Mississippi Valley Blues Fest Guide

Transcript

2 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org | W Welcome from the MVBS President 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal Ticket Information Advance Tickets (through June 28) One-day pass: $12.50. Three tickets good for any day(s): $37.50. Available at: Prices have been slashed for 2012! • Hy-Vee stores in the Quad Cities, Clinton, and Muscatine; • Rascals (1414 15th Street, Moline); • The Muddy Waters (1708 State Street, Bettendorf); • Mississippi Valley Blues Society office (102 South Harrison Street, Davenport). Call first: (563)322-5837. elcome, blues lovers, to the 28th-annual Mississippi Valley Blues Festival in Davenport, Iowa’s beautiful LeClaire Park! We have one of the best blues-festival venues in the world, flanked by the Rock Island Lines railroad on one side and the scenic Mississippi River on the other – an absolutely perfect place to listen to some of the world’s finest blues musicians. We have a great lineup again this year, as always, with a variety of blues styles to satisfy everyone’s blues taste buds – including familiar names as well as some nice surprises that you may not have heard of! Be sure to check out the free photo exhibit (with a 25-year retrospective of our fest by professional blues photographer David Horwitz) and free workshops over in the Freight House, and BlueSKool for the youngsters in LeClaire Park. Blues fans from all over the world have discovered the magic that is the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival. Considering the music, the ambiance of LeClaire Park, the great food and beverages from the vendors, the low cost of festival admission, and the budget-conscious price of local lodging, a discerning blues lover would be hard-pressed to find a better entertainment value anywhere on Earth. The Mississippi Valley Blues Festival is one of the longest-running blues festivals in the country, and as far as I know the only one produced by an all-volunteer not-for-profit organization: the Mississippi Valley Blues Society. These volunteers have been working very hard for the past year to bring this year’s fest to fruition. Stop by the Blues Central tent to make a donation or buy a membership or just thank the fine folks of MVBS for all their hard work and sacrifice. Above all, enjoy the fest, have a great time, and patronize all of our wonderful sponsors that help make this a great experience every year! Thank you for coming! Lonnie Britt President, Mississippi Valley Blues Society At the Gate $15 each day. Children 14 and under are free if accompanied by an adult. | 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal 3 4 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org | Carrying the Torch 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal by Jeff Ignatius A Kenny Neal: Friday, June 29, 10:30 p.m., Bandshell lot of people count the harmonica player Slim Harpo as an influence – among them the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, and Pink Floyd – but nobody can claim a connection as direct (or harrowing) as swamp-blues master Kenny Neal. Slim Harpo was a regular in the Louisiana home of the Neals, and Kenny – one of the sons of harp player Raful Neal – recalled in a recent phone interview the story of how he got his first harmonica when he was three years old. “He was just playin’ around,” Neal said of Slim Harpo. “He tricked me into a trailer one day. ... He told me, ‘Look inside and see if there’s any more equipment in there.’ I went inside, and he closed the doors. It got pitch black and I got phobia. ... Freaked me out. I started screamin’ and yellin’, and that freaked him out. He was trying to quiet me down, so he decided to give me a harmonica – that was the closest thing he had that would probably soothe me a little bit.” Neal said that “every time he came to the house, I didn’t want to see that guy. ... I remember it like it was yesterday.” But despite the trauma of the story, Neal said he connected with the instrument. “I knew I loved music then,” he said. “So when he gave me that harmonica, that was like an extra instrument that I had.” While his dad played the harmonica, too, the kids weren’t allowed to play with his. So Slim Harpo’s pacifying gift was “like handing a kid a candy bar,” Neal said. It’s likely he would have become an entertainer without that present; the 54-yearold Neal said he absorbed the blues from his father: “Everything I know, he gave it to me. ... Every night I play now, man, I can hear my Dad.” At age six or seven, he said, he knew he wanted to be a performer, although he had no sense of what form it would take. “Down here, man, you just pick up an instrument and play,” he said. When his father needed a guitarist or a bassist or a drummer for a gig, Kenny would fill in. “I didn’t know what I was,” he said. “I was whatever my Dad needed.” In the late 1970s, he played bass in the band Neal made his solo debut in 1987 and has released more than a dozen albums on the Alligator, Blind Pig, and Telarc labels – his most recent being 2010’s Hooked on Your Love, which the All Music Guide said is loaded with “confident singing, tasteful and appropriate horn charts, elegant guitar leads (and now and then a chugging harp solo), and a gently swinging Louisiana groove.” He said his next album will be called Strictly Blues, although recording hasn’t even begun. “I want to go back and touch bases with the deep roots of ... the electrified blues,” he said. “It’s kind of getting a bit diluted. So I want to go back and do a real, low-down blues CD.” He cited Big Joe Turner and Guitar Slim as templates – “not much of the Muddy Waters style of the blues, but kind of back [to the] ’40s, ’50s. I want to capture that era. ... “I don’t want to forget about what my whole mission is, and that’s to carry the torch – to keep the blues alive. And I don’t want to get too far away from it.” With that in mind, the artist earlier this year hosted a Kenny Neal’s Family & Friends Heritage Blues Festival in both the states he calls home – one in Baton Rouge and one in Sacramento, California. The goal, he said, was to focus on local talent rather than outside artists: “We have a lot of international folks right here in Baton Rouge, like Mr. Henry Gray, Chris Thomas King ... – guys who live right here under my nose just waiting to play.” And Neal, of course, is making sure his descendants get the exposure he had growing up – but without being shut in a dark trailer. “I open-tuned a guitar yesterday for my two-year-old grandson,” he said. “He already knows about Muddy Waters. I was playing something else, and he wanted to play Muddy Waters.” The grandson is too young to play the instrument well, Neal said: “He just sittin’ there strummin’, but I open-tune it so it’s already an open chord. I want him to hear nice notes. ... I think it’s important for him to hear that early.” of Buddy Guy – another friend of his father – but wanted to lead a band. He chose the guitar mostly out of necessity, “’cause a bass wasn’t going to get it” – the “it” being accepted as a frontman. He saw that most blues bands in Chicago were led by guitarist singers. “They wasn’t that good, but they were going over to Europe and playing all over the place,” Neal said. “And I go, ‘Man, I’d like to get a piece of this action, as well.’” So he focused on teaching himself to play guitar better. He honed his chops in Canada – including with the Neal Brothers Blues Band – and turned a house-band gig into a series of apprenticeships. “Every week I would have a different guest” secured because of his Chicago connections, he said – Guy, Junior Wells, Big Mama Thornton, John Lee Hooker. “That really helped – learn right on the spot how to be a frontman.” | 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal 5 6 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org | A Wider Audience for the King of Beale Street 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal P Preston Shannon: Saturday, June 30, 6 p.m., Bandshell reston Shannon was working and performing in Memphis during the 1960s and ’70s, when “Soulsville USA” rivaled Detroit’s Motown. Stax Records ruled the airwaves with Booker T & the MGs laying down the backing “Memphis Soul Stew” for hits by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and Wilson Pickett, while over at Hi Records producer and songwriter Willie Mitchell was working with Al Green and Otis Clay. It was a magic time. You can hear those soul influences in Preston Shannon’s music, but he doesn’t acknowledge the soul connection. “I am really a blues man,” Shannon declared in a recent phone interview. “I know the blues, I’ve experienced the blues, I play the blues. You know, when I recorded all my CDs, the reason I inserted R&B ... was because at the time it was so hard to get airplay for the blues.” Preston Shannon came up as so many bluesmen do – from Mississippi to Memphis, from the church to the juke. Yet he has a voice that’s often described as being a cross between Otis Redding and Bobby Womack, and a specialized sound that Richard Skelly in the All Music Guide calls “a blend of Southern-fried soul and blues.” Steve Hoffman of CD Universe praised Shannon’s second CD Midnight in Memphis (1996) by noting that “Shannon’s gritty vocals convey so much commitment and authority as to enthrall the listener.” Michael Kuelker in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said that the album has “every ingredient of classic soul in the manner of Stax and Hi Records in their heyday 25 and 30 years ago. The horns – fat, sumptuous, and swinging. Guitar in the tradition of Albert King and T-Bone Walker, tartly punctuating the end of the lyrical lines and re-telling the songs’ stories on the solos. And then there is the voice: gruff and startlingly immediate, stoked with passion and longing, worthy of comparisons to Otis Redding and Al Green.” The Mississippi Valley Blues Society invited Shannon to play this year’s festival knowing that Memphis’ best-kept secret – he’s known as the King of Beale Street – would be bringing a package of blues wrapped in soul. Born in 1947, Shannon moved to Memphis with his family at the age of eight from Olive Branch, Mississippi, where his parents were sharecroppers and Shannon himself chopped and picked cotton. His father was a preacher and his mother a missionary in the Pentecostal Church of God in Christ, where the pastor, W.E. Garner, played guitar and became Shannon’s musical inspiration. “I really learned from just watching him and listening to him,” said Shannon. “He taught me how to play by ear. In those days in the church, their order of service was – it was a testimonial service – you stand up and tell what the good Lord has done for you, and you might break out in a song and everybody’s yelling out ‘eamen.’ The musicians had to ... find out what key they were singing in. I would start at the top of the neck and come down until I found the right note and put the clamp on. “Back in those days [the 1950s], you only had three categories of music: blues, gospel, and country. My parents, they didn’t believe in the devil’s music – they called blues and R&B the devil’s music. I slipped [out] and listened to what was playing on the radio 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal by Karen McFarland 7 | 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org at that time – B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James.” But his parents finally relented somewhat, and bought Shannon his first electric guitar when he was 12. “Naturally my influence is the King of the Blues, B.B. King, but my favorite is Albert King,” he said. “Those are the guys that I try to emulate now. Of course I do my own thing, but I’ve got influences from B.B. King, Albert King, and Freddie King.” Shannon started performing when he got out of high school, around the same time that Albert King was recording “Crosscut Saw” and “Born Under a Bad Sign” for Stax. Shannon was playing guitar and singing in Memphis bands while working as a warehouse supervisor for a hardware store by day. After 20 years, Shannon decided to quit his day job and pursue a solo career. He got a gig in 1988 touring with soul singer Shirley Brown, who had recorded her Grammy-nominated hit “Woman to Woman” for Stax in 1975. Shannon stayed with her for three years, and then formed his own band, reasoning that he was just as good as the other singers he heard, and they weren’t playing guitar at the same time, as he was doing. He and his band stayed in Memphis, playing the clubs up and down Beale Street, with regular gigs at B.B. King’s club. In 1994, Shannon was “discovered” at the Rum Boogie on Beale Street by Ron Levy, a keyboardist and producer for Rounder Record’s Bullseye Blues label. Shannon’s debut CD, Break the Ice, featured the Memphis Horns. Both Midnight in Memphis and All in Time (1999) were produced by Willie Mitchell in Memphis, and Mitchell wrote most of the songs for those two albums. All in Time garnered three Grammy nominations. Shannon continued playing on Beale Street, but his next album didn’t come out until 2006, on another label. Shannon’s much more excited about what’s been happening for him in the past two years. In 2010, his recording of “Honky Tonk” became a hit on YouTube when Florida dance instructor Ira Weisburg used it in a line dance he created called Shuffle Boogie Soul. Shannon explained that Weisburg liked the term “honky tonk” and listened to many versions of different songs – including one by James Brown – before finally picking Shannon’s. He said he adapted his funked-up version of the straight blues shuffle with a walking bass from Bobby Blue Bland. In 2011, he had some luck with a song that has become a staple of his live shows, Prince’s “Purple Rain.” “David Z, the producer of the Purple Rain CD, heard me play it on Beale Street in 1993 or ’94 and said I should record it. It’s been one of my most talked-about songs that I’ve ever done. I play like a blues-guitar player, and that’s the difference. It’s all over the Internet.” Last year, Dr. Fink, who had toured with Prince, called Shannon. He “told me they were putting together a tribute CD to Prince – this was his band that used to play with him,” Shannon said. “And he said, ‘Man, I just heard your version of “Purple Rain” on the radio, and would you mind if we use it in the tribute album?’ That’s kind of exciting, you know!” Then, in February of this year, Preston Shannon was featured on an episode of NBC’s The Voice on Super Bowl Sunday, reaching an audience of more than 50 million people. “It’s very educational to know how TV works, and the chance to meet so many people who are in the business,” said Shannon. “I got the opportunity to audition for the judges,” all of whom he met: Christina Aguilera, Blake Shelton, Cee Lo Green, and Adam Levine. The YouTube video shows all four judges bobbing their heads and tapping their feet to Shannon’s version of “Midnight Hour,” but he was not chosen for the next level of competition. Shannon’s next project is finishing up his new CD: a tribute to Elmore James, the king of the slide guitar. And he’s received a number of gigs outside of Memphis from his appearance on The Voice and from the Shuffle Boogie Soul line dance. Now the rest of the country is learning what Memphis already knew. Shannon’s contributions to Memphis music have been recognized by the city with a musical note in the sidewalk between the Black Diamond and Club Superior, just down from B.B. King’s on Beale Street. It says: “Preston Shannon, King of Beale Street.” 8 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org | Happy Accidents 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal W Kelley Hunt: Saturday, June 30, 9:30 p.m., Tent little band, and that’s kind of when I realized I didn’t want to stop.” Hunt says that after two and a half years of undergraduate studies, including her addition of a minor in voice, “I had to decide if I was going to be a music therapist, if I was going to go into opera – I was singing almost all opera at KU, which was great training – or if I was gonna teach. And I just sat down with my folks and said, ‘You know what? I can’t do any of those things.’ And astonishingly enough, they said, ‘Well, then, what would you like to do?’ “So I made the choice to go into the full-time performance mode,” says Hunt, who – with her parents’ blessing – consequently dropped out of the university. “I immediately started writing on a full-time basis, and my parents helped me get some equipment so I could support myself performing, and that was my own little graduation.” Discovering that “especially if you’re driven, and you’re focused, all kinds of opportunities open up,” Hunt says, “I just started working right away, getting every kind of performance opportunity I could get. I would just put myself out there in any way possible,” and wound up supporting herself through solo performances, jam sessions with other bands, and teaching songwriting workshops for area school systems. “I look back now,” she says, “and I wonder, ‘How on Earth … ? I started when I was 20 years old, and I was by myself … . How the hell did I do that?’ But it worked out!” Her professional breakthrough, though, really came with 1994’s Kelley Hunt, the solo album that Hunt says “came about because I was newly divorced, and I was a single mom, and I was in shock. So I had a moment of thinking, ‘Sink or swim – what’re you gonna do?’ And I thought, ‘Screw this. I’m swimming.’” She met Out Loud Talent manager Al Berman, “whose company was doing booking and promotions and all kinds of things for artists,” says Hunt. “I said, ‘Look, I want to do a CD of hile listening to Kelley Hunt perform – the singer/songwriter’s joyously smoky, soulful blues vocals a perfect match for her funky and fiery piano skills – it’s easy to imagine that the Kansas-based musician never lacked for confidence. As she admits during our recent phone interview, though, she actually did. She just didn’t tell anyone. “When I was about 17, I was in a band with my brother’s friends, and these were older guys – like 21 or whatever,” says Hunt with a laugh. “I wasn’t singing at all; I was just playing these keyboards that they had. And one night we were playing for an event at the college in Emporia, where I grew up, and we were being paid, and the gal that was supposed to sing just did not show up. And it was time to start, and the guys looked at me and just said, ‘Oh my God, we hope you can sing.’ “I was pretty much horrified,” she continues. “I mean, I knew I could, because I was doing it in school, but never in this kind of setting. So at that moment, I just made a conscious decision: ‘I’m going to pretend like I’m all about this, and I’m going to pretend like I’m not scared out of my gourd.’ And I just slammed it out for a couple hours, and I remember thinking, ‘Well, (a) nobody here even knows there’s anything different, (b) the singer’s fired, and (c) I now get paid twice as much.’” Laughing, Hunt says, “I just stepped into it brazenly and naïvely, and just assumed that it would all work out.” Good luck finding a blues fan, or blues-music critic, who thinks it didn’t. Since the release of her self-titled debut album in 1994, Hunt has wowed concert- and festival-goers nationwide with her glorious, unrestrained singing and piano-playing, whether on poignant, impassioned ballads such as “Love” (from her 2009 CD Mercy) or foot-stomping, boogie-fueled anthems such as “I’m Ready” (from her latest offering, 2011’s Gravity Loves You). Hunt’s reviews, meanwhile, have found The Onion praising her “socially charged lyrics with a voice that’s part powerful gospel yearning and part bawdy soul-shouter,” and Blues Revue magazine writing, “Hunt’s vocals and captivating pianoplaying work together to lift each composition to gravity-defying heights.” Not bad for a musician who insists that her entry into the blues scene “really wasn’t by design. It’s just kind of what seeped into my bones. I couldn’t help it.” A resident of Lawrence, Kansas, Hunt says that during her childhood in Emporia, “I was surrounded by music my entire growing-up life. My folks listened to a lot of jazz and blues and R&B, and my older brother and sister brought everything into the house from Jimi Hedrix to Howlin’ Wolf. It was all happening in our house.” Consequently, Hunt’s early affection for the blues, she says, “came party through osmosis, I think. I also heard a lot of gospel music growing up, and sang in church when I was younger, and there’s such a heavy thread of that in the blues. I love that full-out approach of singing with your whole soul, and I think there’s a dose of that in all kinds of music. I’m really attracted to that.” She was also, by age three, enraptured by the piano. “My parents got an old upright piano that was refurbished from a player piano,” says Hunt. “It was so beat up that the black keys were worn down, so my dad painted them turquoise blue. My parents thought my sister and brother would probably play, but I had to have my hands on it, and pretty soon – once they realized that, every day, I was asking to be put up on the piano bench – everybody else fell away from playing it. It became clear: ‘Oh, this is for her.’” As a youth, Hunt continued to play the piano and sing – she performed in her first band, at age 16, “to help make money to go to college” – and her nascent songwriting skills inspired her to pursue a music-composition major at the University of Kansas. “But even though I was in the school of fine arts,” she says, “almost every weekend I was doing some performing, either by myself or with a 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal by Mike Schulz 9 | 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org all my own music, and these are my goals … ’ and everything. He said, ‘Well, if you could have anybody produce it, in your wildest dreams, who would it be?’ And I thought of Mike Finnigan.” An acclaimed, Blues Music Award-winning vocalist/keyboardist – and fellow Kansas native – who toured with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, and Etta James, Finnigan met Hunt a few months prior to her Out Loud Talent meeting. “I loved him,” she says. “And I had given him a tape of a bunch of my songs – just me playing the piano and singing – and it turns out he kept it. So when Al called him, he said, ‘You know what? I’m up for this.’ So I went out to L.A., and Mike put together a stellar list of musicians, and it was during the hardest time of my life. “Which turned into the best time of my life,” Hunt adds. “Fortunately for me, the stars aligned, and I got the help of a lot of really soulful, wonderful people in the business, and I just went from feeling very crushed and grief-stricken to, ‘Oh, this is my opportunity!’ I’d call my mom and say, ‘Holy shit, guess what! Aretha Franklin’s guitar player just came in and asked me what I wanted to do on a song!’ It just freaked me out. And I ended up thinking, ‘Yeah. I can do this.’” Five albums later, Hunt and Berman continue to collaborate, serving as co-producers on Hunt’s last three CD releases – all of which have been recorded and mixed analog, with only minimal time spent in digital studios. “I think the main perk of analog is the warmth of the sound,” says Hunt. “That and the immediacy of it. When I record, one of my favorite things to do is to have everybody there at the same time. It doesn’t always mean we can be in the same room, because I’m usually playing an acoustic grand piano, but it means we can hear each other and many times see each other, and I love the immediacy of that. And I love the surprises that can happen. “For example,” she continues, “on the Gravity Loves You CD, there’s a cut called ‘Shake It Off Right Away.’ It’s just a throw-down, crazy, overthe-top boogie number. It’s just ridiculous. While we were recording, we were all just going, ‘God almighty … ! Strap in!’, like we were shot out of a cannon. And toward the end of the track, I start laughing. I mean, everybody is, forgetting that if this one’s the keeper, that sound’s going to be on the track. And we kept it in. If I would’ve taken that out, it would’ve taken out some other stuff, too, that I wanted to keep, so I just went, ‘Who cares? That’s what was happening!’ I love those happy accidents.” Blues fans can likely expect more happy accidents – and more of what the Kansas City Star calls the musician’s “versatile piano skills and uncommonly dexterous voice” – when Hunt performs her Saturday-night set at the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival, her first return to LeClaire Park in four years. (“God, it was so much fun,” says Hunt of her last Davenport engagement. “I can’t wait to go back.”) Unlike with her accidental vocal debut at age 17, though, they can expect them without the accompanying butterflies. “Music is more fun now,” says Hunt, “because I’m much more relaxed about it, and I understand that, ‘Hey, if I drop dead tomorrow, I’ve already had the time of my life.’ And I plan on doing it every night as if I was gonna drop dead tomorrow, you know? It was really, really fun when I was younger, but now I’m not horrified. I’m not paralyzed when I get up there. I’m just gonna enjoy.” 