"Just got in the Tweed Funk ‘Bringin It’ CD and I just got done listening to it and man it's a cooker!  I will be popping that baby into our current rotation here at the station ASAP. Really like it - very old school yet fresh and current." - Leroy Alvarez, Blues MD, WNMC 90.7

 

“A stylish blend that is superbly versatile, and fits 'round your ears like a custom fedora. If ‘Bringin It’ doesn't get your mojo movin', ya'll better call the undertaker 'cause your spirit has done left the building.” – John “blueshammer” Hammer, www.bluemondaymonthly.com

 

“Excellent CD” – Steve Stoddard, KTUH 90.3 FM

 

“Tweed Funk's ‘Bringin It’ blends Blues and Funk into a nice little cocktail for the ears…they've gotta be a fun band to catch live!” – Jerry D, Blues Programmer, 103.9 FM WQCY and 105.5 FM The KAT

Singer, songwriter and guitarist Stevie J can relate to the history of the Blues and how it has impacted modern music. Son of a pastor and native of Jackson, MS, he has twenty years of experience as a professional musician, beginning in Gospel and Southern Soul, and adding Blues when an introduction to that music fueled a passion that focused him deeply in the Blues genre.

 

The Diversity Project by Stevie J is two separate albums recorded during the same period of time. The first disc is a Blues CD, Standin' At The Station, inspired by Stevie's first appearance on the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise, where jamming with scores of other respected musicians inspired him to get some of his own blues music recorded. The second disc, Soul Sessions, represents Stevie's work in Mississippi as a southern soul artist, and includes exceptional covers of Mayer's Gravity, and Clinton's Cosmic Slop. Stevie's love for blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel and more are abundantly clear in every song from these albums, and together they make for a soulful and uplifting blues experience.

 

Reserve your ad space in the 9th annual issue of Blues Festival Guide magazine today!
Don't miss this once-a-year marketing opportunity!
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Advertising@bluesfestivalguide.com

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The 22^nd annual Simi Valley Cajun & Blues Music Festival in Simi Valley, CA has announced an impressive lineup of performers for the two day event which runs Saturday and Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.

 

The Blues stage features the 6^th Annual Delta Groove All-Star Blues Revue.  Saturday’s performers include Los Fabulocos featuring Kid Ramos, Mikey Jr. & Stone Cold Blues, Arthur Adams, Ana Popovic, the Mannish Boys Review with Tracy Nelson, John Nemeth and the 44s.  Sunday’s lineup features Elvin Bishop, Maria Muldaur, Cadillac Zack with special guests, the Mitch Kashmar Band, the Kirk Fletcher Band, Big Pete with a tribute to Lester Butler and Shawn Pittman.

 

The second stage features Cajun & Zydeco music with Buckwheat Zydeco, Andre Thierry & Zydeco Magic, Lil Pookie & The Zydeco Sensations, Bayou Brothers and Billy Lee & The Swamp Critters.  All Cajun-Zydeco performers will be appearing both days.

 

In addition to two stages, each with dance floors, there is a huge kids area with their own stage featuring a variety of talented kid friendly acts.  And there are jumpers and crafts just for the kids.

 

 

Included at the festival are a variety of food choices from authentic Cajun and Creole dishes like crawfish and alligator to traditional barbecue and hot dogs. And each day there is a New Orleans style parade with bands, stilt walkers and audience participation.

 

Tickets are $ 18 for adults ages 13 and up, $ 15 for kids ages 5 through 12.  Kids under 5 are free.  Tickets may be purchased at the event or on-line.  For more information and ticket purchases, visit the website at www.cajun-blues.com.

 

The Simi Valley Cajun & Blues Music Festival is produced by the Rotary Club of Simi Sunrise and all proceeds go to charity.

 

 

TheBluesMobile.com wants you to join us in beautiful Boulder, Colorado in May for the 1st Annual Roots & Blues Summit. We have been busy gathering major Blues and Roots talent from around the country and beyond, and we are excited to announce the preliminary line-up, with more to come!

 

                         

 

Performances will be at The Boulder Theater, followed by late-night performances at The Fox Theatre, so you can go to both.

Friday May 13, 2011
Boulder Theater 

Lucinda Williams w/ special guest

Fox Theatre
TBD

Saturday May 14, 2011
Boulder Theater
Leon Russell w/ Janiva Magness  

Fox Theatre

Sunday May 15, 2011
Boulder Theater

 VIP ROOTS AND BLUES SUMMIT PASS - $300
- Receive entry to all shows at the Fox and Boulder Theater May 13 - 15
- VIP entrance to all shows.
- Reserved seating for all shows at the Boulder Theater
- Reserved balcony for all shows at the Fox Theatre
- Limited edition 1st Annual Roots and Blues Summit silk screen poster
- Limited edition 1st Annual Roots and Blues Summit t-shirt
- 10% off at George's Food and Drink attached to the Boulder Theater May 13-15.

