Perhaps inspired by an art-house indie drama such as Beasts of the Southern Wild as much as the traditional blues-highway doc The Road to Memphis, Cross’s light-handed film doesn’t romanticize or over-comprehend, choosing instead to concentrate on life’s non-choices.” - Brad Wheeler, Globe and Mail
"Like the recent Oscar-winning music documentaries 20 Feet From Stardom and Searching for Sugar Man, I Am the Blues seeks and finds incredible artists who have been overlooked or forgotten, and gives them their due before they’re gone." - Montreal Gazette