01
Aug
2007
The
Holmes Brothers have always had an eclectic style. Wendell, the
guitar player and raspy-voiced singer, once told me that so many
hours touring in the van acquainted them with all kinds of music. I
can just hear them, all three singing along to whatever they happen
upon on the radio, trying it out later live and then in the studio
with their own gospel spin.
Don
Vappie knows about boring music.
Some
things are too embarrassing for public consumption, so the man born
Garrett Dutton and known as G. Love exercised some control over the
content of his new documentary and concert DVD, A
Year & a Night with G. Love & Special Sauce.
The
MySpace page profile for the Quad Cities trio Head Held High includes
upcoming shows, the band's influences, and a response to the prompt
"Sounds like." The group has written "a rock band."
I'm talking to blues musician Watermelon Slim about the myriad jobs he's had in between the release of his first album, 1973's Merry Airbrakes, and his second, 2003's Big Shoes to Fill. Those three decades found Slim working as a truck driver, a forklift operator, a collection agent, a firewood salesman, a funeral officiator, and even a watermelon farmer, the job for which The Artist Formerly Known as Bill Homans got his moniker.
As always, the performers at this year's IH Mississippi Valley Blues Festival will arrive with a host of awards to their names. But here's a guarantee: Albert Cummings will be the only one boasting a citation from the architectural digest Remodeling.
Alberta
Adams gained a foothold in the booming Detroit entertainment industry
as a tap dancer in the early 1940s at Club D&C. But "I always
wanted to be a singer," she said in a recent phone interview.
I've
read about Nappy Brown's energetic and ribald stage antics when he
was a big star in the 1950s. And having seen him lying on the floor
doing the "bug dance" at the 1993 Mississippi Valley Blues
Festival, I asked him what we should expect of his set with Muddy
Waters alumnus Bob Margolin at the fest this year.
"I'm not sure there's an owner's manual to this business that can truly enlighten one," says blues musician Kelly Richey, "but I did know that I was the type of artist that wasn't gonna be happy if I couldn't do it my own way."
