'GROOVE' is blues guitar phenom Johnny Childs' first studio release since 2005 and follows the recent release of his award winning documentary film "The Junkman's Son".
  The critically acclaimed 'GROOVE', produced by 2011 Blues Hall of Famer and Grammy winner Bruce Bromberg [Hightone] features 14 exciting new tracks by Johnny Childs.

  Tweed Funk brings an edge to the music of their forefathers by wrapping together blues, soul, funk, and elements of hip-hop on their debut release ‘Bringin It’.  Fronted by Smokey's sweet, soulful vocals, audiences can quickly hear why Smokey was signed to Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom Records in the 70’s.  Tweed Funk’s CD (released 3/15/11) consists of 9 original tracks and one cover tune. 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Memphis, TN (April 5, 2011) - The Blues Foundation is pleased to announce 2011 Grammy® winner, five-time 2011 Blues Music Award nominee, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Buddy Guy will perform at its annual Blues Music Awards at the Cook Convention Center in Memphis, TN on May 5, 2011. Performers, industry representatives and fans from around the globe will have the chance to celebrate the best in Blues recording and performance from 2010.    

 

Buddy Guy and Charlie Musselwhite share the honor of five nominations. Janiva Magness garnered four and three each went to Derek Trucks, Eden Brent, Joe Louis Walker, James Cotton, Nick Moss, Paul Oscher and The Mannish Boys each. Steve Miller received his first nomination with his return to the blues Bingo.

 

Just back from his first Bluesmasters Festival, Mickey Thomas of Jefferson Starship and vocalist on Elvin Bishop's 'Fooled Around and Fell in Love' will join Big Llou of Sirius XM's B.B. King's Bluesville as BMA event hosts.

 

Here are just a few of the scheduled 2011 Blues Music Awards highlights:

 

·         Big Head Todd will lead a Robert Johnson tribute by performing 'Love in Vain,' the same Johnson song to be inducted into the Hall of Fame the night before. Todd has released Big Head Todd's Blues Club as a tribute to Robert Johnson and  is currently on tour with 95-year-old Honeyboy Edwards, a personal friend of Robert Johnson.

 

·         John Hammond performs as a 2011 BMA nominee, also a 2011 HOF inductee. John is celebrating his 50th year as a blues musician. He has been nominated for seventeen Blues Music Awards and has won seven. He also been nominated for seven Grammy® Awards including in 2010 for his 33rd album since 1962.

 

·         Denise LaSalle performs as a 2011 BMA nominee, also a 2011 HOF inductee. Her first #1 single was in 1971.  She is considered the Queen of Southern Soul Blues.

 

·         Three BMA nominees this year will give a one song tribute to each of the nominees that passed this year - Solomon Burke, Pinetop Perkins and Robin Rogers.

 

  South Louisiana music boosters spent years lobbying the Recording Academy to create a Cajun or zydeco category for the Grammy Awards. Their victory proved to be short-lived.

  The reduction reduced the total number of Grammy Awards from 109 to 78.

  Most genre classifications were streamlined. In the “American roots music field,” the separate “traditional” and “contemporary” awards for blues and folk were consolidated into single blues and folk awards. The Cajun/zydeco, Native American and Hawaiian music categories were eliminated; those artists are apparently eligible for the newly created Best Regional Roots Music Album. 

  Cynthia Simien, the wife and manager of “zyde-soul” singer Terrance Simien, and then-Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu spearheaded the campaign in favor of a dedicated Cajun/zydeco category.

  Terrance Simien won the first-ever Cajun/zydeco award in 2008, for his “Live! Worldwide” album. Subsequent winners included Beausoleil in 2009 for its “Live at the 2008 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival”; Buckwheat Zydeco in 2010 for “Lay Your Burden Down”; and Chubby Carrier & the Bayou Swamp Band for “Zydeco Junkie” earlier this year. Thus, Carrier will go down as the last specifically “Zydeco or Cajun” Grammy winner.

 

  MICHAEL GRAY is best known as the author of the celebrated books on Bob Dylan, Song and Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan and The Bob Dylan Encyclopaedia, and it was after hearing Dylan sing about an obscure American bluesman which prompted Gray to go in search of Blind Willie McTell.

  “I first heard about Blind Willie McTell from the Dylan song where he says ‘Nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell’,” Michael tells me during our Tuesday afternoon conversation. “I wondered who he was and went and searched out the music.”

  Blind Willie McTell (1903 - 1959) was a Georgia blues singer-songwriter who recorded for a variety of record labels between 1927 and 1935, for the Library of Congress in 1940, and later for commercial labels in the 1950s. He was highly popular with black and white audiences in his native US state but largely unknown outside it.

  His best known song is the classic ‘Statesboro Blues’, later covered by The Allman Brothers, and when Michael heard this and ‘Mama ‘Tain’t Long Fo’ Day’, and others, it was a revelation.

                       

 

  My name is Yvonne Varner and I will be tending to your Blues Festival E-Guide needs.  I've been in rigorous training for the last two months learning the ways of the BFG.  You can find links to articles that I post at the beginning of each item.  I will try my best to bring you new things and ideas as I find them.  "Video of the Week" and "Old Blues Eye" were both my ideas. :)   I am a fellow blues lover and you can find me at many venues throughout the US in the coming year. 

