On the Main stage

Friday, June 17, 2011 - 6:30 p.m.

Eric Lindell

www.ericlindell.com

Born in San Mateo, California singer and songwriter Eric Lindell, spent countless hours in San Francisco soaking up the musical sounds of the city, which led him to pick up the bass and then the guitar.

Lindell discovered blues greats Junior Wells, Jimmy Reed and Albert King before drifting toward the R&B sounds of Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway, soaking up the soul and learning how to craft a song. Lindell left California for New Orleans in 1999, where he quickly discovered the roots music scene. Before long he met up with Galactic's Stanton Moore and the two jammed together often. Some of New Orleans' finest players, including keyboardist Ivan Neville and drummers Harold Brown and Johnny Vidacovich, often joined him on stage. Galactic bassist Rob Mercurio began sitting in as well and word of Lindell's immense talents quickly spread around the city. Stars like Branford Marsalis, The Neville Brothers, John Scofield, Chris Chew (North Mississippi Allstars), and Wally Ingram (David Lindley, Stockholm Syndrome) began showing up at his gigs and embracing this fresh California kid's funky music. According to Lindell, "It's a great feeling to be recognized for your music in New Orleans."

Eric Lindell first hit the national music scene with his 2006 Alligator Records debut Change In The Weather, critics and fans alike celebrated the arrival of a roots rocker with dozens of unforgettable original songs. With his musical roots planted in Northern California, Lindell's music blossomed in New Orleans. His combination of sweet, blue-eyed soul with foot-stomping R&B, swamp pop, funk and blues won him critical and popular acclaim across the country, with reviews and features in Relix, OffBeat, The Chicago Sun-Times, Harp, Guitar Player, Down Beat, The New Yorker, The New York Press and many other national and regional publications. Singer and Musician magazine put Eric on the cover and many newspaper entertainment sections did the same. The New Orleans Times-Picayune said, "Eric Lindell has arrived. He channels Van Morrison with his irresistible soul . . . not a moment is wasted." The Chicago Sun-Times followed, saying, "Soulful original songs fuse R&B, swamp pop and funk into a potent, party-time mix."

As he toured the U.S., his fan base grew and before long clubs and festivals were filled with happy, dancing people singing the words to every song. In 2008, Lindell released Low On Cash, Rich In Love, a collection filled with solid grooves, insightful lyrics and one emotionally rich song after another. In 2009, Lindell released Gulf Coast Highway, which represented the music of New Orleans and the surrounding region by working with a host of N'awlins musical talent including Galactic drummer Stanton Moore and bassist Robert Mercurio. Among the album's most overt homages: This Love is Gonna Last, a skittery slice of uptempo R&B cut from Allen Toussaint or Dr. John cloth; I Can Get Off on You, an old Waylon Jennings-Willie Nelson composition that subtly shifts its rhythmic and melodic focus from Tex-Mex to Basin Street; and Raw Doggin', a funky instrumental that's pure Meters.

Lindell's live shows draw as much attention as his material. His unstoppable grooves, rocking, deeply rooted, original songs and excellent musicianship never fail to fill the dance floor. With the release of Between Motion and Rest, Lindell and his band will continue to tour heavily, giving the rest of the country the chance to discover for themselves what a growing number of people already know: Eric Lindell is a musician bursting at the seams with talent with the uncanny natural ability to come up with one instantly classic song after another and the desire to take his music to every corner of the music-loving universe.

Eric Lindell's Between Motion and Rest is an 8-song, vinyl or CD release, which essentially picks up where its predecessor, Gulf Coast Highway left off. Lindell treats each song or new release as unique, organically-formed creatures. Full of nuance and rich with emotion, Eric's music is the real deal.

If you want some mellow-yet-swinging, good time southern rock, then look no further than Bodega, which suggests a marriage of Elvin Bishop and the Allman Brothers, spiced by gentle horn jabs and boasting the most sensual guitar tone you'll hear all year. Lindell's cover of Magic Sam's That's Why I'm Crying will make you shed a tear or two as well, particularly the way guest vocalist Peter Joseph Burtt (who also contributes kora) summons images of a man at the end of his rope and nearly blind with misery, wondering if he'll ever see his woman again. (Speaking of covers, for all you classic soul fans, Lindell and his band also work up a spot-on version of Curtis Mayfield's It's So Hard to Believe.)

Friday June 17, 2011 - 8:30 p.m.

The Robert Cray Band

www.robertcray.com

The five-time Grammy Award winner Robert Cray's This Time—the first studio album from singer/songwriter/guitarist Cray's own label—arrives at a vital juncture in the musician's career, marked by creative renewal and a key reunion with an old performing partner.

