The Westside Andy & Mel Ford Band, 2 p.m.

Westside Andy & Mel Ford Band Blues Brother Dan Aykroyd calls Andy Linderman "one of the most dynamic electric harmonica players of our generation."

Jazz performer and producer Ben Sidran calls Mel Ford "one of the finest blues players in the Midwest if not the country."

Put "one of the most dynamic electric harmonica players" on the same stage with "one of the finest blues players in the Midwest if not the country" and you have one of the most exciting blues groups in the country: the Westside Andy & Mel Ford Band.

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.

Rich DelGrossoAs a fledgling musician growing up in Detroit, Rich DelGrosso admits to being heavily influenced by such artists as Jimi Hendrix and Cream. So, of all possible instruments, what led the young, rock-oriented DelGrosso to embrace the mandolin?

"I'm Italian," he says with a laugh. "End of story."

Actually, it's just the beginning of the story.

(Listen to this interview here.) 

The Mannish Boys The song is "Mannish Boy." Bo Diddley wrote it, Muddy Waters adapted and adopted it, and now a supergroup from the Los Angeles blues scene has taken it as their name.

The song as Muddy does it has a deep Delta groove with Chicago blues instrumentation, and Muddy sings it as a high-energy shaman would, full of boast and swagger: "I'm a man / I spell M-A-N / That represent man / No B-O-Y / That mean mannish boy." A Big City Rhythm & Blues review of the Mannish Boys' first CD, 2004's That Represent Man, notes that "The Mannish Boys had better deliver with so audacious a name, lest the memory of Muddy Waters and a handful of other blues greats from the same era be slandered. Remarkably, this band manages to earn the right to call themselves anything they like."

(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 the interview here.) 

Calvin Cooke "I've been around it all my life," Calvin Cooke said in a phone interview when asked how he learned to play steel guitar.

He grew up immersed in a Pentecostal culture, where he heard bands in church playing lap-steel guitar, lead guitar, and drums. Starting on regular guitar at an early age, Calvin's hands were too small to go around the instrument's neck, so he played it on his lap like a steel guitar, using the back of a knife for a slide. "Then when my mother realized I really wasn't going to play the lead guitar, she went to the pawn shop and got me an old steel guitar ... and she started teaching me by ear. ... That was back in the '50s. I got better and better, and then my cousin learned the lead guitar and we would play together" in church.

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