10 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org | Finding His Soul 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal by Jeff Ignatius F Coco Montoya: Saturday, June 30, 10 p.m., Bandshell or the music career of singer/guitarist Coco Montoya, thank the persistence of John Mayall. It’s not merely that Mayall called Montoya to ask him to join the legendary Bluesbreakers band in the early 1980s. It’s that he called back when Montoya – who had quit music as a profession after a stint drumming for Albert Collins in the 1970s – hung up on him. “I didn’t think it was him,” Montoya said in a recent phone interview, promoting his Saturday bandshell performance at the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival. “I was bartending at a British pub. ... So I thought it was some of the English cats in there teasing me. ... He called back. ‘No, this really is John Mayall. ... Do I have to come down there ... ?’” Montoya is the first to admit that getting the call didn’t “make any sense at all.” After he left Collins’ band and disco and funk ruled the pop charts, the self-taught drummer didn’t see a place for himself in the music world, and “I didn’t like being broke. ... I just packed it in. ... I like having a check. I like having money in my pocket. ... “I wasn’t in the music business anymore. I was just a [guitar] jammer. I was just having fun.” Mayall, he said, had heard him at a jam session one night, and it obviously made an impression. “John happened to be there when I got up there and played, and somebody told me John was in the audience; they said it was his birthday,” Montoya said. “So I just did a bastardized version of the Otis Rush song ‘All Your Love’” – the lead track on the 1966 album by the Bluesbreakers, then featuring Eric Clapton. “And apparently the sound man gave John a tape of it.” Montoya knew being a Bluesbreaker was a hugely lucky break: “‘I’m actually going to be a Bluesbreaker for however long I last. I was there for a minute.’ It ended up being 10 years.” But it wasn’t an easy decade, he said: “After a while, once all the euphoria starts to come down, you start to realize what you’re up against. It became difficult. ... You did have to live up to the ghosts of guitarists past” – from Clapton to Mick Taylor. And live up to the spirits of guitarists present, as Montoya played alongside Kal David and then Walter Trout. This period, he said, was detrimental in several ways, from booze and drugs to on-stage guitar feuds with Trout. “I drank a lot – for bravery, mostly,” Montoya said. And “I didn’t like to have guitar battles. ... [But] every night was a guitar battle. ... We weren’t making music; we were just being competitive. That wasn’t healthy.” Still, he said, “People loved it.” There were also plenty of positives beyond the obvious prestige of the gig, said Montoya – who has now been sober for 18 years. “I’ve never been an overly confident player, or an overly confident person, either,” he noted. But Collins – both a guitar mentor and father figure – and Mayall encouraged him to be comfortable with his skills and style: “You don’t have to be Jimi Hendrix. You don’t have to be Eric Clapton. You can be you. That’s what this is. Your own identity. For better or for worse. Be at peace with that.” That self-assurance has led to a respected career as a solo artist known not just for his fiery guitar work but also his soul. From 1995 to 2007, he recorded three wellregarded albums apiece for the Blind Pig and Alligator labels. Montoya said he’s proud of those records, but he said the labels typically asked him to record some songs he didn’t love with an eye toward sales. That didn’t happen with 2010’s I Want It All Back on Ruf Records, a bold departure that saw Montoya given free reign – which he used to push himself out of his comfort zone. Producer Keb’ Mo’, Montoya recalled, asked him some questions: “What songs do I like? What do I listen to on the road? I let him know I love ’50s stuff, and doo-wop stuff, and soul stuff. He goes, ‘Well, if I’m going to do this project ... I don’t want to do another guitar album. You’ve got six albums; everybody knows you can play guitar.’ And I just said, ‘Well, what else do I do?’ And he said, ‘I’m going to concentrate on your voice. Nobody’s really done that.’ I said, ‘Well, that was a challenge, because I never thought I was much of a singer anyway.’” The premise for the album, he said, was “frightening.” But the result, as the All Music Guide noted, worked: “There’s plenty of piercingly lyrical guitar work, of course, but it’s Montoya the singer who emerges as the dominant figure in these sessions, leaning into a smooth, soulful lilt that’s not a million miles away from the sound of Los Lobos lead vocalist David Hidalgo. Not only that, Montoya is letting this cool-crooning approach lead him down different musical avenues” – including a gentle version of Jackson Browne’s “Somebody’s Baby.” Montoya said that Keb’ Mo’ warned him that he’d catch some flak for the record, and he did: “There’s a few guys that really want to hear me play a million notes and play as loud as I can that got disappointed on this album.” But he said he’s too old to do anything but listen to his own muse: “At 60 years old, I don’t want to be doing stuff that doesn’t please me. ... At this point, I’m not going to be on MTV. ... The pop charts for me are not something I’m looking towards now. At this late stage in my career, I think I should be happy playing whatever it is I wish to play. ... And if it pleases my fan base, that’s great ... .” 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal 11 | 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org 12 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org | Lady Sings the Blues 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal L Lady Bianca: Sunday, July 1, 5 p.m., Bandshell ady Bianca. Her very name suggests confidence and brio and more than a hint of glamor, qualities that are readily apparent in the artist’s soulful, soaring renderings of blues originals and covers, and that led Blues Revue magazine to call her “a great talent whose hearty, refreshing approach tugs at the heart while moving the feet.” (For a quick, thrilling introduction to Lady Bianca’s gifts, check out her performances of “Ooh, His Love Is So Good” – from her 1995 debut album Best Kept Secret – and Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel,” both viewable on YouTube.) So when you learn that Lady Bianca (born Bianca Thornton) was given her stage moniker at age 17 – a name bestowed on her by the noted San Francisco-based bluesman Quinn Harris, for whom she sang backup – you might think that even then she boasted the electrifying magnetism and blues-fueled assurance that she does now at age 58. “Oh, no,” she says, with a laugh, during our recent phone interview. “Quinn Harris named me Lady Bianca because I was so square.” Regarding the headliner of the R&B ensemble Quinn Harris & the Masterminds, Lady Bianca recalls, “He’d say, ‘You’re just so square. So conservative. You’re such a lady.’ And guess where they worked? They worked at, like, places where there were topless dancers and stuff like that. When I took the job, I didn’t know he was in that kind of club environment. All I knew was I was singing in a band. “It was very scary,” she continues, “and I was underage, so it wouldn’t have been good for the club owners if they knew. But I could sing my butt off, see? And I loved the music. So I never sang topless – I never got involved in any of that – but when it was time for me to come out and sing, I sang.” By age 17, Lady Bianca had already been singing for many years. Born in Kansas City, she and her family moved to the San Francisco area when the future blues artist was four, and she credits her stepfather, Ernest Lee Thornton, with much of her childhood interest in the blues. “He was very instrumental in showing me about the music,” she says. “We basically listened to a lot of gospel and R&B. Aretha Franklin, The Mighty Clouds of Joy ... . Ray Charles was one of my favorites. And B.B. King. My stepfather loved them so much.” Beyond singing, young Bianca Thornton also showed an affinity for a particular musical instrument. “I always played the piano,” says the artist. “Since I was four. But I wasn’t classically trained or anything. I just played and sang what I heard in my mind. What they call ‘play by ear.’” At an age when many high-schoolers are getting jobs in fast food, Bianca, as she tells it, “was just a singer with the nice rhythm-andblues bands that they had at that time in the Bay area” – among them Quinn Harris’. “We lived in San Francisco up on a really tall hill, and I got introduced to Quinn ... ,” she says. “I don’t know where it was, actually, but he did the music I liked. There were some really topnotch R&B bands that worked around there.” In 1970, Bianca made her recording debut on Quinn Harris & the Masterminds’ All in the Soul, an album featuring two tracks (“Stop Telling me Lies” and “We Got to Live Together”) that she herself wrote and performed. And two years later, she appeared on-stage in a presentation of jazz legend Jon Hendricks’ Evolution of the Blues, a production that found Lady Bianca playing Billie Holliday, and singing the artist’s classics “Good Morning Heartache” and “God Bless the Child.” When she first got the role, says Lady Bianca, “I didn’t really know about her. But something about Billie Holliday struck me, and I tried to find every inch of everything about her, and mimic how she sounded. In the end, I really loved her.” Despite these early successes, the nightclub gigs that Lady Bianca continued to play were ones her parents didn’t necessarily approve of. “Oh no, they never came!” she says, laughing, when asked if her folks attended any of her performances as such topless venues as Big Al’s and The Brass Reel. “My mother would never come to anything like that, and my stepfather wouldn’t, either.” In a partial attempt to appease them, Bianca applied for, and earned, a four-year scholarship to the prestigious San Francisco Conservatory of Music, which she says pleased her parents to no end: “They wanted me to stay with the opera and be a colaratura. “But I didn’t finish,” she says of the school she attended “for a couple of years,” where she studied music theory and composition, and received additional vocal and piano training. “I left because I felt, as a young person, that I basically couldn’t create my own music there. Because I was changing all the arias. I was changing the piano parts and key signatures to fit how I felt the music, and when I got into Bach and Chopin and Beethoven, I kind of heard a gospel spin on them. I don’t know why I heard that, but I did.” However, it didn’t take long for Lady Bianca to again score professional work after her time at the conservatory, and among her first jobs were singing backup for the San Francisco gay icon Sylvester – who, she says, “taught me the extravagance of dressing” – and performing as a pianist and background vocalist for Sly & the Family Stone. “I lived up the hill from Sly in San Francisco,” she says, “and I went to school with his sisters, and I always loved his music, and always loved him. I just thought that the music was so creative. So I promised myself, ‘One of these days I’m going to sing with Sly.’ And I didn’t get to sing with them when they were really big – I only got to sing with him on the other end – but I did get to. He’s a fantastic guy.” During this period, Lady Bianca also toured as a backup singer and pianist for Frank Zappa. But her 1976 tenure with the musician, she says, lasted only one month, partly because of the suggestiveness of Zappa’s lyrics. “I was still young, and instead of just going out and doing it, I was thinking, ‘What are my mother and father going to think of this?’” She laughs. “But to this day, I’m really thankful for that experience, because even though I was afraid of it, it did give me the confidence I needed. The confidence to go out there and be able to sing that.” Years of touring, studio, and commercial work followed; Lady Bianca frequently toured with Van Morrison from 1981 to 1985, recorded background vocals for such artists as Merle Haggard and Taj Mahal, and could even be heard singing on several California Raisins commercials. Yet as she attests, her solo career truly started when, in 1984, she met the man she would go on to marry – songwriter/producer Stanley Lippitt. “He says he met me on the radio,” says Lady Bianca with a laugh. “I was singing at a local nightclub, and he heard me on the radio, and he ran down there to have me do some of his songs. But he didn’t get down there until about one o’clock, and I wasn’t there. I had 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal by Mike Schulz left.” Eventually, though, the pair did meet, and on their first date – which Lady Bianca says consisted of “wine and pork skins at my house” – the two also teamed up for the first of what would go on to be many collaborations. “It was a song called ‘Passion,’” she says, “and we were crying when we wrote this song. I don’t know why, but I think Stanley loved me, and I loved him, too – though I didn’t want him to know how I felt about him. So we kind of continued our friendship for about four years, and then we moved in together ... . And in 2001, we finally got married.” They also worked together to release 1995’s Best Kept Secret debut, an album featuring songs written by Lady Bianca and Lippitt, and the first in a series of solo recordings and professional collaborations that includes 2001’s Rollin’, 2003’s All by Myself, 2005’s Let Love Have Its Way, and this past January’s Serving Notice. “He writes fantastic music for me,” says