Canadian duo Trevor May & Theresa MCInerney aka Cornflower Blue releases their second album Run Down the Rails.

Although the band wasn’t really out there to take part in the International musicscene they certainly are from now on. Put together more for the fun of making music, the first album of Cornflower Blue reached out to many people with a heart for country & American roots music and before they realised it their fan base increasingly grew over the years. Not really having the aspirations to become big stars, the band is happy with their status as they think the songs need to be heard by a wider audience then what they locally can achieve and that is a mission they have accomplished. Self proclaimed as electric Folk, their sound is something in between Country and old time music with a dash of folk music. It does look promising for sure.

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Originally Little G. Weevil was a drummer, but to blues lovers’ greatest luck he took up playing the guitar. He might have done so under some mystical inspiration, because he is a natural born talent. He sings with all his body and straining every nerve. He expresses his emotions in a very individual way. He has a special relation with his guitar: Little G. doesn’t use over rehearsed licks and doesn’t want to call interest by his fast technique. On the contrary, he sometimes plucks the strings for several minutes, meditating as if he was talking with his guitar."   

                                   - Mister Magazine, Hungary 

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Writer Peter Guralnick presents documentary on the blues Feb. 7

(Nashville Tn) - A documentary on blues music will be screened free of charge at Vanderbilt University Feb. 7, introduced by acclaimed music writer Peter Guralnick, who will take questions after the show.

The 7:30 p.m. screening is free and open to the public. It will be held in Sarratt Cinema at the Sarratt Student Center on the Vanderbilt campus.

The Blues: Feel Like Going Home (2003) was directed by Martin Scorsese based on a screenplay by Guralnick, author of acclaimed biographies of Elvis Presley and Sam Cooke and a trilogy on American roots music.

The film was part of a seven-part PBS series, The Blues, featuring films directed by Charles Burnett, Clint Eastwood, Mike Figgis and Wim Wenders.

Feel Like Going Home, also the title of Guralnick’s 1971 book on the blues, traces the music form from the Mississippi Delta back to West Africa and features performances by Taj Mahal, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Otha Turner and other greats of the genre.

The screening is part of Vanderbilt’s International Lens film series'

Blues Traveler Celebrates 25-Year Milestone With a 2-CD Retrospective Featuring All Their Hits Plus New Recording and Unreleased Rarities

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 26, 2012 -- /PRNewswire/ -- Over the course of their illustrious 25-year career, Blues Traveler have sold more than 10 million combined units worldwide, played over 2,000 live shows in front of more than 30 million people, and, in "Run-Around," had the longest-charting radio single in Billboard history, which earned them a Grammy® for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.  A television favorite, they have been featured onSaturday Night Live, Austin City Limits, VH1's Behind the Music and they hold the record for the most appearances of any artist on The Late Show with David Letterman.

On March 6, 2012, Hip-O Select/Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) releases Blues Traveler: 25, a 2-CD retrospective that spans the first 25 years of the band's incredible recording career. 25features a total of 29 tracks including a newly recorded cover version of Sublime's "What I Got,"their greatest hits, B-sides, unreleased demos and rarities— among them a remix of "Run-Around" by acclaimed electronic producers Gunslinger, and excerpts from the band's online concept albumDecision of the Skies: A Traveler Tale of Sun and Storm.

Remarks vocalist John Popper, "In a quarter century, through every possible kind of high and low, through every dream realized, through every hope dashed, always there was a return to that dedication and belief in the music and in each other. On behalf of all of Blues Traveler, I am privileged to express how honored we are, how deeply proud we are to share with you the first of our quarter-century celebration and appropriate look back at some favorites you may find familiar as well as rarities that for some reason or another have yet to see the light of day. In our hearts we view this as a time to step back to look at what we've done. We hope you will share that experience with us with as much satisfaction as we have had in bringing it to you."

Originally from the suburbs of New Jersey, Blues Traveler moved to New York in the late '80s where they became an integral part of a new wave of artists coming up in the jam-band scene, packing clubs like Nightingale's, Wetlands and Mondo Cane. The band's live reputation landed them a deal with A&M Records and over the years they released a string hit albums including their 1990 self-titled debut; 1991's Travelers & Thieves; 1993's Save His Soul; the platinum sellingStraight on till The Morning; and their massive, 1994 multi-platinum breakthrough release Four.

