Hello John, As you probably know by now. We were forced to downsize Blues Blast from Hance Park to the Rhythm Room this year due to a severe shortage of funds. It seems our vendors raised prices considerably in our absence. After lying dormant for two years PBS didn't have any opportunities to raise funds to stage the shows you're usedd to. While we wish we were outside we are grateful to Bob for offering his world-famous venue to us so we wouldn't have to postpone or cancel this year. So, come on out folks, we promise a day full of top notch music and plenty of food and fun. Let's make the most out of the day and come prepared to have a good time. SATURDAY, ALL DAY. THE RHYTHM, ROOM, 1019 E INDIAN SCHOOL ROAD!! Jim Crawford Phoenix Blues Society phoenixblues.org/ | |
OUR FRIENDS COLD SHOTT and The Hurricane Horns www.coldshott.com The Sugar Thieves www.sugarthieves.com Gary Zak & The Outbacks www.outbackbluesband.com Eric Ramsey https://www.ericramsey.net/ Hans Olson www.hansolson.net Rocket 88s www.rocket88s.net JC& The Rockers www.thejukerockers.com Smokestack Lightning https://www.facebook.com/sslblues Carvin Jones www.carvinjones.com Poppy Harpman & The Storm https://poppyharpman.com/ Hoodoo Casters www.hoodoocasters.com RHYTHM ROOM www.rhythmroom.com WESTSIDE BLUES & JAZZ https://westsideblues.com/ Nina Curri www.ninacurri.com Paris James www.parisjames.com Mother Road Trio www.motherroadtrio.com Blues Review Band Reverbnationbluesmanmike Mike Eldred www.mikeeldredtrio.com Big Daddy D & The Dynamites Facebook www.bigdadddyd.com Cadillac Assembly Line Facebook https://cadillacassemblylineband.com/ Innocent Joe and the Hostile Witnesses Facebook Dry Heat https://www.facebook.com/dryheatbluesband Chuck Hall Facebook Pop Top Facebook Tommy Grills Band Facebook Sweet Baby Ray SweetBabyRaysBlues.com Thermal Blues Express Thermal Blues Express.com Common Ground Blues Band Facebook Billy G & The Kids billgarvin.com Backdoor Funk Facebook.com/backdoorfunk OUT & ABOUT Tuesday, March 15 Carvin Jones, 6 p.m., Florigino’s Pizza, Gilbert Gypsy & Hooter’s Blues JAM, 6 p.m., Pho Cao, Scottsdale Wednesday March 16 Carvin Jones, 6:30 p.m., Old Brass Rail, Phoenix Tool Shed JAM, 7 p.m, Blooze Bar, Phoenix Johnny Miller JAM, 7 p.m., Coop’s, Glendale Thursday, March 17 Sugar Thieves, 5:30 p.m., Clancy’s Pub, Scottsdale Rocket 88s, 6 p.m., Rip’s Bar, Phoenix Eric Ramsey, 6:30 p.m., Short Leash Hot Dogs, Phoenix Carvin Jones, 7:30 p.m., 12 West Brewing, Mesa Hans Olson, 6 p.m., Handlebar Pub, Apache Junction Friday, March 18 BLUES BLAST PRE-PARTY Dave Riley’s Birthday, 8 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix JC & The Rockers, 6:30 p.m., Fuego @ The Clarendon, Phoenix Saturday, March 19 BLUES BLAST ’22, 11 A.M., RHYTHM ROOM, PHOENIX Blues Blast After Party, 7 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix JC & The Rockers, 7 p.m., Handlebar Pub, Apache Junction Eric Ramsey, 9 a.m., Village Coffee Roastery, Scottsdale Blues Review Band, 3 p.m., Chicago Blues Fest West, Mesa Innocent Joe & The Hostile Witnesses, 9 a.m., Luke Days, Luke Air Base Carvin Jones, 8 p.m., The Rock, Tucson Sunday, March 20 Leon J, 12 p.m., DA Ranch, Cornvile Monday, March 21 Hans Olson, 7 p.m., Time Out Lounge (Every Monday), Tempe | Kansas City Star Jack Walton South Bend Tribune Amanda Fish has already released two albums of original songs and she has new material in the works for a third. She has been on tour extensively and her career has begun to flourish in a big way. But she’s not in a hurry to take her place among the blues-scene veterans yet: Fish wants to continue being the new kid for as long as she can. Her two albums, 2015’s “Down in the Dirt” and 2018’s “Free,” are collections of her own bluesy songs, played with rock flair. Live, as she will Saturday at the Midway Tavern in Mishawaka, she fronts a classic power trio lineup, with herself on vocals and bass. Life on the road can lead to inspirational experiences, but it’s not always convenient from a logistical standpoint. “I’ll go into these songwriting modes, and they’ll last for a while. It actually just depends on how much free time I have. It’s a discipline. If you sit down with a pen and paper, and you do that for a couple of days, the songs start coming. You just need the discipline to write them down,” Fish says by phone while en route to a gig in Kissimmee, Fla. “I’ll have songs occur to me all the time, but I’m not always disciplined enough to write them down. I lose them.” Like most songwriters these days, Fish also has availed herself of some technological assistance beyond pen and