Joe Krown, 2 p.m.

Joe Krown Joe Krown made his way to New Orleans in the early 1990s. Soon, he hooked up with Gatemouth Brown and became his keyboardist for the next 10 years. Along the way, Joe has put together various side bands and has performed with musicians from Chuck Berry to John Lee Hooker to Vassar Clements.

In 2001, he won the Big Easy Award in the blues category. Krown was highlighted in OffBeat magazine. His third CD, Buckle Up, was picked as the number-four CD of 2000 by the Times-Picayune's music critic. OffBeat also selected Buckle Up as one of the top-20 CDs of 2000. Additionally, Krown has been a featured artist on the New Orleans radio, Louisiana radio, and most recently on InsideNewOrleans Web sites. The Joe Krown Organ Combo released Funk Yard in May 2002 at the House of Blues in New Orleans. Krown returns to the piano for his latest CD release, New Orleans Piano Rolls.

The Rockin' Jake Band, 2 p.m.

Rockin' Jake Rockin' Jake has been hailed by many as one of the premier harmonica players in the country. His original sound is a hybrid of second-line swamp funk, blues, and zydeco, with influences from Paul Butterfield, Big Walter Horton, James Cotton, Muddy Waters, the J. Geils Band, and the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

The five-time winner of Off Beat Magazine's coveted "Best of the Beat" award for best harmonica player tours throughout the country with more than 200 performances per year, including clubs, concert venues, and festivals.

This New Orleans-based musician formed the Rockin' Jake Band in 1995 as an outlet for his original music and unique swampy sounds. His debut album, Let's Go Get 'Em (on Rabadash Records), earned national recognition. In the spring of 2004, the Rockin' Jake Band recorded its first live album. Over four days in Key West, Florida, at the Green Parrot, their most recent album 5 p.m. Breakfast came to life.

The Reverend Robert Jones, 5 p.m.

Juke Joint Sinners, 5p.m.

James "Super Chikan" Johnson James "Super Chikan" Johnson is not your typical blues musician, or really your typical anything.

He's a left-handed guitarist who taught himself to play on a right-handed guitar. He makes instruments out of gas cans and ceiling fans. And he communicates with chickens.

(Listen to this interview here.) 

Joe Krown Joe Krown carved out quite a career for himself as a sideman. Now he's reclaiming his role as a bandleader.

Through most of the 1980s, he ran a band and played keyboards in it with his wife in the Boston area. "The band and the marriage kind of split up months apart from each other," Krown said in an interview. So he made a decision: "I'm sick of being the bandleader. I just want to be a sideman for a while."

"A while" turned into close to a decade.

(Listen to this interview here.) 

Popa Chubby It started innocently enough. I asked the blues-rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter Popa Chubby about his recorded output, by his count 15 or so proper albums in the past 15 years.

"I got more than that," he said, alluding to Europe-only releases. "I'm a busy man."

Why so prolific?

"Most people are lazy SOBs, aren't they?" he said. "The way I look at it is you've got X amount of time on this planet, and you might as well make your mark. Whoever put me here didn't put me here to sit on my butt and watch American Idol, now did they?"

I should have run for cover.

Delbert McClinton (Listen to this interview here.) 

Modesty is a rare commodity in the world of rock and roll, but Delbert McClinton thinks it's an essential element of writing a good song.

"Being a songwriter, you have to know humility, and embrace it," he said in an interview last week. "In songwriting, there's what we around here call good stupid and bad stupid."

Kathleen McCarthy, in her "Donkey in Elephant's Clothing" opinion piece (see River Cities' Reader Issue 584, June 7-13, 2006), invited dues-paying members of local chambers of commerce to consider whether their interests as small-business owners were being served by the chambers' support for Governor Tom Vilsack's recent veto of House File (H.F.) 2351, and the governor's call for a special session of the legislature to modify this act. I have been a dues-paying member of the Davenport Chamber of Commerce and its corporate successor for nearly 25 years, and I am in total accord on these issues with both the governor and business leaders' support for the governor.

WVIK 90.3 FM will present the program Quad City Oral Histories throughout July, giving audiences an opportunity to hear Quad Citians relate their experiences (both at home and abroad) during World War II. The program will air at 7 p.m. on Mondays. The project was a collaboration between WVIK and the Davenport Public Library's Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center. According to a press release: "Now in their 70s and 80s, these local citizens were chemists on the Manhattan Project, brides from England, farm boys on ‘scrap drives,' MedEvac nurses, and ‘Rosie-the-Riveters.' They were at Pearl Harbor and survived ‘D-Day.' One man shot the padlock on the gates of Dachau, and several liberated labor camps across Europe."

 

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