The Gramophone » Blues

KDHX FM 88.1 welcomes John Mooney (recently featured on Treme!)

admin — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 03:00:07 +0000

Throughout the years John Mooney has developed one of the most distinctive and easily identifiable guitar and vocal signatures of anyone alive today. Part of the original impetus for his interest in music may have filtered down from his grandfather, a musician himself. “He used to play the mandolin and banjo back in the 20’s” says Mooney. “He even cut a couple of 78’s for the Peerless label that I’ve heard. It was really hot stuff, a kind of raggy jazz.“

John left home at 15 and began playing with Joe Beard at about that same time. Joe introduced him to the first and most enduring influence on the development of Mooney’s music, the legendary Delta blues singer, Ed “Son” House. Impressed by the 16 year old musician’s talent, Son and John soon became friends. “I wasn’t aware of what the opportunity meant, but I knew there was nobody better in Delta blues.“ Mooney cites Son’s heavily rhythmic style having a strong influence on him. In fact, the way Mooney adapts acoustic playing to a modern electric format is one of his most distinctive trademarks.

In 1976 John moved to New Orleans and immersed himself in that city’s vibrant music scene. John regularly played with the likes of Earl King, The Meters, Snooks Eaglin, and the man who was to influence his music greatly, the father of New Orleans piano, Professor Longhair. He was playing regularly in front of New Orleans drummers like Zigaboo Modeliste, John Vidacovich, and Herman Ernest. At this place in time John successfully combined the sounds of the delta with the syncopated rhythms of the Crescent City to create the style that has become uniquely his own.

Since 1981 he has been touring with his group, the Bluesiana Band, performing throughout the U.S., Canada, Panama, Europe, Australia, and Japan. After the loss of long time friend and band member Jeff Sarli, Mooney has called upon Rene Coman of the Iguanas for Bluesiana Bass rhythms and renowned New Orleans drummer Kevin O’Day to keep the beat. Over the years John and his band have earned a musical reputation that have gained them invitations to play at numerous folk, jazz, and blues festivals across the globe, including the Montreaux Jazz Festival, the Newport Folk Festival, the Chicago Blues Festival, and a yearly appearance at New Orleans’ world renowned Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Doors at 8 p.m., show at 9 p.m. 21+

PLEASE NOTE: Advance ticket sales have ended for John Mooney as of 3:15 on 8/19. Tickets will be available for purchase at the door for $15.

www.johnmooneylive.com

Cedric Burnside & Lightnin’ Malcolm

admin — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:00:23 +0000

CEDRIC BURNSIDE, grandson of the legendary R.L. Burnside, son of drummer great Calvin Jackson, is widely regarded as one of the best drummers in the world. Growing up at his grandfather’s side, he began touring at age 13, playing drums for “Big Daddy” on stages around the globe. Cedric was born in 1978 and raised around Holly Springs, Miss., and has been playing music all his life, developing a relentless, highly rhythmic charged style with strong hip-hop and funk influences.

http://www.myspace.com/jukejointduo

Doors at 8 p.m., show at 9 p.m. $10 ($8 advance using link below!), 18+.

Highway Key Industry Night featuring Albert Castiglia + Treble Clef Palette & Brown Bottle Fever

admin — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 03:00:46 +0000

Albert Castiglia (pronounced “ka-STEEL-ya”) was born on August 12, 1969 in New York. At the age of 5, his family moved to Miami. With a Cuban mother and an Italian father, he is an example of the melting pot of culture that is Miami. He learned to play guitar at the age of 12 and soon realized that the passions in his heart were expressed best by his music. Castiglia has a blues history.

In 1990, he joined The Miami Blues Authority and later on won “Best Blues Guitarist” from New Times magazine in 1997. The legendary Junior Wells discovered Castiglia and immediately hired him as his own guitarist/vocalist on several world tours. After Wells’ passing, Castiglia toured with Atlanta blues singer Sandra Hall, then ventured out on a solo career and released his debut album in 2002, Burn, working with his longtime friend, Graham Wood Drout of Iko-Iko. In 2006, he released his second album (and first for Blues Leaf Records), A Stone’s Throw, which included two more insightful Drout songs, “Big Toe” and “Ghosts Of Mississippi.” Castiglia and Drout also released a live collaboration titled The Bittersweet Sessions in 2005, which focused on a more acoustic-oriented, intimate feel.