Lady Bianca of Lippitt, “and we just have a fantastic time. I mean, we fight and cuss and argue about the work, but when it gets done – when I get to play the music the way I want it to go and Stanley gets to put his lyrics to it – it’s a very good combination.” With Living Blues magazine writing, “Lady Bianca’s music enhances and brilliantly synthesizes most major American vernacular strains – blues, country, gospel, jazz, and rock,” local audiences will be treated to the artist’s signature style during her July 1 Mississippi Valley Blues Festival performance, the singer’s first appearance at the fest since her 2001 booking. She admits, though, that she’s hoping for more cooperative temperatures this time around. “Oh my God it was so hot!” she exclaims with a laugh. “I was just breathing in hot air. It was a great set, but we almost died!” And following her Davenport engagement, Lady Bianca will return to California, where she was inducted into the Bay Area Blues Society’s Hall of Fame in 2008, and was even awarded a special citation, in 2002, by Jerry Brown, then Oakland’s mayor and now California’s governor. “That’s right, I got the keys to the city!” she says. “I thought that was just fantastic. Although my keys don’t seem to work in the city. I don’t know where in the city they will work, but I have them, so I’ll keep trying doors ’til they do.” 13 | 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org 14 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org | W Bobby Rush: Sunday, July 1, 8:30 p.m., Tent Devil in Disguise hen Blues Music Award winner Bobby Rush takes the stage at this year’s Mississippi Valley Blues Festival, he’ll be doing so in a concert set titled “The Double Rush Revue,” so named because, as he says, “I’ve got one part of the show I’m doing with the band, and the next part I’m gonna strip down – just me and my guitar.” It won’t be the first time the 76-year-old blues artist has stripped down for a gig. In one of the many entertaining stories he shares during our recent phone interview, the Mississippi-based Rush recalls the time (“in 1954 ... or ’55 ... it could’ve been ’56 ... ”) that he was hired for an openended engagement at a Rock Island venue called the Havana Club, a job secured for him by his friend Ike Turner. One of the caveats, though, was that Rush had to find a comedian to open his shows, and he did – and promptly lost him, when the man pulled out of the gig the day before Rush’s first performance. “I thought, ‘Oh God, what am I gonna do?’” says Rush. “But I knew I could tell a few jokes. So I went and bought me some overalls, and put an old floppy hat on – like a guy laying on the street, you know? Like a homeless guy. And at the show, I came out with a cigar in my mouth, and a bottle of wine in my pocket, and a mustache glued on my face, and I called myself The Tramp. And I just told jokes and was funny. “And then,” he continues, “I would say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, now it’s time for showtime, so let’s get together and give Bobby-y-y Rush a hand!’ And I would step behind the curtain, smack the mustache off, smack the overalls off, ’cause they were just over my dress clothes, unsnap my clown shoes, get my dress shoes on, and come back on-stage in two, three seconds – 10 seconds at most. And then I’d do my thing.” Rush says that for six weeks, his boss (known as Fat Daddy), like Rush’s audiences, “didn’t know I was the same guy” as his Tramp alter-ego. “But finally Fat Daddy called me and said, ‘Listen, man, come to my office.’ And I just know I’m fired. I get there and he said, ‘You know what? You’ve been bullshitting me for a long time. I should fire you.’ And then he laughed. ‘Heh heh heh heh ... .’ And he said, ‘But I’m not. Because you’re good. Just don’t let the people know what you’re doing. Keep doing a good job, boy.’ “And the next night he brought his family 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal down to see me,” says Rush. “And he gave me a raise of eight dollars.” It’s hard not to see Rush’s story as an analogy for his career as a whole: Do what you want to, do what you need to, try to stay one step ahead ... and the acclaim and money will follow. Long before his 2012 Blues Music Award for Show You a Good Time, his 2000 Grammy nomination for Hoochie Man, and his engagements at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and festivals throughout Europe and Japan, Rush says he was a dutiful preacher’s son in Louisiana who came to the blues because “my daddy never told me not to. “At the time when I came up,” says Rush, “this was the devil’s music. And it may have been the devil’s music. But my daddy never expressed that to me, and he was the guy who taught me how to play the guitar, and the first guy who really taught me to sing the blues. So that was a green light for me to do what I do today.” At age seven, Rush received his first guitar as a gift from his cousin, and says, “I knew then, at seven years old, exactly what I wanted to be. There wasn’t any guessing. But I didn’t know you could make money doing this.” He laughs. “I remember thinking, ‘You mean I can make money for something I would do for free?’” Rush says that his first paid gig, and his first donning of an on-stage disguise, came after his family moved to Arkansas in the late 1940s, when the teenaged Rush – serving as guitarist for a blues ensemble that featured slide-guitar sensation Elmore James – was too young to enter the club his band was hired to play. “I wanted a mustache,” he says, “but I didn’t have anything to paint my mustache with. But we had these big matches. And if you struck the match and let it burn for just a second and blew it out, you’d get smut on the end of it. So that was my marker. I used about four or five matches, lit ’em, let ’em go out, and had smut on my lip.” (He laughs and says, “I guess, deep down inside, everyone knew I was young. But I could play guitar, and these guys probably knew my father, and they probably said, ‘That young boy needs to make a dollar – let him on in.’”) No disguises were necessary, however, when Rush hit the Chicago blues scene after his family’s 1953 relocation to Illinois – though a few pairs of sensible shoes likely were. Calling it “the best thing to happen to me financially, and the worst thing that happened to my career,” Rush’s schedule found him working a day job and, in the evenings, playing guitar and singing at numerous Chicago nightspots – occasionally, as many as five in one evening. “Man, I was getting rich,” says Rush. “Because I was making 20, 25 dollars ... sometimes 35 dollars a night. That was more money than any guy was making in Chicago. I’d go to one place at 8:30, do two songs with this one band, and then at my break I’d go to another place and do two, three songs with another band ... . I was just backward and forward. That’s how I’d do it, man.” Yet the relentless travel came with a price. “It hurt my career because I got spoiled making that money,” Rush says, “and so I didn’t travel much. I was only known locally. If you’re cutting records, you gotta travel. But you aren’t making that much money traveling. Even if you’re making $10 a night, that’s only 30 a week working Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And I was making $35 a night. Back in the early ’50s? One hundred twenty dollars a week? Come on, man!” It wasn’t until 1970 that he was finally able to enjoy money and national recognition, when his self-penned single “Chicken Heads” hit Billboard’s R&B chart and became Rush’s first gold record. He remembers the record’s producers being apparently unaware of the song’s rather blatant sexual innuendo, but he laughs when recounting that one of them was even more blind to the single’s flip side. “He said, ‘We need a B side,’” says Rush. “I said, ‘I got a B side. It’s called “Mary Jane.”’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah, I had a girl named Mary Jane that did me wrong, too!’ So I knew I found me some suckers here, man. They don’t know what I’m talking about when I say ‘Mary Jane.’ I’m talking about reefer. Getting high. And this guy thinks I’m talking about a woman, you know? So I sing, ‘I got high last night / I got high but didn’t go home / I said Mary Jane, Mary Jane / Can’t you see by Mike Schulz what you’re doin’?’ And he said, ‘Yeah! My woman did me like that, too!’” The success of “Chicken Heads,” says Rush, “opened the doors” for his career, and eventually led to his moving to Mississippi, where the blues artist still resides. “After the record came out,” he says, “most of my work was in the South. I was in Chicago, but there wasn’t that much work for me in Chicago anymore, so I was driving to Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas ... . I’d leave on a Thursday and come back the next Wednesday, and then leave again ... . It was just too much work. “So I said, ‘Let me find a place in the South where I could centrally locate.’ And I looked on the map and found Jackson, Mississippi, and that was, to me, the center of the South. That meant I could get musicians out of all these states nearby, and I could get work all around, and that’s what I needed.” The move, he says, paid off. Not only were Rush’s commutes made easier, but over the next several decades, he wound up signing with several blues and R&B labels, founded his own label (Deep Rush) in 2003, released some two dozen albums, and was even profiled on the “The Road to Memphis” segment of producer Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed PBS documentary series The Blues. (“I was sorry I didn’t get to meet Scorsese on a personal basis,” says Rush. “But I sent him a couple notes thanking him for what he did for my career, and for the movie – he did so much for the people in our industry.”) “I’ve crossed over with a white audience,” says Rush of his current fame. “But I never crossed out the black audience, and that’s what I want people to know. I’m a black blues singer who is proud to be who I am, but it’s not a ‘black’ or ‘white’ issue with me. I’m a musician, I’m a blues singer, I’m a stand-up comedian, and I want to please everybody I can – and the ones I can’t, I certainly try. They don’t have to like me, but if they say, ‘Well, damn, he’s good ... ,’ that’s good enough for me.” As for the enjoyment he still gets from performing in front of a live crowd, Rush laughs and says, “It’s like making love, man. Maybe you can’t do it often, but whenever you do it, it’s fun.” An Active “Retirement” 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal by Jeff Ignatius 15 | 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org “I Lonnie Brooks: Sunday, July 1, 9 p.m., Bandshell ’m not working as much as I’ve been,” said 78-year-old Lonnie Brooks in a recent phone interview. “I had in mind to try to retire, but my boys keep tellin’ me, ‘Let’s go out there.’” I asked him when he decided he wanted to retire. Without missing a beat or belying the joke, the Louisiana-bred Chicagoan deadpanned: “I was thinking about this about 16 years ago. But I needed money, so I kept on.” Brooks’ “retirement” decision coincided with his last studio release of new recordings, 1996’s Roadhouse Rules – which in retrospect seems to have ended a two-decade solo run on the Alligator label, including 1979’s classic Bayou Lightning. The All Music Guide called him “a Chicago blues giant” with a “unique Louisiana/Chicago blues synthesis unlike anyone else’s on the competitive Windy City scene.” Since Roadhouse Rules, he collaborated with Long John Hunter and Phillip Walker on 1999’s Lone Star Shootout (also on Alligator), and his touring schedule has wound down from roughly 250 dates a year to about 50. “I just work when I need it,” he said. Most of his shows these days – including his closing bandshell performance at this year’s Mississippi Valley Blues Festival – are billed as the Brooks Family Blues Dynasty, featuring father Lonnie and sons Ronnie Baker Brooks and Wayne Baker Brooks. All three men are guitarists and bandleaders, and the show’s appeal, Lonnie said, is that “I know that people love to see families together.” There are practical advantages to this arrangement – Lonnie doesn’t need to keep a band together, instead using his sons’ backing musicians – but Brooks had long envisioned a family band, with Ronnie on bass and Wayne on drums. It just took a lot longer to come together than he anticipated, and it didn’t take the form he had planned. “That’s what I had in mind to do, to have my boys playing with me,” he said – but he was referring to a period when his sons were kids; Ronnie is now 45, and Wayne is 42. Ronnie had music in him early. Brooks recalled that when his older son was six, “I caught him messing with my guitar. Other kids, what they do, they grab a string and pull on it. ... [With Ronnie,] I heard somebody playing the guitar. ... He had the feel for it at six. “When I woke up, when I let him know that I was awake, he hurried and put the guitar down. I said, ‘No.’” Thus began Ronnie’s education at the hands of his father. He first played on stage with Lonnie at age nine and spent a dozen years in Brooks’ band before starting a solo career. Even when Ronnie was young, Brooks said, “we would write together. He would come up with ideas that I never heard before. I was using some of his ideas. ... He had certain licks that he would hit that felt good to me, so I would use it. I’d make it much stronger.” Wayne’s path to a music career was different. “He was into computers” as a kid, his father said. “He wasn’t thinking about no music. Then he wanted to play when he saw the kids coming up to the bandstand when Ronnie would start playing. He wanted to get in.” But he declined Dad’s offers of instruction: “He didn’t say, ‘I want you to teach me’; he said, ‘I want to go to school for it.’ ... I guess he’s like his mother. He wants to do everything himself.” Brooks said that he can see his influence in his sons’ styles. “I hear it, but I notice that I’m seeing it disappearing a little bit,” he said. “Both of them sound good to me.” The patriarch understands, though, that he’s still the main attraction. Audiences, he said, “want to hear the old man.” And he’s not done yet. He recorded a new album two years ago, he said, and is waiting for the right situation and label to release it. “I’m thinking it’s the best one I ever did in my life,” he said. “All musicians think that, but I’m just saying it’s a good record. It took me 15 years to write all this stuff. ... I don’t want to mess with it unless I think it’s a hit.” And don’t think that Brooks is coasting on his reputation, either. The day we talked, he said he’d gone to bed at 6 a.m., practicing guitar for hours after playing pool until nearly midnight: “I’ve got to keep myself in shape.” 16 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org | Friday, June 29: Bandshell whose friends included Lazy Lester, Buddy Guy, and Slim Harpo. As a child, Kenny mastered harmonica, then moved on to bass, trumpet, piano, and guitar. At 13, he joined his father’s band as a bass player, and by 17, he was Buddy Guy’s bassist. Buddy advised Kenny to focus on his guitar-playing, so Kenny relocated to Toronto with three of his brothers and formed the Neal Brothers Band. Later he fronted Canada’s Downchild Blues band before returning to Baton Rouge to begin his solo career. In 1987, Kenny Neal cut his debut album, Bio on the Bayou, for Florida producer Bob Greelee and Kingsnake Records. Alligator Records picked it up the following year and marketed it as Big News from Baton Rouge! Then Kenny expanded his horizons and in 1991 won the Theatre World Award for Best New Talent on Broadway for his acting work in Mulebone, a play by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston with music by Taj Mahal. He toured Africa for the State Department in 1993. He continued to tour and record until hepatitis C forced him to take a year off; his comeback album on Blind Pig Records, Let Life Flow (2008), helped Kenny get four (!) Grammy nominations. The All Music Guide described it as “once again incorporating his gritty Louisiana roots with a sophisticated Chicago/Memphis soul approach.” His most recent CD is Hooked on Your Love (2010). Last year Kenny Neal was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame. But none of this information really expresses the soul of Kenny Neal. The last time he played our Fest, he was in the tent – and he stole the night from the zydeco band that came on after him. Kenny’s music is mesmerizing, and you can dance to it, too. His energy is always upbeat and positive. Let life flow! – Karen McFarland 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal Matthew Curry & the Fury, 6:30 p.m. MatthewCurry.com The party starts here! Matthew Curry is a teenage phenom from Normal, Illinois, who plays guitar, writes songs, and sings. He is backed by the Fury – veteran performers Greg Neville on drums and Jeff Paxton on bass. In 2011, Matthew was awarded second place (first was taken by a Tommy Castro collaboration) in the International Songwriting Competition for his composition “Blinded by the Darkness,” a slow, Chicagosounding blues that features his Clapton-like guitar melodies. The song is included on the 2011 debut CD for Matthew Curry & the Fury, If I Don’t Got You. According to a review of the CD in Blues Blast, “Matthew’s vocals are also tight – he sells the lyrics with his great intonation and fire in his voice. On ‘Hear the Highway,’ Curry takes us on another fiery ride, where he tells us the story of how he wants to hit the road and bring his blues to the world, and I believe him. This kid is committed to his craft, and his roots in the blues sound deep and firm. The guitar here is driving and flaming hot.” ReverbNation says that Matthew’s influences include Sonny Landreth, Albert Collins, ZZ Top, and Joe Bonamassa. That should give you some idea of the kind of scorching, driven set you’ll hear from Matthew Curry & the Fury. – Karen McFarland Sugar Ray & the Bluetones, 8:30 p.m. SugarRayAndTheBluetones.com I’m probably like most of you; you’ve never heard of most of the musicians at the festival but you come to listen to them anyway because it’s the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival. That means they’re good. I’d never heard of these guys either, but when I heard Sugar Ray & the Bluetones on one of Bob Covemaker’s KALA programs, I found out that this band is really good. Sugar Ray Norcia has been singing the blues and playing harmonica professionally since the late ’70s, when he formed a band with Ronnie Earl. His talent has allowed him to collaborate with some of the best in the business, including a six-year gig as frontman for the legendary Roomful of Blues. He’s also frequently recorded with Duke Robillard and Joe Louis Walker. His current band includes “Monster” Mike Welch on guitar, Neil Gouvin on drums, bassist Michael “Mudcat” Ward, and Anthony Geraci on piano. Their sound is so authentic that William Ruhlmann in the All Music Guide wrote, “This Roomful of Blues alumnus sounds more like a Mississippi expatriate living on Chicago’s South Side.” You don’t need to go to Chicago or Mississippi. Just be at the bandshell at 8:30 p.m. on Friday. – Stan Furlong Kenny Neal, 10:30 p.m. KennyNeal.net Kenny Neal hails from the swamps of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and his blues reflect that: smooth and laid-back with a dash of funk. He’s known as a swamp-blues master, and he excels on guitar, harmonica, and vocals. Born in 1957, Kenny grew up in a musical family led by his father Raful Neal, a local harmonica player Friday, June 29: Tent Earnest “Guitar” Roy, 6:30 p.m. EarnestGuitarRoy.Homestead.com Earnest Roy Jr. was born on September 25, 1958, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, under the watchful eye of his father, guitarist Earnest Roy Sr., who worked with Jackie Brinston, Ike Turner, John Lee Hooker, Wade Walton, Raymond Hill, and many of the other Clarksdale bluesmen. Earnest’s father taught him bass guitar at five, and when Earnest turned eight, he began playing in his father’s band, Earnest Roy & the Clarksdale Rockers, whose members included Big Jack Johnson. At age 11, Earnest Jr. began playing lead guitar, and he formed his first band at 14, which led to his being regular performer on Soul Train. By 1989, Jim O’Neal of Rooster Blues Records had signed Earnest “Guitar” Roy to the label and released a single called “Too Many Women & I Wanna Know What My Little Girl’s Been Doing.” The song was written in a San Diego hotel room while Earnest was touring and playing backup guitar for Albert King. Earnest’s other credits include playing drums on Big Jack Johnson’s first album, Oil Man, and playing lead guitar and drums on Frank Frost’s Midnight Prowler album. From 1993 to 2001, Earnest played for the international televangelist and pastor Rod Parsley, whose ministry aired in 320 nations around the world. In 2001, Earnest “Guitar” Roy returned to his blues roots when he began touring and appearing at blues and jazz festivals with Sam Carr. Earnest’s most recent CD is Going Down to Clarksdale from 2011. – from EarnestGuitarRoy.Homestead.com 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal Johnson, played fiddle in local string bands, and one of his uncles, Big Jack Johnson, was an internationally known blues musician. He spent his childhood moving from town to town in the Mississippi Delta and working on his family’s farms. At an early age, James got his first musical instrument, a diddley bow. As he grew up, he came up with new ways to improve and vary the sounds he could make on the one-stringed instrument, and in 1964, at the age of 13, he bought his first guitar. At age 19, he began hitting the jukes, playing bass with his uncle, Big Jack Johnson, and he went on to play bass and guitar for a number of Delta blues bandleaders, including Frank Frost, Earnest Roy Sr., and Sam Carr. As an adult, James began driving a truck for a living. During the long stretches on the road, he began composing his own songs. When he showed the songs to his friends, they convinced him to go to a studio and record them. So in 1997 Super Chikan released his debut album, Blues Come Home to Roost, influenced by such musicians as Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Chuck Berry. He went on to release What You See in 2000, Shoot That Thang in 2001, Chikan Supe in 2005, Sum Mo Chikan in 2008, and Chikadelic in 2009, which was awarded the 2010 Blues Music Award for Traditional Blues Album. Also in 2010, he was honored with three additional Blues Music Award nominations: B.B. King Entertainer of the Year, Song of the Year for “Fred’s Dollar Store,” and Traditional Blues Male Artist. In recent years, taking lessons learned from his grandfather – who built instruments and made fishing lures – James began building his own guitars and other instruments. James combines discarded guitar parts with old Army gas cans to create “Chikantars.” He also makes cigar-box guitars and other one-of-a-kind instruments. He hand-paints each of his instruments, ornamenting them with detailed scenes of the Delta. I like the guitar James made from a ceiling fan, covered in jeweled beads, mirrors, and working lights! Such decorated functionality parallels the kind of blues that Super Chikan writes and plays. I’ve seen Super Chikan many times, and he’s the real deal – a Delta bluesman who knows how to put on a good show. But I’ve never seen him with his all-female band, the Fighting Cocks – although Mississippi Valley Blues Society member Mary Jo Slocum, who heard them on the Legendary R&B Cruise, says they’re fantastic. I predict a superlative set! For a 2006 interview with Super Chikan, visit RCReader.com/y/chikan. – Karen McFarland 17 | 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org Liz Mandeville & Donna Herula, 8 p.m. DonnaHerula.com and LizMandeville.com. Liz Mandeville and Donna Herula represented the Windy City Blues Society at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis this year and made it to the semifinals. I was a judge at their venue on Beale Street, and I was so impressed with their high-energy blues! Blues content: check. Vocal talent: check. Instrumental talent: check. Originality: check. Stage presence: check is blurred by Liz trying to play washboard while lying on top of the judges’ table! When they met at the 2011 IBC, the two Chicago women recognized their shared passion for traditional and classic blues. They formed a duo shortly thereafter, featuring many of Liz’s original songs. Liz got her first guitar at 16 and started playing professionally soon after. Her guitar style tips its hat to her oldest influences: Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Muddy Waters mixed with soul from Curtis Mayfield and the Chicago blues of Jimmy Reed. Liz also plays washboard, in a style first made popular in Louisiana and employed in many traditional blues settings, adding that Creole rhythm to her music. Most of Liz’s songs are self-penned, but don’t be surprised when she busts out a classic cover. She’s spent years listening to and studying blues history and pays tribute with panache, both in her live shows and in the interactive workshops she presents for Blues in the Schools and at festivals around the world. Donna is a slide-guitar player who plays country, Delta, and modern blues styles. With a percussive guitar technique, she plays fingerstyle as well as blues slide guitar on her resonator guitars, including a 1930s National Steel Triolian and National Steel Tricone. In her solo and duo acoustic performances, Donna plays a mix of songs from the early blueswomen, including Memphis Minnie, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith, and the early Delta bluesmen, including Robert Johnson, Robert Nighthawk, Furry Lewis, Blind Blake, and Muddy Waters. Herula picked up guitar at age 10. By 16, she was playing lead in bands and writing original blues songs influenced