Disc one of Blues Traveler: 25 features the band's biggest hits and staple tracks representing all nine of their studio albums. Included are their No. 1 hit single "Run-Around," and their top 20 hit "Hook." Both songs were taken from 1994's Four which climbed to No. 8 on the Billboard 200 and has now sold over six times platinum. Other tracks featured are the No. 4 hit single "Carolina Blues" from 1997's Straight on till Morning, which reached No. 11 on the Billboard 200; the band's first top 20 hit "But Anyway" plus "Gina" and "100 Years" taken from their 1990 self-titled debut; "Amber Awaits" and "After What" from their top 50 album Bastardos!, an album produced by former Wilco member Jay Bennett; the hard-rocking, Led Zeppelin-esque track "How You Remember It" and "You, Me And Everything" from their most recent 2008 release, North Hollywood Shootout; plus a new 2011 recording of Sublime's "What I Got" which is only available on this two-CD set. 

Disc Two of 25 is a collection of rarities including B-sides, unreleased demos and studio tracks. Featured are early demo versions of "But Anyway" and "Trust In Trust" recorded in 1988; the quirky "The Poignant and Epic Saga of Featherhead and Lucky Lack" which was recorded in 1993 but never made it to an album; the unreleased studio track "Demon" which was written in 2000 during a songwriting session in Austin; plus the tracks "12 Swords," "The Sun and the Storm" and the 20-minute odyssey "Traveler Suite," all taken from their 2000 concept album Decision of the Skies: A Traveler Tale of Sun and Storm, which was originally only made available as a download through the band's website.  

As Blues Traveler prepares for the next 25 years, they are currently in the studio putting the finishing touches on their tenth studio album.  They are about to embark on a nationwide tour celebrating 25 years of making music, and Blues Traveler: 25 offers a glimpse into the evolution of one of the most beloved artists to come out of the jam-band scene

Repatriation of Como, Mississippi Recordings, Photographs and Videos from The Alan Lomax Collection

Including performances by The Como Mamas Sharde Thomas and the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band featuring R.L. Boyce

Glen Faulkner

Dedication of the Hill Country Blues Photography Collection on loan from the Jessie Mae Hemphill Foundation

Official handing over of the Como, MS recordings, photographs and videos to the Como Public Library from the Association for Cultural Equity and the American Folklife Center. John Lomax III will be joining us from New York representing the Alan Lomax Archive and Lomax family.

The event is Feb 3rd from 4-6pm at the Como Library in downtown Como, MS.

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22nd Blues Harmonica Blowout honors Little Walter

This year's installment of Mark Hummel's Blues Harmonica Blowout is being billed as a tribute to Little Walter, above. The Chicago bluesman died in 1968 after a beating, at the age of 38.

(LeeHildebrand/sfgate.com)Somewhat like such other musical innovators as Bix Beiderbecke, Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix, blues harmonica virtuoso Little Walter Jacobs checked out early - dead at age 38, in 1968, from a head injury sustained during a drunken back-alley craps-shooting dispute - but left behind an indelible imprint on the way his instrument has been played by countless musicians ever since.

"He's been my biggest influence for years and on all harmonica players who play the blues - not all, but 90 percent," Mark Hummel says over a Mexican lunch in Healdsburg with fellow harmonica blower Charlie Musselwhite. Musselwhite and Billy Boy Arnold, both of whom knew and played with Little Walter, are participating in Hummel's 22nd annual Blues Harmonica Blowout, this year billed as a tribute to Little Walter. The two-week West Coast tour, also featuring harmonica men Curtis Salgado and Sugar Ray Norcia, stops at Yoshi's in Oakland on Friday through next Sunday and at Moe's Alley in Santa Cruz on Jan. 30.

"What Little Walter did on the harmonica is very similar to what B.B. (King) did on the guitar," Hummel, 57, adds. "He made it into something totally new and different."

Arnold was 16 in 1951 when he first heard Walter playing on Muddy Waters' recording of "Gonna Need My Help" and on Jimmy Rogers' simultaneously released "That's All Right." After hearing them on the radio, he immediately went out and purchased both.

The Chicago-born musician had earlier taken two lessons from John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, the most popular harmonica player in the blues world prior to Walter's ascendance. Williamson, much as Walter would two decades later, died in 1948 from being hit over the head while being robbed of his gambling proceeds.

"Walter's style derived from John Lee's style," Arnold, now 76, says by phone from his home in Chicago. "Little Walter was younger and he was faster and his music had a beat. That's what made him successful. He became my hero because he was the greatest and the most creative of them all."

Marion Walter Jacobs was born in 1930 in rural Marksville, La. Between the ages of 12 and 16, before settling in Chicago, he played for tips on street corners and in bars throughout the South and as far north as St. Louis, often with guitarist Honeyboy Edwards. They traveled from town to town by hopping freight trains.

