R&B and roots music sung with passion, conviction and soul. Gritty, powerhouse vocals infusing tales of love and loss with a cathartic mixture of scorching intensity and smoldering resolve. The music has a spare, jagged feel that accentuates Janiva's emotional investment in hard-hitting songs by Joe Tex, Nick Lowe, Julie Miller and more.

 

 

                                                                   –Love, Janiva

 

.

The mission of the blues from its evolution in the South after the Civil War onward, and the glorious results, has been to express the myriad joys and sorrows of life. As contemporary blues guitarist Jimmy Warren relates, "I was never the same after hearing my first Son House and Robert Johnson songs. There was something heartfelt and genuine coming from their music, it seemed real." His experience is clearly in evidence on his first studio CD, No More Promises.

Warren was born in Kankakee, Illinois on October 25, 1964. He came to the guitar relatively late around 1989, but quickly made up for lost time. Completely self-taught, within a year he was playing professionally and has since performed with an eclectic list of artists including Buddy Miles, Junior Wells, Sugar Blue, Pat Travers, Koko Taylor, Lonnie Mack, Reo Speedwagon and Chris Duarte, among others. From 1998 to 2008 he took a hiatus from music to focus on his family, only to return better and more determined than ever. In 2009 the tight and driving Jimmy Warren Band of John DiGregorio (rhythm guitar), Mike Boyle (bass) and Charles Price (drums) released their first CD, Live at Last (Vision Records and Entertainment).

The new 12-song set of all originals as penned by Warren draws the listener in immediately with "Watermelon Money" a jazzy minor key progression that finds him decrying his inability to satisfy his woman’s desire for material possessions. He keeps the pot simmering on the hypnotic, minor key shuffle "Mean Mistreater," digging into his frets with fire and conviction, masterfully building intensity and anticipation. Switching gears dynamically, he sings the plaintive ballad ""I’m Gonna Love You," showing no reluctance in expressing his love minus the irony. With the requisite nod to Jimi Hendrix and the eighties rock he also admires, Warren moves effortlessly between Electric Lady soul and long, melodic solo lines featuring his signature gorgeous tone on the instrumental "Darker Shade of Grey."

 

 

Johnny Moeller's guitar playing is full of voodoo and lighting. The floating bent notes, delicately singing phrases, bursts of staccato picking, and ringing piano-like chords that he sculpts into vibrant solos bring all the beauty, power, and mystery of the blues to life.

Moeller, who leads his own bands and is a member of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, is the latest in a long line of six-string wizards to hail from Austin. Although his playing is influenced by legendary Lone Star staters like Alber Collins, Lightnin' Hopkins and the Vaughan Brothers, "I've never really tried to emulate anybody else," he explains. "I have my own thing, which is blues based, and then I like to mix in everything else I love: soul, jazz, funk and rock 'n' roll."

 

In his role as Severn Records house guitarist, Moeller has lent artful licks to albums by Darrell Nulisch, Lou Pride, Steve Guyger and others. In addition toBloogaloo! Moeller has two previous discs to his own credit: 1996'sThe Return of the Funky Worm and 2001'sJohnny Blues Aggregation..

 

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, The Blues Foundation confirms that the legendary blues musician Buddy Guy will perform at the 2010 Blues Music Awards on Thursday, May 6th, 2010. 2010 Blues Hall of Fame inductee Bonnie Raitt will present, the night after her own induction into the Blues Hall of Fame, the Lifetime Achievement Award to Guy. The award is a one-of-a-kind creation of Patterson & Barnes, who also created the original artwork that serves as the basis for the 2010 poster. The guitar master will also be feted with oral, video and musical tributes.

Buddy Guy obliterated the perceived chasm between blues and rock, leaving the term "crossover" to awkwardly define the efforts of lesser artists in both camps trying to bridge the racial, generational and stylistic borders of each. And he did it with a sense of dynamics and bravado that are rare in artists of any age, but which have been consistent for him throughout his career. You knew you were experiencing a Buddy Guy lick in the first few lines of any number he did in 1960, and the same can be said today. Buddy has been nominated for 41 Blues Music Awards and has received 28 such Awards.

 

 

Along with Buddy Guy, among the more than 25 nominees scheduled to perform are top nominees Tommy Castro, Rick Estrin, Louisiana Red, Duke Robillard, Super Chikan and Joe Louis Walker. And, as always at the Blues Music Awards, there will be surprises.