by famous slide-guitar players and classic blues singers. Donna developed an aggressive slide technique based on a deep study of traditional Delta guitarists, most notably Robert Nighthawk, to whom she paid tribute with her CD The Moon is Rising. Donna performed a tribute to slide master Nighthawk at the 2009 Chicago Blues Festival for his centennial celebration. She also performed as part of a Nighthawk symposium for the Delta Cultural Center in Helena, Arkansas. Last year, Liz and Donna appeared on KFFA radio as guests of Sonny Payne during his historic 50th-anniversary broadcast during the King Biscuit Fest. That should tell you that this duo is keeping the old-style blues alive! Herula will host a workshop at 4 p.m. Saturday; Mandeville will host a workshop at 4 p.m. on Sunday. – Karen McFarland Super Chikan & the Fighting Cocks, 10 p.m. James “Super Chikan” Johnson is a Blues Music Award-winning blues musician, songwriter, outsider artist, educator, and guitar-maker based in Clarksdale, Mississippi. One of 11 children, James came from a musical family. His grandfather, Ellis 18 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org | Saturday, June 30: Bandshell Terry Quiett Band, 2 p.m. TerryQuiettBand.com As his Web site says: “Terry Quiett explodes every power-trio cliché” by performing striking original material, from haunting Delta blues and sophisticated jazzy swing to rock-flavored riffs, all featuring his stunning guitar technique and soulful vocals. Hal Reed brought the Terry Quiett Band to The Muddy Waters, so we found out firsthand that his Web site doesn’t exaggerate. Terry Quiett comes from the rural plains of Kansas and has been evolving in the past decade from a solo acoustic singer/songwriter to the leader of a band featuring bassist Aaron Underwood and drummer Rodney Baker. His latest release, Just My Luck – produced by the legendary Jim Gaines – is an outing of highly charged blues-based music. Since 2006, the Terry Quiett Band has logged 200,000-plus miles and played close to 300 shows a year across America’s Heartland. Along the way, the Terry Quiett Band has shared the stage with international guitar legends including Jonny Lang, Robert Cray, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Walter Trout, Robin Trower, Tab Benoit, Eric Sardinas, Albert Cummings, Robert Randolph, and Bernard Allison. This is a great way to open day two of the festival! The Terry Quiett Band is a sleeper act whose secret can’t be kept quiet once you hear them. – Kristy Bennett – exclaimed for all to hear: “That was some hot slide, boy! I could smell the smoke backstage!” James Cotton, after seeing another performance of Ray Fuller & the Bluesrockers, shook Ray’s hand and proclaimed, “Finally I’ve met somebody as wild and crazy as I am!” John Lee Hooker was so impressed with the band and its performance that he took Ray Fuller & the Bluesrockers and his own band out to dinner and picked up the tab. As it says on the group’s Web site, these opportunities to hang out and learn from the masters were not wasted on a young Ray when he was starting out. He paid close attention to every pearl of wisdom and every nasty riff and blues lick shown to him. Ray Fuller & The Bluesrockers released Somethin’ Shakin’ in 1985, Damn Guitars in 1987, Twist of Fate in 1999, Live Rockin’ the Blues in 2004, and Piece of Work in 2011. Each year, the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival Entertainment Committee gets hundreds of solicitations to play. Ray Fuller & the Bluesrockers were one of the few acts that made the cut all the way to the bandshell. Come hear why! – Steve Heston in a hardware store by day. A break came in 1987 when he toured with soul-blues singer Shirley Brown, and he gained the confidence that he could do this on his own. In 1991, he put together his own band, and soon thereafter he was “discovered” in a Beale Street club by producer/keyboardist Ron Levy, who connected Preston with Rounder Records. Preston recorded three albums for the Rounder Bullseye Blues subsidiary: Break the Ice (1994), Midnight in Memphis (1996), and All in Time (1999). Preston was nominated for three Grammy awards for All in Time, which was produced by and includes songs by Willie Mitchell (a collaborator with Al Green and Otis Clay). Just recently, Preston’s version of “Honky Tonk” was picked up by a choreographer for a global flash-mob project called Shuffle Boogie Soul; it’s soul line-dancing. Don’t miss this chance to do some soul line-dancing of your own to Preston Shannon’s set! – Karen McFarland 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal Guitar Shorty, 8 p.m. GuitarShorty.com Credited with influencing both Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Guy, Guitar Shorty (born David Kearney in 1939) has been electrifying audiences for five decades with his supercharged live shows and his incendiary recordings. Shorty strikes with his blistering, physical guitar-playing and his fierce vocals, connecting directly with body and soul. What really sets Shorty apart is his unpredictable, off-the-wall guitar-playing. He reaches for sounds, riffs, and licks that other blues players wouldn’t even think of. A reviewer on Amazon.com says his guitar work “sounds like a caged tiger before feeding time. His molten guitar pours his psychedelicized solos like lava over anything in his path.” The Chicago Reader declares: “Guitar Shorty is a battle-scarred hard-ass. He slices off his phrases and notes with homicidal fury. He is among the highest-energy blues entertainers on the scene.” Through the years, Shorty has performed with blues and R&B luminaries including Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, B.B. King, Guitar Slim, and T-Bone Walker. He started playing with these legends while still in his teens and recorded a handful of singles for a variety of labels as well as an obscure LP during the first 30 years of his career. After decades of paying his dues (like so many unheralded American Preston Shannon, 6 p.m. PrestonShannon.com I first heard Preston Shannon in a club on Beale Street in Memphis, and was impressed enough to bring his name up to the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival entertainment committee for more than three years. “The King of Beale Street” is a singer who sounds like Otis Redding and plays guitar in a style influenced by Albert King, Little Milton, and T-Bone Walker. Ray Stiles at MNBlues.com describes Preston’s sound this way: “His raspy, forceful, and expressive vocals simmer and soar as he soothes, grooves, and moves like the best of the legendary Memphis soul singers. Shannon is a master of vocal control and phrasing and can switch from deep-rooted soul to down-and-dirty blues easier than anyone.” Born in Olive Branch, Mississippi, Preston’s family moved to Memphis when he was eight. There he heard and fell in love with the blues. He began playing around town at age 18, and for the next 20 years played in a succession of Memphis bands on weekends while working Ray Fuller & the Bluesrockers, 4 p.m. RayFuller.com Guitarist Ray Fuller was born on December 19, 1954, in Columbus, Ohio. His band includes longtime drummer Mark Ward (who was formerly with Terry Davidson & the Gears), pianist Keith Blair (who was one of the finalists at the 2003 International Blues Challenge in Memphis), and bassist Manny Manuel (who has spent many years touring with Patrick McLaughlin and also Hot Rod & the Blues Devilles). Living Blues magazine has said this about Ray Fuller & the Bluesrockers: “Their blues are laced with healthy doses of rockabilly and rock-and-roll, and Fuller is out to stake a claim as one of the best singers of his genre.” Muddy Waters – after seeing Ray’s band as the opening act and his blazing steel guitar Saturday, June 30: Tent bluesmen), it took a tour of England to establish Shorty’s fame in his home country. His recordings since then all received critical acclaim, and his renowned live performances have kept him constantly in demand all over the world. His 2004 Alligator Records debut, Watch Your Back, was his best-received, bestselling album. His 2006 follow-up, We the People, won the Blues Music Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album of the Year. Watch Your Back and We the People both charted on Billboard’s Top Blues Albums – at numbers 11 and 12, respectively. Billboard said of We the People: “It’s difficult to imagine that he ever tracks a better album than this one.” – from GuitarShorty.com 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal picking or playing bottleneck on his National Reso-Phonic guitar, MacLeod is known for his unique and powerfully rhythmic style of acoustic-guitar-playing, a blend of churning bass and intricate finger-picking influenced by his early years playing blues bass and by his journeys into jazz and electric blues. MacLeod’s playing landed him sideman gigs with George “Harmonica” Smith, Big Joe Turner, Pee Wee Crayton, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Lowell Fulson, and Big Mama Thornton. Doug has been prolific as a songwriter, having now penned several hundred compositions. His songs have been recorded by Albert King, Albert Collins, Son Seals, Joe Louis Walker, Papa John Creach, Dave Alvin, Eva Cassidy, Coco Montoya, Chris Thomas King, Sun Records veteran Billy Lee Riley, and James Armstrong. These songs express life and times and experiences on a level that makes listeners feel they know each person inside and out. As MacLeod puts it: “Makes ya think I been reading your mail, huh?” It is during his unforgettable live performances, though, that MacLeod shines the brightest. He entertains and draws his audience closer by telling the stories that inspired the songs. It is no wonder that MacLeod is highly sought-after as a festival performer and has entertained music fans throughout the world at countless international blues, jazz, and folk festivals. MacLeod has garnered many honors. He has been nominated for numerous W.C. Handy and Blues Music awards – including in 2012 for Acoustic Artist of the Year and Best Acoustic Album: Brand New Eyes. You will find his portrait hanging in the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He was celebrated as one of the “49 musicians shaping a new blues tradition” in Art Tipaldi’s book Children of the Blues. Blues Revue magazine said of him: “MacLeod is not a mere imitator of a style, but one of the vibrant voices that will keep this sound alive into the next century.” And blues legend Honeyboy Edwards said: “There’s a man who can play the blues!” McLeod will conduct a workshop on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. – Glenn Cotabish 19 | 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org Bryce Janey, 2 p.m. BryceJaney.com Bryce Janey grew up in a musical family and has been playing his guitar for almost 30 years. He started playing at 13 years old in his hometown of Marion, Iowa, in a blues trio with his mother on drums and his father also on guitar. They were simply named The Janeys. Both he and his father Billy Lee Janey are in the Iowa Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. They still perform as a four- or five-piece band called The Janeys; his mother no longer performs, but Bryce and Billy Lee still headline the band. Bryce also has a band of his own that performs under the name Bryce Janey Group. In 1995, Bryce released his first CD, titled Practice What You Preach. He followed that with Live at Checkers Tavern, which many of you might know is in Cedar Rapids. Next he released Sweet Baby Jane. In 2001, he released Live at J.M. O’Malley’s (another fixture of the Cedar Rapids blues scene), followed in 2002 by The Janeys and in 2006 by Heal the Night. In 2010, he released Blues in My Soul, and in 2011 he released two albums: Down Home Blues and Game of Life. Bryce was in The Blue Band with Bob Dorr from 1999 to 2002. Bryce also finds time to play part-time with Perry Welsh and Tommy T-Bone Giblin in The Pumpers. He was the 2011 Iowa Blues Challenge winner in the solo/duo competition and went on to become a 2012 International Blues Challenge semifinalist in Memphis. It will be his solo show that Bryce will perform at our festival this year. So don’t miss seeing one of Iowa’s own native sons on the tent stage kicking off day two of our festival! – Steve Heston Coco Montoya, 10 p.m. Coco Montoya was born in 1951 in Santa Monica, California. He grew up as a drummer raised on rock-and-roll but soon realized his calling was to be a great blues guitarist. He said that after seeing Albert King in 1969, the music went right into his soul. By the mid-1970s, Coco was playing drums in several local rock-and-roll bands and then found himself playing drums in Albert Collins’ band. After the shows, Albert took Coco under his wing, and they started trading licks on the guitar for hours on end in motel rooms. It wasn’t long before Coco and Albert were showing off their guitar-playing on stage together. Coco stayed with Albert