He was a member of Waters' band from 1948 until 1952, when "Juke," a rocking harmonica instrumental recorded that year during a Waters session, was issued under his own name and became a national smash, spending eight weeks at the top of Billboard magazine's "Most Played Juke Box Rhythm & Blues Records" chart. Walter was suddenly a major blues star, toured widely with his own band and scored 13 more Top 10 R&B hits through 1958, including "Blues With a Feeling," "Last Night" and "My Babe."

Walter's career and life went into rapid decline during the '60s. His playing and behavior had become erratic because of chronic alcoholism. His once-handsome face was noticeably scarred from frequent fistfights. While some of his imitators where appearing at festivals in Europe, he was working in Chicago juke joints with hastily thrown-together bands.

"It seemed like he had somebody different with him every night," recalls Musselwhite, 67, who often hung out with Walter during the mid-'60s. "Some nights it was like, 'Man, that's the s-.' The next night it might be, 'What the f- happened to Walter?'

"Sometimes he'd just hand me the mike and his harp and say, 'Here. Play, boy,' and go and talk to some lady at the bar."

"People talk about him like he was such a troublemaker," Musselwhite adds. "That wasn't my opinion of him. To me, he was a guy who just wanted to have a good time. He loved to laugh, but he wouldn't back up from you. They didn't call him Little Walter for nothing, but pound for pound he was one tough little guy."

Mississippi native Musselwhite was 13 the first time he heard Walter on a record he'd bought for a nickel at a Memphis junk shop. It struck him as being much different from the Williamson blues records in his collection.

"To me, Little Walter sounded real modern, like rock 'n' roll," he explains. "He didn't sound as bluesy and down-home as Sonny Boy did. Now it doesn't sound that way, but it was almost jarring to hear Little Walter at that time."

Musselwhite moved to Chicago at age 18, not to play music, but in hopes of landing one of those good-paying factory jobs with benefits that his friends in Memphis had been telling him about. He soon discovered, however, that many of his blues heroes lived and regularly performed in the Windy City. He got to know and sit in with Waters and a year later met Walter.

Before relocating to the Bay Area in 1967, Musselwhite saw Walter for the last time, sitting in a chair in front of a stage, staring at the floor, not playing or singing, while the band was playing.

"I pulled up a chair next to him," Musselwhite remembers. "I said, 'Walter, what's wrong?' He just went, 'Baah.' That's all he said. I couldn't get him to talk. He just seemed real disgusted."

Musselwhite has fonder memories of the time he and his musician friends Paul Butterfield and Michael Bloomfield were walking down a Chicago street scatting all eight choruses of "Juke."

"The three of us were snapping our fingers and going, 'Bah-ba-da-dah-dop.' Me and Paul were really drunk, and back then Mike didn't drink. We were happy, we were young, and the world was full of possibilities. Life was great, and we all knew 'Juke.' " {sbox}

Tribute to Little Walter: 8 and 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 2 and 8 p.m. next Sun. $20-$30. Yoshi's, 510 Embarcadero W., Oakland. (510) 929-7849. www.yoshis.com. Also 8 p.m. Jan. 30. Moe's Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $27-$30. (831) 479-1854. www.moesalley.com.

Blues Fest Organizers Singing The Blues

 Blues On The Brink?

(niagara-gazette.com) NIAGARA FALLS — A downtown festival that has been making sweet music for several years is suddenly feeling the blues.

City officials are attempting to heal a rift between members of the nonprofit group that has overseen the Niagara Falls Blues Festival for the past four years and a former employee of the organization who was relieved of her duties last year.

On Monday, the city council received two separate proposals to run the festival — one from long-time organizers, the Niagara Festival & Entertainment Group, and a second by the festival group’s former member, Daria Sterner, who is seeking the city’s permission to assume festival operations with the help of the Western New York Blues Society. Both groups are seeking $24,000 in casino cash from the city to hold a 2012 blues fest, which both parties plan to hold this fall.

“I believe the festival entertainment group, the way it is set up now, is for the best,” said Remy Rotella-Orlowski, a spokesperson for the Niagara Festival & Entertainment Group.

 Sterner, who was dismissed by the Niagara Festival & Entertainment Group in September, disagreed, suggesting the time has come for her and the Western New York Blues Society to take the event in a new direction.

“Together with the blues society, I don’t think you can find a better qualified committee to produce festivals that will bring national recognition to the city,” Sterner said.

The city’s blues fest has been steadily growing in popularity since its inception. The 2010 event drew an estimated 10,000 people to Old Falls Street the weekend after Labor Day. Rotella-Orlowski told council members much of the credit belongs to her father, Toby Rotella, one of the founders of the Niagara Festival & Entertainment Group and a man she said started formulating plans for a blues festival in Niagara Falls back in 1984. Rotella-Orlowski said her dad, the former owner of the now-defunct blues bar, the Imperial Garage, and his fellow organizers with the festival & entertainment group have been largely responsible for the festival’s recent success. She encouraged the council to stick with her dad’s organization, saying her his connections to the blues community would allow Niagara Falls to continue to draw top acts in 2012 and beyond. She also noted that her organization has $20,000 in funds earned from the 2011 blues festival that it can use to leverage additional acts and sponsors for this year’s event.