 

The Blues Music Awards are universally recognized as the highest honor given to Blues artists. The presenting sponsor is The Gibson Foundation and the sustaining sponsor is BMI. Additional 2010 BMA sponsors include ArtsMemphis, Casey Family Programs, Eagle Rock Entertainment, FedEx, Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise, Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, I55 Productions, and the Tennessee Arts Commission. For tickets, please visit www.blues.org/ or call (901) 527-2583.

 

 CHICAGO – Amtrak wants you to know W.C. Handy, the “Father of the Blues,” was inspired to create the classic American art form while at a train station in the Mississippi Delta and “The Midnight Special” was the name of a train before it was the name of a Blues song by Leadbelly. 

 

 As part of the National Train Day 2010 celebration, Amtrak will explore the historic connection between Blues music and America’s railroads with a commemorative train tour from the Mississippi Delta, the birthplace of the Blues, all the way to Chicago. Aboard the famous Amtrak City of New Orleans train will be the musical offspring of a Chicago-based Blues legend with Mississippi roots, riding the rails north from New Orleans on May 6.

 

Amtrak will host “Big Bill” and “Mud” Morganfield, sons of the great bluesman Muddy Waters, on a three-day train tour through the Mississippi Blues Trail to the Midwest. The tour will visit several Blues historical sites in Mississippi, before Blues great and former railroad man Bobby Rush boards the train in Memphis on May 7. The musical journey concludes in historic Chicago Union Station on National Train Day, Saturday, May 8, with live, free, performances by “Big Bill,” “Mud,” and Rush. 

 

 

The Chicago Blues Museum will install a special exhibit for National Train Day at Union Station. During the Blues segment of the day’s program, museum Founder and Director Gregg Parker will share additional insights about the movement of the blues from the south to the north.

 

 

By Geoffrey Himes -- Ali Farka Toure died in 2006, but the Malian guitarist left behind an album that illuminates the mysterious connection between West African music and American blues as few records have. The new disc, Ali and Toumani (Nonesuch), pairs Toure's guitar with Toumani Diabate's kora, and in the interaction between the two instruments, one European and one African, you can hear what happened when kidnapped Malians found themselves in North America in the 18th century with kora tunes dancing in their heads, but only guitars close at hand.

 

The kora is a 21-string harp with a large, resonating gourd as its base. The gourd sits between the musician's knees, and the strings fan out from the central post, sticking straight up from the pumpkin-like body. Diabate, also a Malian, uses both hands to pick out shimmering, syncopated arpeggios, and when Toure echoes those same phrases on his steel-string acoustic guitar, the similarity to the blues of such Mississippi guitarists as John Lee Hooker, Skip James, and Fred McDowell is unmistakable.

 

So here is the missing link. Anyone who has truly fallen in love with blues-based American music--whether it's Elvis Presley or Bob Dylan, Prince or Jay-Z--has wondered where it came from. It was obviously rooted in the music that slaves brought over from West Africa, but for years no one could find African recordings that closely resembled American blues recordings. It was only in 1988, when the album Ali Farka Toure was widely distributed in the West that we got an inkling. And it was only in 2005, when Toure and Diabate released their first duo album, the Grammy-winning In the Heart of the Moon, that we could hear the transmission from kora to guitar.

 

We can hear even more nuances on Ali and Toumani, recorded in the greater clarity of a London studio with fewer accompanying instruments. The circumstances encouraged the two men to play more quietly, as if they were at home rather than on stage. The result is a subtlety, a sheer beauty that surpasses Toure's earlier work. This is not the energetic, rhythmic music of his younger recordings; this is the reflective, uncluttered music of an older, wiser man. Toure knew he was dying from bone cancer--he often had to stop during a take because of the pain--and he approached the session as an examination of his lifetime in music.

 

The crucial track is "Sina Mory," the first song Toure had ever heard played on guitar. He had been playing the one-string djerkel, the one-string bowed njarka, and the four-string ngoni, but it wasn't until he was 17 that he heard Guinean griot Fodeba Keita playing this song about an evil stepmother on a six-string European guitar. A dozen years later, Toure had his own guitar, and four years after that he was a star on Radio Mali. On the new album, he sings the song in his gruff tenor, then plays the same lilting tune on his guitar, surrounding the single-note lead line with sympathetic notes. Then, Diabate's kora adds a whole swarm of such notes. It's as if the tune has slowly blossomed from djerkel to kora to guitar, from melody into harmony before our very ears.