Cray summarized 35 years of mastery on the debut Nozzle release Live From Across the Pond (2006), an electrifying two-CD concert set drawn from a series of shows (opening for Eric Clapton) at London's Royal Albert Hall. When the time came to follow up that widely praised collection with a studio recording, Cray viewed it as an opportunity to move his sound in other directions.

He found exactly what he was looking for by turning to one of his oldest friends and colleagues: bassist Richard Cousins whose tenure with the Robert Cray Band began with its barnstorming regional origins in Eugene, Oregon, in 1974 and extended through 1991, encompassing such early high-water marks as Strong Persuader (1986) and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1988), both winners of the best contemporary blues performance Grammy.

"I've known Richard for 40 years," Cray says. "We go back to 1969, and we grew up in the same area together. We've always had a really good rapport together stage-wise. Richard and I have remained the best of friends ever since he departed way back in '91. I'd still see Richard, whether it was in the States or in Europe–where he still lives. He'd always come to see us at the gigs. We always remained close. We talked on the telephone all the time.

"It just so happened that last year I wanted to make personnel changes in the band. So I asked Richard to come back."

Cousins' return to the Cray fold bonds him once again with keyboardist Jim Pugh, a cornerstone of the guitarist's group since 1989.

In the hunt for a new drummer, Cray—with encouragement from Cousins—struck on a musician whose style and experience perfectly complemented his own: the road-tested Tony Braunagel, whose résumé includes work with Bonnie Raitt (including her Grammy-winning Nick of Time and Luck of the Draw), Taj Mahal, Keb' Mo', and B.B. King.

Cray recalls, "I'd seen Tony work in a lot of different situations before. My first real opportunity to play with him was three years ago when we did a benefit up in Portland, Oregon for our friend Curtis Salgado. Tony was playing drums there, and Richard was there, too—they were the rhythm section. Richard was working really well with Tony and they were kind of fronting the whole jam. It was great. I was talking to Richard after he'd rejoined the group, and I said, 'We need to find a drummer.' He just went, 'Tony!'"

The refreshed lineup of Cray, Cousins, Pugh, and Braunagel came together at Santa Barbara Sound Design in Santa Barbara, California to record what became This Time. Cray produced (though he notes, "Every time I produce, it's like a communal effort"), with Don Smith engineering.

Cray says of the sessions, "I really looked forward to it—to how Richard and I were going to gel together after having not played together for a long time, and to bringing Richard back to work with Jim, because we did all get a chance to work together for two years, before Richard left—and then having Tony come in.

"Richard, Jim and myself have all known each other for a while, but when we added Tony to the mix, it was like, 'Hey, where you been?' We all get along really, really well. It was fun, and everybody brought something to the table. Tony's interpretation of what we were doing was just spot-on, and of course with his background, all the music that he'd listened to and played coincided with the music we've listened to and played over the years. It was like the perfect hand in the glove."

All of the band members contributed fresh material to This Time. Cray brought in the title track, Chicken in the Kitchen, I Can't Fail, and Trouble and Pain, and co-wrote Forever Goodbye with his wife Sue Turner-Cray. Pugh authored Love 2009 and To Be True. Cousins and the Swiss soul/blues musician Hendrix Ackle collaborated on Truce. And Braunagel and guitarist Johnnie Lee Schell co-authored That's What Keeps Me Rockin'.

As ever with Robert Cray's undefinable sound, the music on This Time remains stubbornly beyond category. He has been internationally admired as a stylist whose innovations have brought new life to the blues, and such punchy outings as Chicken in the Kitchen and That's What Keeps Me Rockin' should satisfy the most demanding blues fans. But the new album's barrier-busting material—whether it's the soulful Love 2009 or the profound balladry of This Time and Forever Goodbye—demonstrate once again that attempting to slot Cray in a single genre is an exercise in futility.

"Blues is one of the foundations of our music, but it's not all that we play," Cray says. "When I first started playing guitar, I wanted to be George Harrison—that is, until I heard Jimi Hendrix. After that, I wanted to be Albert Collins and Buddy Guy and B.B. King. And then there are singers like O.V. Wright and Bobby Blue Bland. It's all mixed up in there."

He continues, "Every time somebody asks me about where my music comes from, I give them five or six different directions—a little rock, soul, jazz, blues, a little gospel feel. Then there are some other things that maybe fall in there every once in a while, like a little Caribbean flavor or something. You just never know. I always attribute it to the music we grew up listening to, and the radio back in the '60s. It's pretty wide open. It's hard to put a tag on it."

Cray, who began 2009 with concert appearances in Brazil and Japan, will support This Time with shows around the country with his reconfigured band.