  You can meet me in Memphis!  I'll be in attendance at the Blues Music Awards on May 5th.  Feel free to come up to me and introduce your self - I'll be the one wearing the Blues Festival E-Guide Editor "Badge".  You can also get to know me on FaceBook.  I look forward to meeting all of you someday.  There are so many blues events - and so little time.

 

Love, Peace, Happyness & Music,

Yvonne Varner

Festival Eguide Editor

We all make plans for different occasions.  We plan parties, weddings, trips, even grocery shopping!  Do photographers plan shots?  Do they anticipate that very moment that we all get to see?  Let's ask "Old Blues Eye".

 

This week - Buck Nelson 

Q:   Is getting a good photo planned or pure luck?

A:   Planned , sometimes the ones not planned are not so good. Don't have a favorite photo or rule out pure luck. 

                 

 

  Looking for more photographers!  editor@bluesfestivaleguide.com

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Saturday, April 9th

 

Clarion Hotel
401 Holiday Drive
(Greentree Area) Pittsburgh, PA
Doors will open at noon.
The competition will start at 1:00 PM. 
Admission $12 to public
$10 to BSWPA members

 

For more information click here:
http://www.bswpa.org/cms/

 

  Music filled the air Saturday at the Hattiesburg Zoo Saturday during the annual Zoo Blues event.  Around 6,000 people crowded around two stages that featured 15 bands.  Food vendors also were on-hand, serving up a 2,000-pound crawfish boil and Tango's World Championship Barbecue.  This year's event also featured a live interactive artisan market.

  Matt Carr, executive director of the Hattiesburg Zoological Society, said Zoo Blues serves as a fundraiser to pay for additions to the Hattiesburg Zoo.  "Last year we raised about $12,000 from the event, which went directly towards the restoration of the carousel," Carr said. "This year our plans - we have several plans going on in the zoo right now - but the three big ones right now are the hospital quarantine center, the education center and the new tiger holding facility.  "All the money we raise today will be divided up equally amongst those three projects."

  The zoo also celebrated its 61st anniversary Saturday, during its Birthday Bash. The event was held in conjunction with Zoo Blues.   

Those attending Zoo Blues were granted free access to the zoo Saturday.  Marcia Chesser and her grandson, Samuel Figenbaum, 5, said they came to Zoo Blues to hear the music and see the animals.

                       

 

 

  The seventh annual Blues by the Sea — a popular event featuring authentic blues and roots music for free — is set to boogie on Sun. April 10 from 2-7 p.m. with performances by acclaimed singer/harmonica player James Cotton and husband/wife teams Ike & Val Woods and Marcelo Ponce y Viviana Dallas.

  Grammy Award-winning, Mississippi-born harmonica master James “Mr. Superharp” Cotton has been singing and playing the blues for more than 60 years. In his youth, he played with such greats as Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Muddy Waters before stepping out on his own and leading his own band. He’s recorded 30 solo albums, including two highly-regarded collections for the Alligator label. His latest, Giant, features a mix of originals and reworked standards. The album was nominated for three 2011 Blues Music Awards for Traditional Album of the Year, Traditional Blues Male Artist of the Year, and Instrumentalist of the Year (harmonica).

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  Saskatchewan blues musician Little Miss Higgins is a winner of a 2011 Independent Music Award.  Higgins and partner Foy Taylor won in the Blues category for their album Across The Plains.  Winners are chosen in 70 categories by a panel of judges that includes Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan, Seal, Aimee Mann and Ozzy Osbourne.  Other winners this year are Jackson Browne and David Lindley, Christopher Tin Flying Lotus, Melissa Auf der Maur, Pokey La Farge and The South City Three.  Organized by the Music Resource Groupe, this is the 10th year of the Independent Music Awards.  Little Miss Higgins is on a U.K. tour through April.

Stony Plain, the Edmonton-based roots music label, has signed international recording agreements with two Canadian artists, MonkeyJunk and Kenny "Blues Boss" Wayne.

   Both have completed new CDs; they will be released on Stony Plain in Canada, the U.S. and most international markets. In Europe and the UK the CDs will be released on the French-based label Dixie Frog.

    

 

Elwood welcomes Charlie Musselwhite back to the Radio Hour, to talk about his Grammy-nominated album, The Well. Along with some diet tips, his unusual path to sobriety, and the first blues he ever heard. The Well will be played, along with some Elvis Presley, Little Walter, Mavis Staples, Cyndi Lauper, and a cut from roots artist Rory Block’s new tribute to Mississippi Fred McDowell. Here in the giveaway department, Big Head Todd and the Monsters have created an alter ego, the Big Head Blues Club, to make a tribute CD, 100 Years of Robert Johnson. Five copies will be given away.  And don’t forget our Baton Rouge Blues Festival getaway -- three days of music May 6th, 7th, and 8th. We’ll put you up for the weekend, and give you passes to the VIP tent. Get details here.

 

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

Reach the E-Guide editor, Yvonne Varner, editor@bluesfestivaleguide.com

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

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