paper. “I also have a phone full of voice memos,” she says. “Sometimes I won’t go back and listen to them for months, until it’s time to write again.” Fish’s concert sets tend to lean heavily on her original compositions, but she throws in cover songs as well. But where many young singers might shy away from certain unapproachable classics, Fish goes bold. For instance, the song “Ball and Chain” became one of the primary trademarks of its author, Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, in the 1960s. When Big Brother and the Holding Company made it a feature vehicle for Janis Joplin, it turned into one of Joplin’s most famous numbers as well. Anyone who sings it today has to contend with two intimidating ghosts over their shoulders. This does not deter Fish, who has been known to do “Ball and Chain” as a 10-plus minute centerpiece of her shows. “I’m going to do the stuff I love. I don’t have any problems with ghosts,” she says. “Ghosts — please come in and join me for a few. The fans don’t have a problem with that. I’m playing my originals, and they like those, too.” Besides, Fish says, she gets compared to Joplin whether or not she covers her. “It used to (anger me): ‘Janis, Janis, Janis,’” she says. “Once I took myself and my ego out of the equation, I was able to realize that everybody loves her so much and she’s gone. People are grasping for a shred of that moment back. If I take myself out of the way and let that take over, it’s really powerful. You all get to go through that experience together. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a spiritual thing.” Fish and her sister, fellow rising blues star Samantha Fish, grew up in Kansas City and have both had quite encouraging starts to their musical careers. Awards with names such as “best new artist” or “best emerging talent” are starting to pile up. “I’m enjoying being the new thing,” she says. “I still have time to grow and change. I have time to find myself, figure myself out.” She says that she’s been leading her own bands for only about five years. “I’ve made the progression from being a local open-mic person to where now I’m touring around North America. I’m still processing it, and it all still seems new,” she says. “If we’re traveling through mountains, I still think, ‘Hey, mountains are exciting!’ I’m still a puppy about most of these things.” | | Real Deal by Jim Crawford The blues is in Zac Harmon’s blood, literally. Being from Mississippi he says you really don’t have a choice but to embrace the music and that’s exactly what he has done for his whole life. Growing up in the civil rights hot bed in Jackson in the ‘60s Zac saw and heard things that would help form his musical perspective. “(The ‘60s) made me a very free thinking person. My music is very forward. I come from the Mississippi blues lineage but my expression is not the same as the early guys. Because what I saw was different. A lot of people are copycats because they don’t have a natural lineage for the music so they hear somebody they like and do songs that sound like them. I don’t do that and I never even thought about doing anything like that because what Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter were doing is part of my DNA. I don’t have to try to be like them I just try to be like me.” His mother introduced him to the violin when he was 6 and he played it for two or three years until he discovered the guitar. “I started playing guitar because it was so much cooler than violin. Girls like the guitar. My sister was a musician and playing the guitar. My mother bought her one and I used to sneak in my sister’s room and play her guitar. One night she caught me and all hell broke loose. She didn’t want me playing it. We were very competitive like that. So the only way my mother could restore order in the house was buy me a guitar. She bought me this Stella guitar.” Zac lived in a music-rich neighborhood. His next door neighbor was a music teacher who didn’t have any children so all the kids in the neighborhood were like her own. Her front room was filled with musical instruments and Zac would go over and play around with the various pieces and that’s where his stint with the violin started. “When I started playing guitar my teacher, Bill Ferris, was like a jazz guy. He was one of the coolest people I’ve ever met in my life. During that time in Mississippi it was such a cultural melting pot. There was just so much going on then during the ‘60s. When I’d go to his house for a lesson it was almost like stepping out of Mississippi and stepping into New York. He turned me on to Miles