Saturday June 18, 2011 - 2:00 p.m.

Hix Brothers Junior All-Stars

Aurora's first family of music, the Hix Brothers, promises to provide the cream of the crop of young students of the blues.

Hix Brothers Music's two Chicago-area locations sit in a hotbed of big-box retail. But the combo dealer's greatest threat doesn't come from chain-store giants. It comes from fellow indie music stores. Since moving into its Aurora location in 1999, Hix's executive team—brothers Andrew, Peter and Carl Hix—have watched several local stores launch competitive music lesson programs. In response, Hix has debuted a number of education offshoots such as Rock U and the Marching Guitar Band, which have garnered industry-wide attention. "We're really trying to use our students as our best marketing tool," Peter said. For Rock U, students practice songs in their private lessons and rehearse with a band the week before the show. This is capped off with a final performance at a professional music venue with a backline of high-end gear, lighting and a multiple-camera video shoot. "The kids have a great time and the parents are happy to see it," Andrew said. Hix hosts three Rock U showcases a year. The last one featured 38 bands and brought in nearly 1,000 people, according to Andrew. The program has also attracted musicians of all ages.

"Parents get involved, becoming students themselves, so that they have a chance to play and perform with their kids," Carl said. "One dad did 'I Wanna Be Sedated' with his daughter playing drums," Peter added, laughing. According to the Hix brothers, the program has drawn more students into their lesson program, improved retention rates and inspired students to purchase instruments and upgrade to better gear before shows. It has also inspired offshoots.

The Hix Brothers Junior All-Stars is a band featuring the best Rock U students. "Rock Around an Hour and a Half" is an eight-week program that teaches students how to write songs and the finer points of playing in a rock band. "Most of the students are in our Rock U program," Andrew said. "They want to play more." And for students seeking extra playing opportunities, Hix recently launched the Marching Guitar Band. This initiative, which is exactly what the name implies, has promoted the Hix Brothers name at local parades and festivals. The most recent iteration featured 60 adults and kids jamming on electric guitars with Roland Micro Cube amplifiers strapped to their belts. They played a medley that blended John Philip Sousa marches with Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water."

As an added bonus, the Hix brothers talked their brother-in-law into both serving as the drum major and dressing up as Abraham Lincoln. "Hopefully, we would've gotten the press anyway," Andrew said. "But because of our Abe Lincoln brother-in-law, we got some really nice coverage in several papers—pictures of Abe Lincoln leading the Hix Brothers marching band." Peter added, "Maybe next year, we'll have Batman do it."

Saturday June 18, 2011 - 3:00 p.m.

Billy Branch and the Sons of Blues

www.billybranch.com

Billy Branch and the Sons Of Blues (SOBs), based out of Chicago, is one of the hottest blues bands working today. They are currently defining the sound of the blues for future generations.

This award-winning combo currently consists of some of the finest bluesmen in the world: Billy Branch, Harmonica & Vocals; Dan Coscarelly, Guitar & Vocals; Ariyo, Piano & Vocals; Nick Charles, Bass & Vocals; and Mose Rutues, Drums & Vocals.

Billy Branch has followed a very non-traditional path to the blues. Unlike many blues artists, he isn't from the South. Billy was born in Chicago in 1951 and was raised in Los Angeles. He first picked up a harmonica at the age of 10 and immediately began to play simple tunes.

Billy returned to Chicago in the summer of '69 and graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in political science. It was during these years that he was introduced to the blues. He soon became immersed in the local blues scene. He spent a great deal of time at legendary blues clubs such as Queen Bee's and Theresa's Lounge. He learned from such stalwart harmonica players like: Big Walter Horton, James Cotton, Junior Wells and Carey Bell.

His big break came in 1975 during a harmonica battle when he beat Chicago legend Little Mac Simmons at the Green Bunny Club. He made his first recording for Barrelhouse Records and began to work as an apprentice harp player in Willie Dixon's Chicago Blues All-Stars. He eventually replaced Carey Bell and worked with Willie Dixon for six years.

During this time Billy formed the Sons Of Blues (SOBs) featuring musicians who were the sons of famous blues artists. The original SOBs consisted of Billy, Lurrie Bell, Freddie Dixon and Garland Whiteside. They toured Europe and played at the Berlin Jazz Festival. Shortly afterward, they recorded for Alligator Record's Grammy-nominated Living Chicago Blues sessions, and Billy has been a regular studio player appearing on over 50 albums.