Tickets for Boulder Theater Buy Now

Tickets for The Fox Theatre Buy Now

 Stayed tuned for exclusive special hotel rates for TheBluesMobile Brethren.

 

 

 

 

It is not the fate you would expect of the star of arguably the most popular TV show in the world, but Hugh Laurie has got the blues.

The British performer, 51, is the highest paid actor on US television for his role as Dr Gregory House in the medical drama series House. But to prepare for the release of his debut album as a recording artist, he was due to appear in a small New Orleans venue earlier this week for his first ever gig, with a crack band behind him – featuring the likes of local legend Allen Toussaint.

 

Guests in the specially invited audience included his old acting partner Stephen Fry.

 

Laurie, star of British TV series including A Bit of Fry and Laurie and the PG Wodehouse adaptation Jeeves and Wooster, says he is a lifelong fan of the blues, ever since hearing I Can't Quit You Baby by Willie Dixon as a child. "I'm embarrassed to say I don't recall where I was when I heard that John Lennon had been assassinated," he said recently, "but I do remember where I was when I heard Muddy Waters had died. I was driving down the A1 from Lincolnshire and had this awful, selfish reaction: 'Now I'll never get to see him play live'."

 

Blame it on the sea bass. Or perhaps, the food and wine tasting that featured the sea bass. Either way, that's how I discovered Clarksdale. I'd received an invitation to be a guest at a gourmet tasting; the caveat was that my destination wouldn't be East Memphis, but Clarksdale, Mississippi. A colleague had tipped me off, saying that Madidi Restaurant, owned by Mississippi gubernatorial candidate and attorney Bill Luckett, and business partner Morgan Freeman, had this new chef who was really sharp. And the town, with its recently opened art galleries and funky museums, had a cool buzz going.

 

It sounded hopeful, but an hour and a half's drive through the Delta — on a Saturday night?

 

Nonetheless, a few weeks later I'm sitting in an elegant dining room aglow in candlelight and warmed by a convivial group of 75 diners as eager as I am to discover what the evening has in store. While the kitchen staff works their magic, I fall into conversation with a dizzying array of guests: a cardiologist from Grenada, a librarian from Clarksdale, farmers and realtors from Helena, an aide to Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln in Washington, educators from Memphis and Oxford. Even Madidi's illustrious owners table hop. We are an eclectic, food-loving bunch.

 

When I bring up the distance, several guests shrug it off, saying, "When you live in the Delta, you're used to driving somewhere else to get what you want."

 

Tonight's gracious plenty proves well worth our travel. General manager Madge Howell and executive chef Levi Minyard have assembled a talented, energetic group of regional chefs and vintners who ply us with savory breads, dense wild mushroom soup, rabbit and foie gras terrine, honey-roasted quail, and that delicate, divine sea bass. A raucous evening ensues as the wine and conversation flow.

 

Driving be damned, I'm in foodie heaven.

Canadian blues and jazz vocalist Shakura S'Aida was wrapping up a one-week tour of Australia and preparing to travel to France when she learned that she won the Indies Blues Artist of the Year award.

 

                                   

 

"I screamed my head off when I learned I had won," said S'Aida who was one of the headliners at the one-week Port Fairy Folk Festival in Victoria, Australia. "I thank everyone who logged on and voted for me. You all made my sun shine."

 

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Switzerland before coming to Toronto, S'Aida began her professional singing career with a local band, Mystique, and was the lead singer for the 13-piece band Kaleefa before embarking on a solo career.

 

Her debut 11-track album, Blueprint, released in February 2008 takes listeners on a journey through the 1940s and 1950s blues and is infused with her signature voice and sultry interpretation of the music.

MODESTO, CA   Virgin voyage?  This will be Miss Kane's first time .......... performing in Modesto!  This Sunday Candye Kane and Cole Fonseca headline this wonderful charity event at The Fat Cat Music House & Lounge 930 11th Street in Modesto.  The event is scheduled to begin at 6pm on Sunday March 27th and ends at 10pm .... ish.  If you would like to donate to the efforts from no matter where you are - please call (530) 415-9705 for more information.

 

 

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Sometimes we don't grasp the lengths that photographers will go to get that shot, that picture, that perfect photo in their own eyes.  We see the artist and think of the artist.  This series of articles are an attempt to get you to see the photog. Old Blues Eye.