“My father loves the blues and he loves his hometown Niagara Falls,” Rotella-Orlowski said.

Sterner received a letter from Rotella in September, informing her that her help was appreciated, but her services were no longer needed because, according to Rotella, some of her actions as event coordinator “did not serve the best interests of the corporation. On Monday, Sterner suggested that her former boss has become increasingly territorial when it comes to running what she says he now calls “his” event. She told city lawmakers she believes new leadership is needed to ensure future success and expressed confidence that with the help from the blue’s society 500 members in Western New York the city’s blues fest could become one of the premiere events in the country.

Karl Bauer, president of the Western New York Blues Society, said his organization was disappointed in Rotella’s treatment of both Sterner and another former blues festival organizer, Ken Walsh. He said both Sterner and Walsh did a lot of work to make sure previous festivals were a success and he told lawmakers he believes they would be able to continue to run the city’s blues fest in a professional manner with the blues society’s assistance. He suggested Sterner and the Blues Society could provide “sound” and “experienced” record-keeping and monitoring of all future activities.

“We would welcome and invite Mr. Rotella to assist with booking, but feel it is critical to the future and sustainability of the festival to have a stronger and more broad-based presence year-round in the form of Daria and the blues society,” Bauer said.

Rotella-Orlowski characterized Sterner as a “disgruntled ex-employee” who was dismissed with cause based on a number of “errors” she made while helping to put together previous festivals. She also suggested that Sterner’s group of organizers would not have her father’s connections and would not be able to pull in the likes of Dan Akroyd and others who have been approached about participating this year.

“He’s doing his best to acquire a high level of bands,” she said.

Mayor Paul Dyster and City Council Chairman Sam Fruscione both said they believe it would be in the best interest of the city and the festival itself to get the two factions to work together again. Fruscione said it will be up to the administration to mend all wounds before any funds are released by the council.

“Right now, we’re going to look to the mayor and hopefully he’ll be able to put these two groups back together,” Fruscione said. 

Ferndale Blues & Music Festival expands for 11th year

(macombdaily.com) Ferndale,MI - The Bud Light Ferndale Blues & Music Festival gets bigger, and broader, in its 11th year.

The nine-day event, which kicks off Jan. 27, has added new venues and styles to this year’s lineup of more than 60 concerts — as well as new cities. This year the festival takes up residence at the Charter Township of Royal Oak’s Recreation Center for a Motor City Blues Band show on Jan. 28, and at Max Dugan’s in Hazel Park, which will host festival shows on each of the Saturdays.

Six new Ferndale sites — Bosco, Orchid, The Grasshopper, Boogie Fever, Loving Touch and Valentine Distilling — also join the festival lineup.

The Rockin’ Blues BBQ Rib Burn Out Tent runs noon to 9 p.m. Feb. 4, with a rib contest and performances by Blues Infusion and the Hunter Brooks Band in Ferndale’s City Library Parking Lot off Nine Mile Road east of Woodward Avenue. The Emory will host blues brunches from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. each Saturday and Sunday, while Sneakers will host karaoke on several nights of the festival run.

Other festival performers include the Reefermen, Kingshead, Looking Up At Down, Big Will & 360 Degrees, Killer Flamingos, the Luddites and Albert Young & the Straight 8s. Josh James and Andrew Lloyd will perform a jazz set on Jan. 27, at Howe’s Bayou.

The festival will again raise money for two local charities — Ferndale Youth Assistance and Michigan AIDS Coalition — via special blue piggy banks at the festival venues as well as other locations throughout Ferndale. A Blues Shuttle will run on the festival’s Saturday nights.

A full schedule and other information can be found at www.ferndalebluesfestival.org

Video of the Week

Laura Chavez on guitar, Nathan James on bass, Evan Caleb on drums and world reknowned, singer-songwriter Candye Kane on vocals sings from her latest album "Superhero" at a benefit for Steve White who is battling esophogeal cancer.

This benefit took place in 2010, and now we know Candye Kane is once again diagnosed with cancer (pancratic) herself.

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Valentine’s Blues Festival

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- Tickets are currently on sale for the inaugural Valentine’s Blues Festival at the Von Braun Center South Hall, 700 Monroe St., Feb. 11 at 6:30 p.m.

All seats are reserved for $39.50.

According to the WHRP website, the event will feature Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, Latimore, Theotis Ealey and others.

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