Collins for five years. Soon Coco became a member of John Mayall’s band the Bluesbreakers, taking over for such guitar legends as Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and Mick Taylor – who had all held that spot in the past. He spent 10 years with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. Coco finally started off on his own in 1995 and has released seven CDs – including the Bling Pig album Gotta Mind to Travel, which won an award for Best New Blues Artist at the 1996 W.C. Handy Awards. His second album, Ya Think I’d Know Better, was followed by 1997’s Just Let Go. Coco and Blind Pig parted ways at that point, and Coco signed with Alligator Records. Since then he released Suspicion in 2000, Can’t Look Back in 2002, Dirty Deal in 2007, and I Want It All Back in 2010. You won’t want to miss this legend in the making! – Steve Heston Doug MacLeod, 3:30 p.m. Doug-MacLeod.com Doug MacLeod is a gifted blues guitarist and superb songwriter who learned from the old blues masters and is carrying on their tradition. Whether 20 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org | Saturday, June 30: Tent, continued 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal with the other standard guitars that a blues musician has. We have all seen people playing cigar boxes; some, of course, just seem like a novelty. But Aaron has it right on. Dustin sings and plays a mean harp – I mean a mean, cool, down-home-sounding harp. These two, together, play some great Delta blues along with some Hill Country blues, and of course a bit of funk thrown in, with at times maybe a rock edge or two in there for good measure. They usually travel with a drummer named Brad Horner who keeps the backbeat going. Having seen these guys at a festival in Mississippi, I’ve got to say: Man, this is my kind of show! This, in my opinion, is close to being Down South Blues. That kind of down- home Charley Patton/early Clarksdale or maybe some Dockery Farms stuff. This is going to be one of those tent shows you don’t want to miss. Better get there early! – Michael Livermore Ernest Dawkins Quartet, 5:30 p.m. ErnestDawkins.com. If you like freedom, you’ll like Ernest Dawkins. While he can, and definitely does, play some remarkably tight arrangements, what he’s most noted for is “free-bop” and avant-garde music that would appeal to an Ornette Coleman fan. You’ll also hear blues (of course), swing, and funk. His latest CD, The Prairie Prophet, features a gospel- influenced jazz waltz called “Hymn for a Hip King” dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. Did I mention that this guy is versatile? This influential alto and tenor saxophonist has studied at Vandercook College of Music in Chicago and was awarded both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in musical education from Governor’s State University in University Park, Illinois. Since forming the New Horizons Ensemble in 1979, Ernest and his band have traveled throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. They’ve recorded seven CDs, and their latest has received special notice from the critics. The New Horizons Ensemble appeared at our 2004 festival and more recently played at the Polyrhythms Third Sunday Jazz series at the Redstone Room. I know where I’m gonna be Saturday afternoon. I hope you’ll join me. Your ears will be opened. – Stan Furlong Sunday, July 1: Bandshell Jeff Banks & the Pain Killers, 3 p.m. Congratulations to the winners of the Iowa Blues Challenge: Jeff Banks & the Pain Killers! They emerged victorious from tough challenges by two Quad Cities bands – Serious Business and The Mississippi Misfits – at the final round in Des Moines in May. The Pain Killers will represent the state of Iowa at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis next February. Besides their set at the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival, they will receive recording time and cash to help defray expenses in Memphis. Formed in Des Moines in January of this year, the Pain Killers feature singer/ songwriter Jeff Banks on guitar, Jon Locker on bass, and George McCutchen on drums. The 2012 Iowa Blues Challenge is sponsored by Central Iowa Blues Society, the Mississippi Valley Blues Society, Lizard Creek Blues Society, South Skunk Blues Society, Southeast Iowa Blues Society, Budweiser, Summit Brewing, Cumulus Media, and Cityview. Kelley Hunt, 9:30 p.m. KelleyHunt.com Kelley Hunt was born in Kansas City, Kansas. Her love of music was inspired at an early age by her mother singing jazz and blues in the home, and her grandmother, who was a New Orleans gospel singer. Kelley tells her own story in a song called “Queen of the 88s” on her third CD, Inspiration – my favorite of her five albums. She tells how she began playing the piano at the age of three. Kelley endured years of five different piano teachers telling her that playing by ear was no good, and that boogie-woogie had to go. Kelley kept coming home crying, until one day, when she was 10 years old, her mother took her to see Mary Burt Norton, the “Queen of the 88s.” Mary asked Kelley what she wanted to do, and Kelley said: “I wanna boogie-woogie! That’s what I wanna do!” The rest is history. I have seen Kelley Hunt perform live three times. I saw her in a local blues bar (Muddy Waters), an intimate setting where I sat five feet from her piano. I saw her at the Electric Park Ballroom years ago, and she was fantastic! And I saw her on the bandshell stage at our blues festival a few years back, when she did her own set, and then came back out later and stole the show from Delbert McClinton! I have loved her show every time. She has a commanding stage presence and superior vocal and keyboard skills, and she writes passionate lyrics that touch you deep in your heart. Gospel music influenced Kelley’s ballad-style songs, but her trademark is full-tilt boogie. I can’t wait to see her again! – Ellen Clow Moreland & Arbuckle, 7:30 p.m. MorelandArbuckle.com Guitarist Aaron Moreland and harpist/ vocalist Dustin Arbuckle have been kicking around the blues scene for more than 10 years now. The story goes that they met at an openmic night, and it all seemed to click. Heard that before? Well, I’m talking a big click here. Hailing from Kansas, these two guys have been playing, changing, adding, and improvising their music along the way. This certainly does not imply they needed to learn their blues; they have refined it to fit them. I would guess that with two core musicians playing together night after night, you get to know one another very well. It shows in their music. Aaron plays a cigar-box guitar along Lady Bianca, 5 p.m. LadyBianca.com I remember seeing Lady Bianca at the Pocono Blues Festival a long time ago 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal and noticing her pink tutu before being amazed by her deep, soulful voice (I hear Etta James, maybe Tracy Nelson) and her strong piano-playing (from boogie to the deep blues of Otis Spann). I’m looking forward to an exciting set by this Oakland artist! Her Web site says that she’s had the gift of singing and piano-playing since the age of four. Her vocal influences include Bobby “Blue” Bland, Etta James, Koko Taylor, Dinah Washington, Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, and Bessie Smith. Her piano style is influenced by Ray Charles, Meade Lux Lewis, Charles Brown, Mabel Scott, and Amos Milburn. In her youth, she sang gospel and studied opera. Born Bianca Thornton in 1953, by the mid-’70s she was a backing vocalist and keyboard player for Sly & the Family Stone, and as a session singer she backed Taj Mahal. Between 1981 and 1986, Lady Bianca toured with and recorded backing vocals for Van Morrison, and appeared on his recordings Beautiful Vision (1982), Inarticulate Speech of the Heart (1983), Live at the Grand Opera House Belfast (1984), A Sense of Wonder (1985), and No Guru, No Method, No Teacher (1986). She met her songwriter/producer husband Stanley Lippitt in 1983. Together, they have produced, written, and arranged five CDs for various record labels as well as their own Magic-O Records. Since 1995, Lady Bianca has released six solo albums, three of which were nominated for a Grammy Award: Best Kept Secret, Rollin’, and Through a Woman’s Eyes. In April 2007, at the Bay Area Black Music Awards, Lady Bianca was named Best Blues Performer. In March 2008, she was voted into the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame. In 2009, she appeared with Van Morrison at the Royal Albert Hall in London. And in 2012 she’s here with us, ready to give us a show we won’t forget! – Karen McFarland features the musical family of Lonnie Brooks, father to Ronnie Baker Brooks and Wayne Baker Brooks. All have established solo careers with their own bands and gained fan support worldwide. Lonnie Brooks has been performing for almost six decades! He learned to play guitar in his native Louisiana and then made his way to Chicago, which has been his home for more than 50 years. There he hooked up with Alligator Records and released Two Headed Man, which quickly became famous for the “Voodoo Blues’’ sound that is now his trademark. He has recorded 15 total records, one of which was his Grammy-nominated Bayou Lighting. He’s also been featured in the movie Blues Brothers 2000 with Dan Aykroyd and John Goodman. Ronnie Baker Brooks was playing guitar on-stage at age nine and joined his dad’s band right after high school. He released his debut album Golddigger in 1998, which earned him a W.C. Handy Award nomination for Best New Blues Artist. The Ronnie Baker Brooks Band has been headlining shows around the world ever since. Anyone who’s seen him knows that what it says on his Web site is true. Ronnie enlivens blues rock with deep soul and modern hip-hop vocals and funk rhythms. Working with Minneapolis producer Jellybean Johnson, a veteran collaborator with Prince and Janet Jackson, Ronnie takes roots sounds and transforms them into something that spans the ages. Ronnie compares this to the way that Muddy Waters took Mississippi Delta blues and adapted it for Chicago audiences. Like his father and brother, Ronnie Baker Brooks is also a songwriter. Wayne Baker Brooks joined his father’s band as a roadie in 1988, and started playing guitar in the band in 1990. In 1997, he formed the Wayne Baker Brooks Band. His latest release is Something’s Going Down, featuring platinum-selling artist Twista, as well as GLC and Sugar Blue. Wayne has been making a name for himself ever since his 2004 release of the album Mystery, which received five awards from Real Blues magazine and four stars in the All Music Guide. Wayne was also in the Blues Brothers 2000 movie. And he co-authored the book Blues for Dummies with his father and Cub Koda. – Steve Heston 21 | 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org Well, they won the Blues Challenge that year, along with Nick Schnebelen receiving the Albert King award for Most Promising Guitarist at the IBC. And the rest is history. To describe them as a power trio just doesn’t fit. This is a true family band, two brothers and a sister: Nick on guitar, Kris keeping it tight on the drums, and Danielle on bass. They share the vocals. They have the harmony and the chemistry that you can see and feel. When Danielle opens up with her strong, soulful vocals, it all just blows wide open. This band will give you goosebumps. Rarely do you hear so much raw emotion coming right at you. They can play traditional roots, all the while putting their own feeling to it. I sometimes think that the blues scene is fading somewhat, with a lot of the early blues artists leaving us. But then a group like Trampled Under Foot comes along, and you can hear influences from Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Howlin’ Wolf. They play with the passion of Etta James, Aretha Franklin, or Koko Taylor. They take these influences and wrap them into their soul. – Michael Livermore Trampled Under Foot, 7 p.m. TUFKC.com All right! Finally, we have Trampled Under Foot coming to the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival! I have been waiting for them since I had the opportunity to see and hear them at the 2008 International Blues Challenge (IBC) in Memphis. My wife Nanci and I were down there for the challenge, and some friends from Kansas found us and said we needed to get down to Club Superior to see this band named Trampled Under Foot. The Brooks Family Blues Dynasty, featuring Lonnie Brooks, Ronnie Baker Brooks, and Wayne Baker Brooks, 9 p.m. BrooksFamilyBlues.com. The Brooks Family Blues Dynasty 22 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org | Sunday, July 1: Tent 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal Cooper Schou started on piano before taking up drums and has been playing music for more than half of his 13 years. Cooper plays percussion in the Pleasant Valley Junior High band and drum set in the school jazz band, and will play snare in the drum line when he enters high school in the