Bluesman bounces back from heart ailment to keep playing
By Charles Cassady
Insights
Published July 23, 2008

Colin Dussault has been making music with the Blues Project since 1989. (Photo credit: ColinDussault.com)

Local blues-music legend Colin Dussault said he recently read a stridently negative online review of a performance by him and his band, the Colin Dussault Blues Project. It got him so incensed the only thing to prevent him posting a rebuttal was that he wasn’t a “member” of the Web site.

“‘Blues Nazi’ is a term we musicians have,” said Dussault, to describe the attitude of the critic, whose essential complaint was that the Blues Project played too much popular stuff and not enough Blues (capital letter). The authentic Mississippi string-tie, slide-guitar, poverty-wracked, woman/the sheriff done-me-wrong, empty liquor bottles, dusk on the bayou, deep, deep southern blues.

“I’m a blues player and a blues lover,” said Dussault, of Lakewood, but he affirms that he and his band reserve the right to bring their harmonica-driven blues styles to anything they want, be it a Bob Dylan or Van Morrison cover or their own originals, most recently showcased on the group’s latest self-released CD “Colinized.”

But don’t take Dussault’s word for it that he’s got the blues in his system. Ask the Cleveland Clinic. For earlier this year Dussault had a serious health scare from what might be described as a broken heart.

On his own homepage, www.colindussault.com, the incident is described in novelistic detail. Dussault archly notes that it was while voting in the Democratic Primaries in March that the trouble began: blurred vision, a sore throat, a headache, an earache, and a pain “like a tractor-trailer rig was pressing down on my chest.” He made an appointment with a doctor for three days later and soldiered on through his full-time regimen of gigs, assuming he had some sort of flu. But his doctor could find nothing clearly wrong. After cycles of the symptoms reviving and subsiding - and visits to the Lakewood Hospital Emergency Room - Dussault got the advice to check into the Cardiac Care Unit.

“I felt perfectly fine. I had no pain and almost left my hospital room three different times through the course of the day. Each time I mentioned leaving the nurses convinced me to stay to await my CAT scan.” And Dussault would have left, to play some important concerts, except that snowy weather led to the playdates getting cancelled. Dussault now calls that a miracle; if he had gone to perform - straining himself to carry his heavy gear, the way he learned in the family moving-van business - he might very well have died.

Dussault had developed an aortic tear, in the arch of the main artery feeding the heart. The same ailment killed actor John Ritter. Dussault was rushed to the Cleveland Clinic, and had to contemplate the likelihood of risky open-heart surgery, and that he might not survive or suffer a stroke during the procedure.

But Dussault’s “atypical Type A dissection,” fortunately, responded to treatment with non-invasive medication and lots of bed rest. “It’s clotting, which is a good thing.” The burly bluesman has lost 50 pounds and is keeping to a regular regimen of medicine to control his blood pressure. And, “I gave up carrying furniture.”

After about three weeks of bed rest, Dussault and the Blues Project returned to active duty at area attractions, bars and festivals. “I came back, and I just didn’t play as hard,” he said. “I’ve got people carrying my gear.”

On Sunday, the Colin Dussault Blues Project plays a free outdoor show on Sunday at the Westlake Recreation Center, 28955 Hilliard Boulevard, part of Westlake’s summer concert series. All are invited, and the show starts at 6:30 p.m. On Saturday at noon Dussault also performs at the Emerald Necklace Marina in Rocky River. Both shows are free to the public.

This Westlake show has poignant significance for Dussault and his five-piece band. Last year when the Blues Project performed at Clague Park as part of the same concert series, the wife of drummer Fredo Stable-Perez attended. “Wives never come to gigs,” said Dussualt. “That’s the reality. That day she showed up with their two children.”

It was the last time most of the band saw her. Rachel Stable-Perez, who had suggested the title “Colinized” for the new CD, subsequently fell ill with what was thought to be food poisoning. It turned out to be an unexpected, adverse reaction to prescription medication, and she died suddenly at home. She was 38.

“It’s been a very crazy year,” said Dussault. “Very sobering. It makes you appreciate your life and what you have around you.