Billy has recorded and/or performed with an incredible list of blues legends including: Muddy Waters, Big Walter Horton, Son Seals, Lonnie Brooks, Koko Taylor, Johnny Winter and Albert King. In 1990, he appeared with three harp legends: Carey Bell, Junior Wells and James Cotton on W.C. Handy Award winner, Harp Attack! His most recent recordings for the Polygram label are entitled The Blues Keep Following Me Around and Satisfy Me.

Billy is also passing on the blues tradition to a new generation through his "Blues In The Schools" program. He is a dedicated blues educator and has taught in the Chicago school system for more than 20 years as part of the Urban Gateways Project. In 1996, some of his finest students opened the Main Stage at the Chicago Blues Festival that was broadcast throughout the United States on National Public Radio.

Blues producer Chicago Beau has written, "Billy Branch has become a beacon and model for his times—as an artist and social/cultural activist . . . Billy Branch is a Bluesman; Billy Branch is the Blues."

During the past several years, the SOBs have filled many passports touring the world visiting China, Europe, South and North America.

Saturday June 18, 2011 - 4:45 p.m.

Kenny Neal

www.kennyneal.net

Kenny Neal is an acclaimed multi-instrumentalist and is widely renowned as a modern swamp-blues master.

His new release, Hooked On Your Love, follows the triumph of his multi-award-winning 2008 comeback album, Let Life Flow. An outstanding success, the CD raked in the accolades: three prestigious Album of the Year awards, two Song of the Year awards for the title track, and Kenny himself garnered two Artist of the Year honors.

It was clear that Kenny touched something deep in the blues community with his soulful guitar playing and uplifting songwriting, and his hot streak continues with a batch of new songs. Hooked On Your Love covers the plethora of accomplished roots styles Kenny has become known for. The tasty musical gumbo of swamp-boogie, jazz, R&B, and straight-ahead blues all swirl together on this new CD.

Kenny Neal was born in 1957 in New Orleans and raised in Baton Rouge. He began playing music at a very young age, learning the basics from his father, singer and blues harmonica player, Raful Neal. Family friends like Lazy Lester, Buddy Guy and Slim Harpo also contributed to Kenny's early musical education. In fact, it was Harpo who gave the crying three-year-old a harmonica to pacify him. Kenny stopped crying that day, and eventually learned to play the harmonica. Along the way, he also mastered the bass, trumpet, piano and guitar. At 13, he joined his father's band and began paying his musical dues. Four years later, he was recruited and toured extensively as Buddy Guy's bass player.

Following Buddy's advice to concentrate on his guitar playing, Kenny relocated to Toronto, and along with his brothers Raful, Jr., Noel, Larry and Ronnie—formed the Neal Brothers Band, honing his chops backing up visiting blues stars. Through the years, he has shared the stage or worked with a who's-who list of blues and R&B greats at one time or another, including B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Muddy Waters, Aaron Neville, Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker. Later, he fronted Canada's Downchild Blues Band, before returning to Baton Rouge to begin his solo career.

Signing with Alligator Records in 1988, Kenny began releasing a series of consistently lauded albums featuring his laid-back, Baton Rouge blues, with a modern spin on the Louisiana sound he grew up with. Throughout this period, Kenny distinguished himself as one of the brightest prospects of the contemporary blues scene, receiving great critical acclaim in the process. The Chicago Tribune pegged Kenny as "one of a mere handful of truly inventive young contemporary guitarists, Neal has something fresh to say and the chops with which to say it," while AllMusic said his "gruff-before-their-time vocals retain their swamp sensibility, while assuming a bright contemporary feel that tabs him as a leading contender for future blues stardom." Blues Revue agreed, calling Kenny "one of the brightest young stars on the blues horizon, and a gifted artist."

In 1991, Kenny branched out into the world of acting when he starred as the lead in the much-acclaimed musical, Mule Bone, a lost play written by the famed African-American poet Langston Hughes and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston in 1930. Featuring music written by Taj Mahal, Kenny's performances garnered a prestigious Theater World Award for "The Most Outstanding New Talent On and Off Broadway," and he concurrently set two Hughes poems to music on the album Walking With Fire.

After his impressive run with Alligator, Kenny switched to Telarc and continued to release albums highlighting his developing skills as a songwriter, as well as interpreting songs from musicians as diverse as Bob Dylan, John Hiatt and Nick Lowe. His 2004 release with Billy Branch, Double Take, garnered Kenny a W. C. Handy award for Best Album. More recently, Kenny released A Tribute to Slim Harpo and Raful Neal, which pays homage to blues harp icon Harpo as well as Kenny's father, who passed away as the album was being completed.