Now Castiglia comes back full-bore with a blistering new album on Blues Leaf Records, These are the Days, which perfectly showcases both his incendiary electric and slide guitar work and soulful vocals, which recall Van Morrison. These are the Days contains five Castiglia originals, including a tribute to his mentor Junior Wells, “Godfather of the Blues”. The material is varied, with songs from Bob Dylan (“Catfish’), Nappy Brown (“Night Time is the Right Time”) and Fenton Robinson (“Somebody Loan me a Dime”). Once again, Graham Wood Drout contributes another outstanding song, “Celebration,” to add to the string of compositions he’s written on each of Castiglia’s albums. Until now, “Somebody Loan Me a Dime” and Little Willie John’s “Need Your Love So Bad” were attention grabbers in Castiglia’s live shows; but through the insistence of Blues Leaf president Joe Morabia, Albert captures that magic on this album. In addition to the solid blues songs throughout These are the Days, Castiglia generates some dance floor energy with “Bad Year Blues” and “Twister,” two jumping tunes sure to become live show favorites. This is the album that says “These Are Albert Castiglia’s Days.”

Treble Clef Palette will open. Doors at 8 p.m., show at 9 p.m. $10/18+. Free admission with current service industry pay stub!

myspace.com/albertcastiglia

www.trebleclefpalette.com

John Lee Hooker Jr.

admin — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:00:19 +0000

Touring relentlessly in support of his debut album, Hooker Jr. and his band have shared the stage with legends such as BB King, Johnny and Edgar Winter, Lucky Peterson, Bo Diddley, Charlie Musselwhite, Koko Taylor, Johnny Johnson, Elvin Bishop, Ron Thompson, and Canned Heat to name a few. Their non-stop touring across the country, and internationally has included countries like Poland, The Netherlands, Austria, Montenegro, Holland and Czechoslovakia as well as Canada, Norway, Germany, Australia, Lithuania, Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium and more recently, Africa.

A style, he calls “2 parts R&B, 1 part jazz and “down home blues,” Hooker Jr. is carrying on a century-old family musical heritage – that he learned from his father John, Sr. – who in turn learned from his stepfather, Will Moore, a blues singer/guitarist who most influenced his guitar style. The CD pays homage to his dad, with remakes of his blues classics like, “Boom, Boom” and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” along with eight songs penned by Hooker Jr. that extol the trials and woes of the everyday working class. Stand out selections include “Suspicious” a gut-wrenching tale of heartbreak and deceit and the modern “Goin’ Down to Baghdad (Lookin’ for Saddam Hussein), as well as “The Blues Ain’t Nothin’ But a Pimp.” A marriage of old school blues funk mixed with hip-hop sensibility, that song was inspired by John Lee Hooker Sr. who said, “The Blues is a pimp because every time you have ‘em, you go do something or get something to get rid of ‘em.”

www.myspace.com/johnleehookerjunior

Door 8pm / Show 9pm / $12 door

Rev Km Williams and The Amazing Trainreck w/ Eli Cook

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 03:00:39 +0000

KM Willimas is known as the Texas Country Blues Preacher; An actual ordained Minister that is also a Master of Texas Country Blues/Spirituals and Boogie Music. If you like RL Burnside then you know KM will tear it up

Doors 8pm
Show 9pm
$5 at the door

Cashman w/ Brown Bottle Fever

admin — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 03:01:46 +0000

Not for the faint of heart is Cashman, purveyor of full-frontal downhome blues, as subtle as a tornado funnel or an artillery blast. On Texassippi Stomp, the music arrives courtesy of two guys, Ray Cashman (electric and acoustic guitars, dobro, percussion) and Grant A. Brown (harmonica), with the periodic assistance of the ubiquitous but unfailingly worthy Jimbo Mathus (bass, guitar, snare drum), who also produces. This is rude, raucous Mississippi juke-joint music, much less delta than hill country — the sort of raw approach whose then-surviving (and some since-deceased) native practitioners (including T Model Ford, R.L. Burnside, Paul “Wine” Jones and Robert Belfour) the Oxford, Mississippi, label Fat Possum famously recorded and promoted.