 

Several of the tracks hearken back to the late '50s and early '60s, when Mali, Guinea, Senegal, and neighboring countries won their independence from European colonizers. "Sabu Yerkoy" is an Afro-Cuban salsa with Songhai lyrics that declare, "The independence of Mali did us good/ As we have our land back." "Be Mankan" is the national anthem of Guinea, and "Doudou" combines several tunes from that period. "Machengoidi," which Toure had recorded twice before, is patriotic paean to Mali, but here it is done as a slow, almost wistful, instrumental, with the rippling spray of notes from the kora distilled into more concise phrases on the guitar--in much the same way African-Americans must have distilled their memories of African songs onto their new instruments.

 

Toure was not born into a griot family as his duet partner was. The three most prominent griot families in West Africa are the Diabates, the Keitas, and the Kouyates, and Bassekou Kouyate has emerged as the leading advocate of the traditional Malian instrument, the ngoni. With four strings laid across a goat skin stretched over a canoe-shaped wooden body, the instrument combines the melodic and percussive qualities of the banjo and is often thought to be the banjo's ancestor. Much like the banjo before Earl Scruggs, the ngoni was considered an accompanying instrument until 1985 when a 19-year-old Kouyate added a strap to the lap instrument and stepped to the front of the stage to solo along with the guitars.

 

Kouyate kept messing with the ngoni, adding strings for harmonic flexibility and creating a bass ngoni to go with the traditional baritone, tenor, and alto instruments. Thus he was able to form his own band, Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba, comprised of four differently pitched ngonis, two percussionists, and a female lead singer (Kouyate's wife Amy Sacko). The band's new album, I Speak Fula (Next Ambiance), features guest appearances by Toumani Diabate and Vieux Farka Toure (Ali's son), a return favor for Kouyate's contributions to the older Toure's Savane and to half a dozen Diabate recordings.

 

In contrast to the subdued, elegiac mood of Ali and Toumani, I Speak Fula is a dance-band record. As in much West African music, the chords are broken into separate notes, but Kouyate's band cycles through those notes so briskly, so insistently, that the tunes tumble forward with an irresistible momentum. The chords rarely change, even as the melody is constantly moving, and the tension between the singer and the hypnotic one-chord vamps should sound familiar to fans of R.L. Burnside and the North Mississippi Allstars. Kouyate, the lead ngoni player, spins fascinating variations on the underlying broken chords to keep that tension from ever growing monotonous.

 

When Nashville banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck traveled through Africa in 2005 looking for the origins of his instrument, it was inevitable that he would wind up on Kouyate's doorstep in Mali's capital city of Bamako. The title of both the documentary movie and audio recording from that trip, Throw Down Your Heart, comes from the tune Fleck performed with Kouyate in the latter's home. Now, Fleck has released the web site-only CD Throw Down Your Heart: Africa Sessions, Part 2 (belafleck.com), which offers 14 more tracks from the same trip.

 

Included are two tracks with Kouyate. "Kandjo (aka Sumu)" features the quartet of Fleck, Kouyate, Sacko, and calabash player Alou Coulibaly on a home-style, meditative piece not unlike the Toure/Diabate duets. "Mali Jam" is just that: a free-for-all improvisation featuring Fleck and Bamako's top instrumentalists (Kouyate, Coulibaly, Djelimady Tounkara, Lassana Diabate, and Haruna Samake); the playing builds from a patient balafon intro to a blur of ngoni and banjo notes. The CD also features music from Uganda, Tanzania, Gambia, and Madagascar, but six of the best tracks come from such Malian musicians as Oumou Sangare and the above players.

 

Perhaps because it was isolated by poverty, the desert, and its landlocked geography, Mali has retained more of the pre-slave-trade character of West African music than any of its neighbors (just as Appalachia retained the pre-immigration character of Anglo-Celtic music long after that sound had died out everywhere else). Whether it's the semi-arid farmlands of the nation's south, where Toure, Diabate, and Kouyate grew up, or the Saharan desert of the north, the base of the great nomad guitar band Tinariwen (whose Imidiwan: Companions was the best world-music release of 2009), Malian music is so close to thewearly roots of American music that the family resemblance is impossible to ignore. That's why the kora and ngoni sound so comfortable alongside the guitar and banjo; that's why Malian tunes can be so easily mistaken for the trance-boogie blues of North Mississippi and can be heard so clearly in everything that grew out of those blues.