After relocating to the Bay Area in 2004, Kenny began hosting his own local cable TV program, Neal's Place. The show features Kenny jamming and talking with the many international blues stars he has met and performed with, as well as local artists he has spotted at festivals and clubs. Filmed in front of a live studio audience, Neal's Place has a relaxed, informal atmosphere that brings out the best in the artists, while giving an unscripted, improvisational edge to the performances.

In 2005, health problems forced Kenny to completely stop performing and recording for a few years. And, within an 11-month span during this recovery period, Neal lost his dad, sister and brother. In the best blues tradition, Neal took the tragedies, adversity and heartbreak of those years and turned them into great songs and performances.

Writing, playing and singing with a renewed sense of purpose and energy, he used the time to craft an inspired collection of songs that make up Let Life Flow. Released in 2008, the CD met with immediate critical success. Vintage Guitar said, "Kenny Neal's new release is full of blues and soul music of the highest standard. While Neal's always been one of his generation's finest bluesmen, Let Life Flow helps push him into the upper echelon of the genre. His maturity, mastery of the music, and sheer determination show it, making this one of 2008's best."

Living Blues magazine added, "His latest effort is a resounding affirmation of his talents as a musician, songwriter, and singer," while About.com offered that "Kenny Neal's Let Life Flow album should be considered a masterpiece."

The critical acclaim and passel of awards that followed are testament to not only the album's soulful grooves, but also to the deep, emotional resonance in Kenny's perseverance in the face of life's trials. Kenny was able to return to the scene and the stage with a new vigor and outlook on life. With these, he entered the studio to whip up the good time gumbo of Hooked On Your Love.

The new album casts that potent Neal spell of deep grooves and deep feelings that put him where he is today. With tunes like swampy Louisiana look-back Down In The Swamp, the funky shuffle of Memphis in his take on Blind Crippled Or Crazy, or the soul searching blues of Bitter With The Sweet, Hooked On Your Love extends the spirit of his acclaimed Let Life Flow.

Saturday June 18, 2011 - 6:30 p.m.

Charlie Musselwhite

www.charliemusselwhite.com

Harmonica master Charlie Musselwhite's life reads like a classic blues song: born in Mississippi, raised in Memphis and schooled on the South Side of Chicago.

A groundbreaking recording artist since the 1960s, Musselwhite continues to create trailblazing music while remaining firmly rooted in the blues. His worldly-wise vocals, rich, melodic harmonica playing and deep country blues guitar work flawlessly accompaning his often autobiographical and always memorable original songs. Living Blues says, "Musselwhite's rock-solid vocals creep up and overwhelm you before you know it. He plays magnificent harp with superb dexterity and phrasing. The results are amazing."

Over the last 43 years Musselwhite has released more than 30 albums. Three of those—1990s Ace of Harps, 1991's Signature and 1993's In My Time—were recorded for Alligator Records and remain among his best-selling titles. Now Charlie Musselwhite returns to Alligator with The Well. With musical flavors from Mississippi to Memphis to Chicago, The Well is steeped in the music of Charlie's youth—country and city blues as well as rockabilly and gospel—the music that inspired his signature sound. The fresh, new songs speak from his decades of experience, hard living and his triumph over adversity.

The Well is the first full-band recording in Musselwhite's long career for which he wrote or co-wrote every track on the album, and it is the most personal and the emotionally deepest cycle of songs he has ever created. The Well was recorded at Los Angeles' legendary Sunset Sound with guitarist Dave Gonzales (Paladins, Hacienda Brothers), bassist John Bazz (The Blasters) and drummer Stephen Hodges (Tom Waits, Mavis Staples), and was produced by Chris Goldsmith (Ruthie Foster, Grammy-winning Blind Boys of Alabama). The revealing, autobiographical songs recall specific events and places in Musselwhite's amazingly colorful life. His conversational vocals and masterful harmonica work are perfectly matched with the stories he tells and the near-telepathic musicianship behind him. Simply put, The Well is Charlie Musselwhite at his very best.

Central to the album are stories looking back at hard times and personal healing. Dig The Pain recalls his drinking days, while it tells of his recovery. In Cook County Blues, he wryly remembers his short stint behind bars. The most poignant song on the album, Sad and Beautiful World—a duet with Charlie's close friend, legendary vocalist Mavis Staples—is his response to the tragic murder of his 93-year-old mother in her own home (and the house Charlie grew up in) during a burglary. Each track on The Well is a chapter from Charlie's life, and in the liner notes to the CD he offers some very personal insights into the meaning behind the songs.

