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They just are. And so it was that Conrad Oberg began plinking away at the keys of a toy piano at a young age.
Legally blind since he was born in 1994, Oberg proved himself a capable and strikingly gifted musician before he reached his third birthday.
Completely self taught, he hammered out any tune he heard on the piano. At 10, he was recording his first album aptly titled “Decade” on the very piano played by Jerry lee Lewis at the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis, Tenn.
Oberg, a Jacksonville resident who attends LaVilla Middle School, will perform at 2:30 p.m. Saturday on the west stage at the 17th annual George’s Music Springing the Blues Festival at the SeaWalk Pavilion in Jacksonville Beach.
Now 12, Oberg beat out 15 other entrants in a contest sponsored by George’s Music to earn a slot on the festival’s west stage.
“He’s the full picture,” said Alan Friedman, regional manager for George’s Music.
“He’s young and talented beyond his years. We expect great things from him in the future.”
Oberg’s bright future is only eclipsed by his own well of experience. Not many kids his age can say that they have played alongside such blues greats as Pinetop Perkins, Dr. John and the very band members that backed Jerry Lee Lewis in his Sun Studios heyday.
“They were the nicest people you could ever want to meet,” Oberg said Wednesday in an interview with The Beaches Leader.
“There were a few cigarette burns on some of the keys so it made it more authentic.”
Oberg said he is reticent to “toot his own horn.”
But he has more than earned the bragging rights for his stellar personal and professional accomplishments.
Despite his physical limitations, Oberg comfortably wears two hats.
He is a student by day and a seasoned musical artist in his free time, having played at the Miller Mile stage for the 2004 Super Bowl, the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Miss., and several festivals and local venues.
“People [have] said that it is like a flashback of seeing Derek Trucks when he was 12,” said Oberg’s father Michael, vice president of the Museum of Science and History.
Trucks, a Jacksonville native and guitar virtuoso, famously toured with his uncle Butch Trucks and The Allman Brothers when he was 9. Oberg, like Trucks, is also a proficient slide player.
Conrad attends LaVilla Middle School, where he participates in the piano and guitar programs and plans to enroll at the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts for high school.
He is working on his third album — “a combination of piano blues, acoustic and electric guitar blues and really old folk instruments,” he said — and is excited about performing at the festival.
“We are both happy that he is getting this chance,” Michael Oberg said.
“I am glad there is a little bit of a door open for Conrad to be able to play. I just like that people are receptive to it.” Michael Oberg said.
The younger Oberg has an age-appropriate approach to his first Springing the Blues performance.
“We’ll try not to suck,” he said.
One challenge, his father said, is changing up instruments mid-set. But that is only a problem with a regimented stage time. In a club setting, Oberg is free to do his thing.
“The bigger the crowd, the louder the noise that is coming back at him the harder he plays,” Michael Oberg said. “He can’t see past the first row so the feedback is what he thrives on.”
This weekend, the only challenge facing Oberg is timing. The elder Oberg said it is not uncommon for his son to play a two-minute version of a song or a 12-minute rendition of the same song.
“The determining factor is his solos,” Michael Oberg said. “We don’t want to run into someone else’s time.”
As for his set, Oberg promises “ a sample platter” of blues genres from the old traditional blues from the 20’s and 30’s reminiscent of Blind Willie McTell and Robert Johnson to the “possum blues” of Chicago with an emphasis on slide guitar in the vain of Alvin Young blood Hart.
He plans to finish big with the faster, more upbeat blues of artists like Stevie Ray Vaughn. The entire hour and a half-long set will encompass 60 to 70 years of blues music, Oberg said.
Michael Oberg tears up when he speaks of the kindness and generosity of the blues community and can’t help but display an overwhelming love and pride for his only child.
He doesn’t take credit for his son’s talent — people think it’s the other way around, jokes Conrad of his dad who will join him Saturday on the bass.
Oberg does what he can to help foster his son’s “God-given” talent by providing the stepping stones he needs to reach his goals and is there to gently guide him across each one.
“It would be like if I were tossing the baseball around in the backyard and he whipped back a 90-mile an hour fast pitch,” Oberg said. “He was just born to it.”
See the Weekend section of the April 6, 2007, Leader for a complete performance schedule.