 

LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) -- The Concord Music Group anounced acquisition of storied Massachusetts-based independent music label Rounder Records. Rounder, celebrating its 40th year as the world’s leading American roots music label, is a major force in a broad range of musical genres including blues, bluegrass, Americana, singer-songwriter, Cajun & Zydeco and children’s music. Rounder possesses an extraordinary recorded catalog. The acquisition of Rounder and its collection of over 3,000 masters combined with Concord Music Group’s catalog of more than 10,000 master recordings strengthens Concord’s status as one of the world’s most significant independent record companies, with a leadership position in multiple genres.

 

Rounder, founded in 1970, has been at the center of nearly all of the American roots revivals that have reshaped the music world in the last 40 years. An unequaled leader in the preservation and re-release of precious historic recordings, Rounder has brought the music of Jelly Roll Morton, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and Mississippi John Hurt back to vibrant life. In addition, their dazzling work on the epic anthologies from the Library of Congress and the Alan Lomax Collection has been universally respected and admired.

 

Hanson premiered the music video for their bright-and-bluesy new single “Thinking ‘Bout Somethin’” on MySpace Music this week, and it’s basically a shot-by-shot remake of the song-and-dance number “Shake A Tail Feather” from the 1980 comedy-musical The Blues Brothers. Sort of an odd homage for the trio to make, considering oldest Hanson bro Isaac was born the year the movie was released in theatres, but we’re not complaining. Check out the dancetastic vid below—and watch out for the groovy (albeit random) Weird Al Yankovic cameo!

 

Click for video

 

Spring has sprung, which means the 7th annual Juke Joint Festival is almost here! As always, the Delta Blues Museum will be hosting several fun and educational events and performances, as well as our current and permanent exhibits, including photographer Michael Loyd Young's Blues, Booze, & BBQ.

 

Blues, Booze, & BBQ documents the 150 miles of Highway 61, the famed blacktop road snaking from Memphis down to Leland, Miss. At the halfway point, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, sits Clarksdale, the city considered the birthplace of the blues and the location of Robert Johnson's famed "Crossroads" intersection of Highway 61 and 49.

 

If you enjoy the exhibit, stop by the DBM Shop where copies of Blues, Booze, & BBQ are available.

 

Below is a complete list of what's going on at the museum and we hope to see you out and about this weekend! Our hours of operation are Monday - Saturday, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Thursday, April 15th -- Students from the DBM Arts & Education Program will audition for a full scholarship that will place them in Boston for five weeks this summer, July 10 - August 13, with 900 high school students from all over the world, sharpening their playing or singing skills in private lessons, ensembles, and concert performances. (Private)

 

Friday, April 16th, 3 p.m. -- Join us in the DBM classroom for "Conversations With Honeyboy." At age 94, David "Honeyboy" Edwards is one of the last of the original Delta Blues masters, and is still playing and entertaining audiences around the world. Edwards will be selling and signing his CDs and book, The World Don't Owe Me Nothing.

 

Friday, April 16th, 4 p.m. -- Join us in the DBM classroom to hear William Ferris discuss his new book and current exhibit at the museum, "Give My Poor Heart Ease." Give My Poor Heart Ease is a documentary record of Ferris's home state during the 1960s and '70s, illustrated with Ferris's photographs of Mississippi musicians and their communities and includes a CD of original music and a DVD of original film. The book, available in the DBM Shop, also features more than 20 interviews relating frank, dramatic and engaging first-person narratives about black life and blues music in the heart of the American South.

 

Friday, April 16th, 5:30-7 p.m. -- Once again, the Delta Blues Museum Band will perform at the DBM Stage for the Care Station's annual Fish Fry fundraiser. The Care Station, located next to the museum, has been feeding Clarksdale's hungry for more than 20 years. For just $10, you get a plateful of catfish, hush puppies, fries, slaw and a dessert (eat in or take out). Tickets can be purchased in advance at the museum, as well as at the Care Station during the event.

 

Saturday, April 17th -- Three years ago, Berklee College of Music began a summer scholarship initiative for students at the Delta Blues Museum, in Clarksdale, and the Robert Johnson Blues Museum, in Crystal Springs. To date, four recipients have made the trip to Berklee's Five-Week Summer Performance Program.