 

This week: John "BluesHammer" Hammer's Photos

 

 

 

 

If you would like to be included in these interviews - please contact me through FaceBook at Yvonne Varner .  I have lots of questions - not many photographers.  :)

 

Jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues: Ray Charles, "The Genius," can do it all, and do it all he does in his 1964 concert at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Originally released by ABC-Paramount in 1965 as a twelve-song album, it's now being reissued by Concord Music Group on a nineteen-track (seventeen-song) CD, Ray Charles: Live in Concert. There are some performers who seem uncomfortable outside the recording studio; live audiences are inconveniences that have to be put up with. Then there are some performers who always seem to manage a little something extra in live performance; audiences energize them. Not only is Ray Charles in this second group, he may well be at the head of the pack. The audience is having a good time; he is having a great time.

 

 

Whether he is taking a hoary old standard like "Margie" and making it his own, or rocking out his own chart topper, "Hallelujah, I Love Her So," this is a singer who has his audience in the palm of his hand. He begins with two big-band jazz instrumentals, "Swing a Little Taste" and "One Mint Julep." The band has a brassy vibe that someone like Count Basie would have been proud of. On the first of the two you can hear Charles' patented growl over the piano. Original liner notes indicated that the fifteen-piece band included a dozen horns featuring sax players David "Fathead" Newman, Hank Crawford and Leroy "Hog" Cooper. This is a band that can swing with the best of them. (As an aside, I recently heard "Fathead" Newman's "Hard Times" on an old time rock podcast, and if you've never heard it, you can download it from his web site. It's worth your time).

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Well, a big Texas hello, Midnight Sun gang!

 

I'm Sam Sessa. Some of you may remember me as the guy who used to write stuff for Midnight Sun. These days, I edit stuff and boss people around.

 

If you haven't guessed already, I'm in Austin, Texas, covering the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival for 89.7 WTMD and The Baltimore Sun. A gracious grant from WTMD members helped make the trip possible.

 

 

While not the country's biggest music festival, SXSW is perhaps the most important. About a thousand up-and-coming bands descend on Austin every March to try and make an impression on the roughly 10,000 journalists, music industry folks and fans who come to see them play.

 

I'm here to write a piece about why Austin is such a great city for live music (they call it the "Live Music Capital of the World"), and how Baltimore can be more like it.

 

 

Here is the comprehensive list of things cooler than a xylophone: Um...everything.

 

 

Now, here is the list of things cooler than a xylophone when veteran xylophonist Cinco Calderon is behind them: Zilch.

 

Nothing. At. All.

 

Charlie Sheen could be riding a white tiger with solid diamond testicles through The Men's Club (3303 Sage). Doesn't matter.

 

When Calderon has mallets in his hands, beating blood and glory out of the bars, it seems less like he's playing a xylophone and more like he's destroying God's piano with thundersticks. He is king.

 

And that's why at this very moment, everyone inside of the tiny Richmond Chill Bar (4704 Richmond) is enraptured, listening as Calderon tink-tink-tanks his way through a blues solo.

 

The xylophonist is flanked by the excessively talented bass player Spare Time Murray, who is every bit the sleepy blues dynamo his name implies, and Little Terry Rogers, a harmonica player/vocalist who sounds like he's been grown from the earth specifically to sing the blues; he even sings into one of those vintage steel microphones.

 

Travelers in search of great jazz usually flock to clubs in cities like New Orleans or New York, or attend festivals in Montreal or Montreux, Switzerland.

 

But from May 12 to 15, Port Denarau, Fiji, will be the unlikely host of a celebration of jazz, blues and soul. The Fiji 2011 International Jazz and Blues Festival, presented by Air Pacific and Tourism Fiji, will feature more than 100 musicians from around the world. Local bands will perform, along with musicians from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, England, American Samoa and the United States.

 

VANCOUVER, BC – Black Hen Music announces the signing of singer/songwriter Roxanne Potvin and an April 19 U.S. release date for her label debut CD, Play, a bold new direction into her rock, pop and punk influences and a distinct departure from those fans who knew her as a blues artist. Black Hen Music is distributed in the U.S. by Burnside Distribution.

 

 

THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA BLUES SOCIETY OF INDIANOLA

 

    

 

Road trip in the Bluesmobile this week on the Radio Hour. Elwood stops by Mitch Woods’ house, where Mitch has his piano tuned up and ready to play. Get schooled in piano blues with tracks from Gumbo Blues, Mitch’s tribute to New Orleans piano man Smiley Lewis. Elwood also spins tracks from Charles Brown, Fats Domino, Professor Longhair, Dave Edmund, Honey Piazza, and Ray Charles. Mitch will educate the listener on what happens when you put a little boogie woogie on the blues, and what happens when you put a little New Orleans spin on top of that. Mitch Woods performs live from his living room. Plus, the blues breaker! New piano blues from Canadian Sunday Wilde.

 

 

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
 

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