These 2 Laugh Away Blues

So you think the blues are the soundtrack for a bummer in spired by Mr. or Miss Wrong? Something you cry into your beer until you decide to put yourself out of your misery? Well, if that’s the blues, then it never was so much fun as Tom Ball & Kenny Sultan make it sound. You can hear the good sound of feeling bad when they kick off the Blue Monday gig at the Holiday Inn in Ventura.

These two Santa Barbarians have been laughing away those blues for more than a decade with songs such as “One Monkey Don’t Stop The Show” and “Who Drank My Beer?” and the ever-appropriate “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?” The duo’s fifth album, “Filthy Rich,” just came out on Flying Fish Records.

Ball is a bad-to-the-bone harmonica player, and also the guy with the gruff blues voice that half the singers on MTV probably wish they had. Sultan is the virtuoso guitar player.

These guys are big on that endless blues festival circuit and they’ve played with just about every blues artist you can name. Lately, they’ve been doing some TV stuff, such as the new CBS series, “Johnny Bago.” They’re also doing a Levi’s commercial.

When Ball and Sultan are in town, they play a couple of times a week in Santa Barbara, rarely in Ventura.

Also on the bill will be Little Jonny & the Giants--a hot S. B. blues band with a cast of all-star players. Among them is Jim Calire on keyboards, Jonny Lawton on vocals and guitar, and Bill Flores on everything else.

It’s a $5 show beginning at 8:15 p.m. The Holiday Inn is at 450 E. Harbor Blvd. in Ventura. For more information, call 646-7230.