According to Alligator president Bruce Iglauer, having Musselwhite back on the label is pure pleasure. "I'm thrilled to welcome Charlie back to the Alligator Records family. He's a real icon of American roots music, a brilliant harmonica player and a true storyteller as a vocalist and songwriter. Charlie's a terrific guy to work with, a genuine road warrior who is out there pleasing the fans night after night. We're looking forward to renewing a great relationship." And Musselwhite couldn't agree more, saying, "I don't think anybody is happier than I am being back in the Alligator family. It feels good to be home."

Musselwhite's personal history is the kind of story a novelist would sell his soul for, but his indomitable spirit is crafted by him alone. Tough times have been a huge part of his life, and have shaped him into a true working-class hero. His fans include young hipsters, Vietnam veterans, convicts, bikers, jazz aficionados, aging hippies and hard-core blues fans. He is a larger-than-life musical legend, writing and singing what he calls, "music from the heart." According to Musselwhite, "It's about the feeling, and about connecting with people. And blues, if it's real blues, is loaded with feeling. And it ain't about technique, either. It's about truth, connecting to the truth and communicating with the people."

Born into a blue-collar family in Kosciusko, Mississippi on January 31, 1944 and raised by a single mother, Musselwhite grew up surrounded by blues, hillbilly and gospel music on the radio and outside his front door. His family moved to Memphis where, as a teenager, he worked as a ditch digger, concrete layer and moonshine runner. Fascinated by the blues, Musselwhite began playing guitar and harmonica. It wasn't easy growing up a poor, white boy in Memphis, even among the rich musical influences the city offered. He felt like an outcast and a stranger (themes that have informed, inspired and haunted his music to this day). As a teen, Musselwhite attended parties hosted by Elvis Presley and hobnobbed with many of the local musicians, including Johnny Cash and Johnny Burnette, but the celebrities young Charlie sought out were Memphis' veteran bluesmen like Furry Lewis, Will Shade and Gus Cannon.

Following the path of so many, Musselwhite moved to Chicago looking for better paying work. While driving an exterminator truck as a day job, Charlie lived on the South Side and hung out in blues clubs at night, developing close friendships with blues icons Little Walter, Big Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Joe Williams, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. Before long, he was sitting in at clubs with Muddy and others, building an impressive word-of-mouth reputation. Soon after, Charlie was being paid to play in the same South Side neighborhood. Noted blues journalist Dick Shurman says, "The black Chicago blues artists all liked Charlie as a person. They felt that he was one of them—a southern country boy with a deep affinity for the blues."

His first recording, under the name Memphis Charlie, was with Big Walter Horton on the famous Vanguard Records series, Chicago/The Blues/Today! Signing with Vanguard, Musselwhite (along with Paul Butterfield who was as urban as Charlie was rural) brought the amplified harmonica blues to a new audience of young, white rock and rollers, who discovered that Charlie personified the cool and hip counter-culture icons they admired.

After the release of his first full-length LP—Stand Back! Here Comes Charlie Musselwhite's South Side Band—he was embraced by the growing youth counter-culture and the newly emerging progressive rock FM radio stations, especially on the West Coast. His iconic status established, he relocated to San Francisco, often playing the famed Fillmore Auditorium. Over the years, he has released albums on a variety of labels, ranging from straight blues to music mixing elements of jazz, gospel, Tex-Mex, Cuban and other world music, winning new fans at every turn. He has been touring nationally and internationally for four decades and is among the best-known and best-loved blues musicians in the world.

Musselwhite has guested on numerous recordings, as a featured player with Tom Waits, Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, John Lee Hooker, Bonnie Raitt, The Blind Boys of Alabama, INXS and most recently Cyndi Lauper. He has shared stages with countless blues and rock musicians. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Blues Hall of Fame in 2010, has been nominated for six Grammy Awards and has won 24 Blues Music Awards. The San Francisco Chronicle says, "Charlie Musselwhite's harmonica playing shows taste, bite, restraint and power. He's one of the best, and as a bluesman, he's as real as they come."

Charlie Musselwhite today is as vital and creative as at any point in his long career. DownBeat calls him, "the undisputed champion of the blues harmonica." In addition to his always-busy schedule, he hosts a weekly radio show, Charlie's Backroom, on KRSH-FM in Santa Rosa, California (streamed at KRSH.com Sundays at 10:00 a.m. PST). He considers himself a lifelong learner and is constantly perfecting his craft. With The Well, Charlie Musselwhite returns with the strongest, most intimate album of his career—a powerful, personal collection of songs. Musselwhite's blues, imparting his hard-won knowledge and working class wisdom, are a window into the deep well of his Mississippi soul.

Saturday June 18, 2011 - 8:30 p.m.