The Berklee Mississippi Music Exchange, as the effort is now known, develops opportunities to exchange music, education and culture between Berklee, the Mississippi Delta and other parts of the state.

 

On Saturday, the Berklee Mississippi Exchange Band performs at the Juke Joint Festival at 3:30 p.m. on the Delta Blues Museum Stage, and at 7:00 p.m. at Ground Zero Blues Club, opening for Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band, and Super Chikan.

Saturday, April 17th, DELTA BLUES MUSEUM STAGE

2:30 p.m.--Delta Blues Museum's Arts & Education Program Band

3 p.m.--Announcement of Berklee Summer Music Camp scholarship winner

3:30 p.m.--Berklee Mississippi Exchange Band

5 p.m.--Stax Music Academy Revue

6 p.m.--Delta State University's "Ol' Skool Revue"

(CelebrityAccess MediaWire) -- A volcanic eruption on the island nation of Iceland is disrupting air travel on both sides of the Atlantic and led to numerous cancellations by European artists, including some scheduled for Coachella.

 

According to the Washington Post, UK Band The Cribs have been forced to scrap their Friday appearance at Coachella while the band Frightened Rabbit is on the 'doubtful' list as they look for a way to get to Indio.

 

A spokesman for Bad Lieutenant told Spin Magazine that the band was hoping to catch a rescheduled flight and make it in time for their Saturday Coachella appearance. Other U.K. based bands such as headliners Muse and The Gorillaz were already in the U.S.

Festival organizer Paul Tollett vibed confidence though when he assured the Wall Street Journal that the festival's headliners are all still on board. "We have 135 bands on the bill. Our headliners are fine. But there’s maybe a dozen bands in question." he said.

 

According to the Associated Press, airborne ash from the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull is causing the most significant air traffic interruption since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The volcano last erupted in 1821, in a tectonic event that lasted for more than a year. - CelebrityAccess Staff Writers

 

Tickets are on sale NOW for two days of world-class blues at the 2nd annual Mile High Blues Festival at the Mile High Marketplace Event Center.

 

Enjoy 25,000 square feet of cool shade and hot music, plus BBQ, Cajun, Creole food and plenty of cold beer. It’s the perfect setting to listen to some of the finest blues music around.

 

Future of the Blues youth performers

Harmonica workshops

Free harp giveaways

MHBF 2010 signed guitar auction

Vendors & merchandise

Shopping and Blues: Delta Sonics and Soul Collective will be playing on the Mile High Marketplace stage in case you wander over to shop the 22 acres right next door to the festival.

Lodging: It’s a full weekend of blues so plan on staying over. Great hotel rates are available at the Holiday Inn – Denver East and there are free hotel shuttles to and from the festival. Call 1.800.HOLIDAY (festival code is MHB)

AFTER PARTY: Limited tickets are on sale now for a VIP after-party on Saturday night with Mike Zito at Martini’s Bar located in the lobby of the Holiday Inn - Denver East (3333 Quebec Street).

Plan now and save with early-bird discounts on tickets and lodging.

Details: www.milehighbluesfestival.com.

 

 

This week, the Radio Hour goes to the movies, and comes back with the blues. Mick Jagger and Ry Cooder with “Memo from Turner” from PERFORMANCE. Plus, the Blues Brothers (of course). With BB King and Bonnie Raitt, and Shemekia Copeland and Robert Cray. Kim Wilson channels Little Walter from the soundtrack to CADILLAC RECORDS. Plus: Jeff Healey from ROADHOUSE, and Allison Krause and Gillian Welch providing some roots from O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? Elwood will share a track from BARE KNUCKLE, a new one from Guitar Shorty. And there is a chance for you to win LIVE AT THE RYMAN, the new CD from Jonny Lang recorded live in Nashville. Here is where you enter to win.

 

For a list of stations where you can find House of Blues Radio

RBA Publishing Inc is based in Reno, NV with a satellite office in Beverly Hills, Florida. We produce the annual Blues Festival Guide magazine (now in its 7th year), the top-ranking website: www.BluesFestivalGuide.com, and this weekly blues newsletter: The Blues Festival E-Guide with approximately 20,000 weekly subscribers. We look forward to your suggestions, critiques, questions, etc.

Reach the E-Guide editor, Gordon Bulcock, gordon@bluesfestivalguide.com

or contact our home office at 775-337-8626, eguide@bluesfestivalguide.com
 

back to top