Among our many debts to Fat Possum (in whose Money Spot studio Cashman cut this album), we may thank it — snark alert — for encouraging talented young white guitarists to stop trying to sound like Eric Clapton trying to sound like Albert King. Or, to the more knowledgeable, giving them some idea of a living, as opposed to an archival, country blues. Cashman’s uncompromising approach renders trivial, even absurd, conventional notions of “authenticity.” Who Cashman and Brown are in prosaic fact — you could call them, technically, folk musicians in the revival sense — is detail, and, worse, misleading detail, because in the post-traditional early 21st century anybody who decides to carry a tradition has become a tradition carrier. If the music is so felt and true that it rises above rote impersonation, that’s as close to a working definition of “authentic” as you’re going to get.

Doors at 8 p.m., show at 9 p.m. $5/21+

www.myspace.com/raycashman
www.myspace.com/brownbottlefever

Tab Benoit

admin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 03:00:46 +0000

Guitarist-singer Tab Benoit is the real deal. Born and raised on the Louisiana bayou, this self-proclaimed “new kid from the old school” has been the standard bearer for a new generation of Cajun blues musicians – a traditionalist and an innovator at the same time, grafting elements of rock and soul to the indigenous sounds of the bayou. And if dedicating his life to his musical roots weren’t enough, Benoit has also been a tireless crusader in recent years – prior to the devastation of hurricane Katrina but even more so since – for the preservation of the rapidly vanishing wetlands of his native region.

Tab Benoit Myspace
Doors 8pm
Show 9pm
$20 General Admission

Everett Thomas CD Release Show (Early Show)

admin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 03:00:56 +0000

With the lines of the artistry and industry being blurred together more everyday, singer/songwriters seem to get categorized as either full-fledged commercial superstars or pensive underground poets. St. Louis-bred/Wisconsin-based troubadour Everett Thomas certainly falls into that latter category, though he’s quickly ascending beyond a niche in-the-know to become one of the Midwest’s most authentic and accomplished tunesmiths who’s already opened for the lauded likes of Nickel Creek’s Sean and Sara Watkins, G. Love & Special Sauce, Over the Rhine, Lifehouse, The Wood Brothers and Matt Nathanson.

Everett Thomas CD is the early show
Doors 7pm
Show 8pm
$5 at the door

Davina and The Vegabonds

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:00:35 +0000

Davina and the Vagabonds are known in The Twin Cities, Minnesota as being the busiest band in town because of their hard-working professionalism, high energy stage performance, and original sound. They have shared the stage with Ruthie Foster, Pinetop Perkins, Aaron Neville, Gary Moore, 10 Years After, The Mannish Boys, Robert Cray, Los Lonely Boys, Scottie “Bones” Miller, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, Ana Popovic, Lil Ed’ and The Imperials, Booker T and The MGs, Bobby Rush, Irma Thomas, James Hunter, and many others.

Davina and the Vegabonds Myspace

Doors 8pm
Show 9pm
$5 at the Door

Dave Herrero feat Felix Reyes and Los Carnales

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:00:00 +0000

Dave began playing music professionally at the tender age of 20 years old in Jacksonville, FL. Initially, he was largely influenced by Muddy Waters, Albert King and the Fabulous Thunderbirds, which (with the help of friend Seth Walker) prompted his move to Austin, TX.

Dave will be playing with Felix Reyes and members of Los Carnales. This show is the Blues City Deli 5th anniversary street fest pre party. Doors at 8 pm, Show at 9. $5, 21+