fall. Cooper listens to and loves lots of different music, and says his biggest musical influence is the steady diet of ’70s funk, R&B, and Motown that his father has fed him over the years. Connor Essary is a freshman at Central High School in Davenport. He started playing violin in the school orchestra in fourth grade, and has since learned to play the double bass, cello, guitar, and bass guitar. He loves all kinds of music from blues to rock, country to classical. Along with his musical career, he is a 3.8-GPA honor student and the starting catcher on the freshman baseball team. During these years, Geremia crossed paths with people whose influences were beneficial to his development and understanding of the tradition. He worked as opening act for some of the early blues legends, thereby gaining an immeasurable depth of knowledge from people including Howard Armstrong, John Jackson, Yank Rachell, Son House, Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf (“He was very tolerant of my enthusiasm,” and showed him the proper fingering for a chord from Charley Patton’s “Pony Blues,” Geremia said), and many others, especially Pink Anderson – whose career he helped revitalize. Geremia will conduct a workshop on Sunday at 4:30 p.m. – Karen McFarland Johnny Rawls, 6:30 p.m. JohnnyRawlsBlues.com In April 2002, Johnny Rawls made the cover of Living Blues magazine, where he was given the title “Soul-Blues Renaissance Man.” He’s played the Chicago Blues Festival twice, and one of those times I first heard him there: memorable songs, a soulful voice, and a guitar sound that has, as Soul Blues Music says, “Southern-soul melody template with a heavy rhythmic pulse.” Born in Mississippi in 1951, Johnny learned guitar from his blind grandfather as a boy. He went on to play saxophone and clarinet in school bands until he switched back to guitar in his teens. During that time, his music teacher got him gigs backing touring musicians such as Z.Z. Hill and Joe Tex. By the mid-1970s, Johnny was in the band of soul singer O.V. Wright, and the band continued 13 years after Wright’s death in 1980 with Johnny as the bandleader. After releasing albums on numerous labels in the ’90s, his 2006 album Heart & Soul was nominated for a Blues Music Award for Soul Blues Album. He won that award for 2009’s Ace of Spades, a tribute to his mentor Wright. Johnny’s latest CD, Memphis Still Got Soul, was nominated for the 2012 Blues Music Award for Soul Blues Album. A Blues on Stage review of Johnny Rawls live noted that he’s “a great singer and a fantastic showman. Rawls filled the dance floor from the very first note and kept them dancing all night long. ... If you had to sum up Johnny and his music in one word, it would be smooth. Everything he does, from singing, playing Winter Blues All-Stars, 3 p.m. The Winter Blues All-Stars is a collaboration of graduates of the River Music Experience’s Winter Blues program, led by Ellis Kell and Hal Reed. The kids have been practicing hard, so their set will be sure to amaze the audience! Levi Craft is from Viola, Illinois. He became interested in music at age seven and has been playing guitar for about three years now. His influences are Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton. He is excited and honored to play at the Blues Fest this year. Sophia Pike is from Bettendorf, and has shown interest in music from the time she could crawl. She started singing in church at age three and hasn’t slowed down. Sophia’s influences are Big Mama Thornton, Reba Russell, Ella Fitzgerald, and B.B. King. She will enter Bettendorf Middle School this fall and participate in band, choir, and orchestra. Simon Ertzinger is originally from Cedar Rapids. He got his first guitar at the age of four and began taking lessons at age five, and he’s been participating in River Music Experience workshops (Rock Camp, Winter Blues) since he was eight. He credits those – and Ellis, Hal, and many other wonderful musicians – for all of their encouragement, support, and inspiration. Some of his influences are Jimi Hendrix, Keb’ Mo, Slash, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and B.B. King. Sage Weeber is originally from Moline. After getting his first guitar at age eight – a Gretsch hollow-body – Sage fell in love with guitars. While he plays other instruments (including banjo, bass, drums, and piano), guitar is still his favorite. Paul Geremia, 4:30 p.m. PaulGeremia.org For more than 40 years, Paul Geremia has built a reputation as a bluesman, a songwriter, a storyteller, a scholar of early jazz and blues, and one of the best country-blues fingerpickers ever with his tools – six- and 12-string guitars, harmonica, piano, and a husky, soulful voice. Paul is possibly the greatest living performer of the East Coast and Texas fingerpicking and slide styles on six and 12 strings. Combining his interpretation of the earlier music of people such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Scrapper Blackwell and Blind Blake with his original compositions, he has created a style of his own that has received accolades in the U.S. and Europe. Geremia’s background isn’t typical for a bluesman. He is a third-generation Italian American who, as he laughingly puts it, “was born in the Providence River Delta.” He discovered the blues by seeing Mississippi John Hurt at a topical-songs workshop at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival along with Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Pete Seeger. Soon, he found paying gigs in coffeehouses in cities and at college campuses and made occasional forays south and west in search of the music he loved and whatever gigs he could find. Workshop and BluSKool Performers guitar, writing songs, and interacting with his fans, reflects the polish and considerable talent he has developed over the years.” – Karen McFarland 2012 Mississippi Valley Blues FesitVal he digs out his gigantic harmonica! His passion and love for kids is unstoppable, and he leaves kids of all ages with something more than what they came with. David is an endorsee for Hohner harmonicas and has taught harmonica classes through adult continuing education at Tulsa Community College for more than 10 years. He also teaches children’s harmonica classes for the Tulsa parks-and-recreation department. – Ann Ring 23 | 2012 Blues Festival • June 29 - July 1 • LeClaire Park, Davenport, Iowa • MVBS.org David Horwitz (blues photography) Saturday, June 30, 2:30 p.m. Photographer and educator David Horwitz of Tucson, Arizona, has been traveling to clubs and festivals for decades in search of great blues music for his ears and visual images to capture on film. The winner of the 1999 Blues Foundation’s Keeping the Blues Alive Award for Photography, David has spent more than 25 years capturing moments of the blues masters. His works have appeared in countless publications. Last year, he was inducted into the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame. This is his 25th year of shooting the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival, and the free photo exhibit near the workshops will showcase David’s work. – Ann Ring Bobby Rush, 8:30 p.m. BobbyRush.net Bobby Rush was born Emmet Ellis Jr.,the son of a preacher man, in the northLouisiana town of Haynesville. He later adopted his stage name out of respect for his father. Bobby has been performing for more than 50 years. He built his first instrument, a primitive guitar or diddley bow, and by his early teens he was putting on a fake mustache and playing at different deep-South juke joints. In the mid-1950s, he moved to Chicago, where some of his bands included blues legends such as Freddie King, Earl Hooker, and Luther Allison. Also, on trips back to his family home in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, he would perform with people such as Elmore James. Bobby started getting national attention with his 1971 release Chicken Heads on Galaxy Records. Over the next decade, Bobby would record on the Jewel, Philadelphia International, and Warner Bros. labels. In the early 1980s, Bobby moved to his current home of Jackson, Mississippi. In 2003, he fulfilled his lifetime dream of forming his own record label, Deep Rush, and recorded his CD Undercover Lover. He also had his always-entertaining live show recorded for a DVD at Ground Zero in Clarksdale, Mississippi. That same year his showmanship was featured in Richard Pearce’s documentary film The Road to Memphis, part of Martin Scorsese’s film series The Blues. This year, Bobby Rush won the Blues Music Award for best Soul Blues Album, Show You a Good Time. Bobby Rush has decided to perform solo on occasion, but also still tours extensively with his band and lovely female dancers. We are very lucky to have an artist of Bobby Rush’s caliber here, and he will be entertaining our audience with a version of both shows combined, called appropriately the Double Rush Revue. Bobby will also receive the RiverRoad Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mississippi Valley Blues Society. – Steve Heston Winter Blues Academy Kids with Hal Reed & Ellis Kell (BlueSKool) Saturday, June 30, 3:45 p.m.; Sunday, July 1, 4:45 p.m. Blues harpist, guitarist, singer, bandleader, and educator Hal Reed was born in Mississippi just a few miles from the Delta, where he grew up influenced by his grandfather, a talented Southern folk-blues artist who, in addition to inspiring young Hal’s love for the blues, taught Hal the need to pass it on from generation to generation. Reed is a veteran musician on the Quad Cities scene. He’s fronted various bands, and took one of them to the International Blues Challenge in Memphis. Ellis Kell, director of programming and community outreach at the River Music Experience in Davenport, is also a pillar of the Quad Cities blues scene. As a guitarist, songwriter, and bandleader, he’s kept the Ellis Kell Band together for 22 years. Ellis and Hal conducted a very successful Blues in the Schools residency a few semesters back, and this is their fifth year collaborating with graduates of the River Music Experience’s Winter Blues program at BlueSKool. – Karen McFarland Hawkeye Herman (stories of the blues) Sunday, July 1, 5:30 p.m. With more than 40 years of performing experience, Michael “Hawkeye” Herman exemplifies a range of possibilities in acoustic blues, and personifies versatile musicianship, originality, and compelling artistry as a blues storyteller. This workshop will showcase what he’s learned about the blues from his mentors. As a child in Davenport, Michael Herman listened to the blues on the radio. Hawkeye spent much of his time as an aspiring blues musician in the late 1950s through the early 1970s listening to blues records, going out to see live performances, and seeking out older blues musicians for advice and lessons whenever the opportunity afforded itself. He was fortunate to sit at the feet and learn from many icons of the blues: Son House, Bukka White, Mance Lipscomb, Lightinin’ Hopkins, Furry Lewis, Sam Chatmon, John Jackson, Brownie McGhee, “Cool Papa” Sadler, Charles Brown, Yank Rachell, T-Bone Walker, and others. In the course of this blues “schoolin’” and being “brought along” by these wonderful artists, Hawkeye kept hearing one particular idea that seemed to permeate and define every encounter with these experienced elder statesmen of the music, uttered by each of them in their own way: “Play it like you feel it, son.” – Karen McFarland Maggie Brown (BlueSKool, history of the blues in song and dance) Saturday, June 30, 5 p.m.; Sunday, July 1, 6 p.m. Maggie Brown is a tremendously talented singer and performer using her gift to not only entertain but educate, as well. I learned this firsthand when I saw her workshop at a Polyrhythms Third Sunday Jazz Series event. Maggie is the daughter of the late Oscar Brown Jr. – a world-renowned composer and social activist, and a legendary giant on the jazz scene. Mr. Brown passed on his artistic integrity to his daughter, who now uses her own voice to create images that excite and inspire. For 19 years, the songstress has nationally toured her one-woman show, Legacy: Our Wealth of Music, which follows the history and evolution of African-American music and covers a wide range of musical forms. Maggie will be spending the week before the festival at an after-school program in the Quad Cities, teaching kids about the history of the blues through song and dance. – Karen McFarland David Berntson (BluSKool) Saturday, June 30, 2:30 p.m.; Sunday, July 1, 3:30 p.m. What would the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival be without blues educator and harpist David Berntson? David brings it. Originally from Galesburg, Illinois, this Tulsa (Oklahoma) Blues Club founder, prevention educator, and drug/alcohol counselor continually shares his enthusiasm and passion for the blues with young people and adults. David presents Blues in the Schools at a number of venues, including alternative schools for at-risk students. Look out when