Buddy Guy

www.buddyguy.net

Any discussion of Buddy Guy invariably involves a recitation of his colossal musical resume and hard-earned accolades. He's a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a chief guitar influence to rock titans like Hendrix, Clapton, Beck and Vaughan, a pioneer of Chicago's fabled West Side, and a living link to that city's halcyon days of electric blues.

But Guy's incredible story actually begins in Louisiana, not Chicago. Born in 1936 to a sharecropper's family and raised on a plantation near the small town of Lettsworth, located some 140 miles northwest of New Orleans, George "Buddy" Guy was one of five children born to Sam and Isabel Guy. His earliest years were marked by the all-too-familiar characteristics of the Jim Crow South: separate seating on public busses, whites-only drinking fountains, and restaurants where blacks, if even served at all, were sent around back. But the social order of the day notwithstanding, it was tolerance, not bitterness, that this experience instilled in the young Buddy Guy.

"There's a lot of stuff my parents kept from us kids," he says. "I know that my mom and dad—and also my grandparents—went through a lot worse than what I did. But they didn't want us knowing nothin' like that. They kept that hid from us because they figured that would just put pressure on us and worry us. They just tried to tell us the good things about life."

Guy's father used to point to examples like heavyweight champion Joe Louis and pioneering major leaguer Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's long-standing color line in 1947 when Buddy was 11 years old. If you possess the talent, Sam Guy told his children, you couldn't be denied in this world, regardless of your skin color. "Before my parents passed away, they told me 'Don't be the best in town. Just try to be the best until the best come around.'"

Buddy was all of seven years old, he recalls, when he fashioned his first makeshift "guitar"—a two-string contraption attached to a piece of wood and secured with his mother's hairpins. There was usually no work to be done on the plantation on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, and the precious free time helped Buddy to develop the very skills that would one day bring him fame. It would be nearly another decade, however, before Buddy would own an actual guitar—a Harmony acoustic that now proudly sits on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

By late 1955, following a stint pumping gas, the 19-year-old Guy was working as a custodian at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and earning the princely sum of $28 per week. ("Back then, you could go to the grocery store with just three dollars," Guy recalls with a laugh, "and you needed help to bring the groceries back!") His heart and mind were already firmly attached to the guitar and the blues sounds he heard emanating from the radio, but a future in Chicago, at least then, wasn't in the picture. At that point in his young life, Guy had never even been out of Louisiana.

But by the summer of 1957, the outlook had changed. "A friend of mine, a guy who was a cook in Chicago, he returned to Louisiana and said, 'Man, you could go to Chicago and do well playing the guitar! You could play at night and work in the daytime!'

"All I thought about was that I could get the same work at a college in Chicago somewhere that I did at L.S.U.," Guy remembers. "Instead of $28 per week, I'd be making $68 or $78 a week, and that's what was really standing out in my head. I didn't leave Louisiana to be a professional musician. That didn't even cross my mind. I just wanted to go to work and come in a club at night and watch Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and Little Walter and them play the blues like it's supposed to be done. I thought maybe I could learn something and then go home and play it. I didn't plan this. I still don't think I'm good enough to do it."

It was September 25, 1957, a date Guy would cite countless times in interviews over the ensuing decades. He boarded the 8:14 a.m. train in Hammond, Louisiana, and arrived in Chicago just before midnight. In an instant, his world had changed. Gone was the rural landscape of Louisiana; in its place was the thriving urban sprawl of a metropolis. It may as well have been a foreign country. "I just got off the train at 63rd and Dorchester, looked up at the moon and said, "Which way should I go?"

Within months, Guy had taken up residency in Chicago's fabled 708 Club. His first appearance followed a set by Otis Rush and he told an oft-repeated story about a hungry Guy, broken and on the cusp of returning to Louisiana, getting salami sandwiches from none other than Waters himself, who'd arrived at the club in a red Chevrolet. It was the first time Guy had ever seen the blues giant, who happened to live nearby.

"He throwed down that loaf of bread and that salami—that was the lunch we used to have in the cotton fields. I never will forget that, man. People were sayin' 'That's the Mud!' Nobody called him Muddy Waters. When he asked me if I was hungry, and he said who he was, I said, 'Well, if you're Muddy Waters, I'm not hungry no more.' Just meeting him filled me up."

The great Waters was 21 years Guy's senior, but the younger man quickly earned the respect of the long-established star. By the early 1960s, Guy was a first-call session man at Chess Records. In addition, he began to cut a considerable catalog of sides under his own name. Many fans and critics have lauded Guy's singles output from 1960 to 1967, but the artist has never given them the satisfaction.

"I was always coached," Guy says. "I didn't know any damn thing. When Willie Dixon and other people came in, if they thought I was something new that they could cash in on, I didn't have no say-so. I was almost told how to play the guitar with the session going on. I didn't have the freedom. I never was free on those recordings."

That's not to say there weren't high points. As a session man, he backed the likes of Waters, Howlin' Wold, Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson. One landmark recording backing Waters, Folk Singer, was cut in September of 1963 and released in the spring of 1964.

Wrote producer Ralph Bass in the album's original liner notes of the "search" for a second guitarist to back Waters: "Buddy Guy, a young blues singer in his own right, was first choice and it is amazing for so young a musician as Buddy to be able to fit in with Muddy."

By the decade's end, Guy was staking out new creative territory, cutting albums like 1967's I Left My Blues in San Francisco, his last effort for Chess, and 1968's A Man and the Blues for Vanguard. In the process, Guy, the purveyor of a stinging, attacking electric guitar style and wild, impassioned vocals, was capturing the minds of a growing number of rock musicians. "He was for me what Elvis was probably for other people," Clapton remembered at Guy's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2005. "My course was set, and he was my pilot."

There were no fewer than 20 releases under Guy's name during the 1970s and '80s, the best of them collaborations with the late harp master Junior Wells. But by the time the Eighties became the Nineties, Guy amazingly didn't even have a domestic record deal.

But life, as Buddy has long since learned, is loaded with unpredictable twists and turns—and Guy's life was about to enter a new stratosphere of commercial success. His first three albums for Silvertone—the 1991 comeback smash Damn Right, I've Got the Blues (reissued in 2005), 1993's Feels Like Rain and 1994's Slippin' In—all earned Grammy Awards. Suddenly, it was cool to like Buddy Guy. For Guy, it was like being a new artist.

"Who knows?" Guy asks of his resurgence. "In my earlier days, if I'd have been too wild, I might not be here talking to you now. I'm very religious, and I think God's got his eyes on all of us, and he's got a time for all of us. When it happens it happens, and if it don't, it don't."

"I had got it in the back of my mind that I'd just keep playing, because I felt that I hadn't had a chance to really express myself with my singing and my guitar. Nobody would listen to me, but I wasn't gonna stop playin'. So they gave me a chance to do Damn Right, I've Got the Blues, and when it came out, they told me it was on Billboard and with a bullet. I didn't even know what the hell that was, man! But I guess somebody must have been listening to me."

Guy's legend has only grown throughout the Nineties and early 21st century. Subsequent release like the eminently satisfying Live: The Real Deal (1996), the daring Heavy Love (1998) and 2001's Sweet Tea have demonstrated that Guy, while firmly ensconced in his blues roots, has always tried to keep his music looking forward even at the risk of alienating lovers of traditional blues sounds. And now, the story continues with Bring 'Em In, which finds Buddy trading licks with the likes of Carlos Santana (I Put A Spell On You) and John Mayer (on the Otis – penned I've Got Dreams to Remember).

Internationally acclaimed, a Grammy winner and now an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Guy has firmly cemented a blues legacy that places him squarely in the company of his heroes who came before. "This all reminds me of something my mother used to tell me," Guy says of his current-day status as a music icon. "She said, 'If you got the flowers for me, son, give 'em to me now so I can smell 'em, 'cause I'm not gonna smell 'em when you put 'em on the casket.'

"I'm gettin' to smell a few now."

On the sky club stage

Saturday June 18, 2011

Made in Aurora

Local musicians, collaboratively named "Made in Aurora," will perform between headline acts at Blues on the Fox this year. This local offering showcases some of the area's fine musicians and supports a good cause close to home. The following "Made in Aurora" artists will perform on the Sky Club Stage that is located next to the main stage at the event:

Jeremy Keen and The Kevin Trudo
Members of the band HOSS
Greg Boerner and Noah Gabriel
Dave Nelson and Dave Ramont

"Made in Aurora" is the brainchild of Steve Warrenfeltz who owns the record store Kiss the Sky in Geneva, Illinois. "Our whole mission is to draw attention to local artists and the local music scene ... and also, it's just because I love music," says Warrenfeltz.* This group of local musicians has recently produced an album of original music that was recorded in Aurora, Illinois. Thirty musicians in 11 different band lineups contributed 16 songs that range in style from rock to swampbilly to alt-country. They loosely classify this as "roots and rock Americana" music. Made in Aurora: Volume One, will be available for purchase in vinyl or CD format at Blues on the Fox. All profits after expenses will be donated to the local Paul Ruby Foundation (paulrubyfoundation.org) to support research for a cure to Parkinson's disease.

To learn more, connect with them on Facebook and be sure to stop by the Sky Club stage to support local talent at the 2011 Blues on the Fox festival.