Davis, Coltrane and people like that. He taught me and his daughter, Cassandra Wilson, who is now the number one jazz vocalist in the world. There was just so much music around me. My sister was a musician. My father played harp. There were so many influences that it was just a natural progression. Bill lived next door and was the guy who started the Southern Cultural Center at Ole Miss. He was doing a lot of the recordings like Alan Lomax. He used to bring the guys down from the delta and they’d record at his house. They’d have parties in the backyard and guys would play.” Zac Started playing with the legendary Sam Meyers when he was 14. His dad okayed it because he and Sam were good friends. Clug owners would let Zac in to play but he had to retreat to the dressing room during breaks. Zac counts Sam as an early influence. He also learned from Jesse Robinson and Mel Brown who were both Jackson area natives. At age 17 Zac toured with Dorothy Moore and played briefly played with Little Milton. These people contributed to his musical education but to learn he had to strike a deal with his mom to stay in school and go to college. He fulfilled his part of the agreement earning a bachelor’s degree from Jackson State University and an MBA from Pepperdine University in California. “My dad finally made me leave because I was hiding under the radar playing music and going to school. I could live at home and didn’t have any bills. I didn’t have to be responsible. It was cool. At a certain point Zac’s dad askedhim what he was going to do. “I’d had a good time and a good run. ‘If you’re gonna play music then really play music and go where the music business is,’ Dad said. In his mind I was going to go to California and suffer and then come back home and go to med school. But that didn’t happen. This was in 1979. He stayed in LA for 26 years and along the way lived in some fleabag hotels, played on street corners and did whatever he had to do to survive. “Almost starved trying to play the blues but I had a nice career as a writer, producer and session player. I’ve worked with a lot of people and have produced or written over 150 CDs.” Around the late ‘90s the music business changed and the session world wasn’t that great anymore. Rap had really taken over giving Zac more time to play blues. One night Georgina Moore, who was married to Keb Mo at the time, and was on the board of the Blues Foundation, approached Zac and said he should enter the IBC. “I asked her what that was. She explained that the LA Blues Society would have a local competition and the winner advanced to Memphis. I thought it would be cool to play in Memphis. I got in the competition and I never thought I’d win. I really got in the competition just to play. Next thing I know I’m the local LA champ for the blues society. We were called the Mid-South Blues Revue. The only thing on my mind was going to Memphis to see some friends, have some catfish and ribs, play some blues and come back to LA. So we went down and competed and just kept winning. We made it to the finals and I still never expected to win. When they announced our names it was surreal. That pretty much launched my career. Overnight went from being a guy who played the blues in La to being someone who is known around the world.” Zac and a group of artists traveled to Iraq in 2009 as part of the Bluesapalooza tour. This particular lineup included Zac,, Michael Burks, Shemekia Copeland and Moreland & Arbuckle. Also Tony Braunagal was the band director. The promoter wanted to reach all of the troops so they went to all of the bases that were way out in nowhere. The group found themselves in some seriously dangerous places. “We all really got close. Micheal and I had been friends but on this tour we became brothers. We were in a war zone and traveling by Black Hawk helicopter , all hours of the night. We had some crazy stuff going on. “We went to this base at 6 a.m., and I’m dead tired. We had to wear a helmet, flak jacket, about forty pounds of gear. When we got on base they wanted to give us a tour. I went into the barracks to sleep. Everybody else went on tour. They were demonstrating how they located explosives and how they would blow them up. All of a sudden I hear air raid sirens. I didn’t know they were going to sound sirens to let everyone know they were about detonate explosives. All of a sudden, boom. I jump up and throw on gear and run into bomb shelter. Stuff was still going off but I’m the only one there. After about an hour I hour came out and saw a Hummer full of soldiers and they won’t look at me ‘cause they’re laughing. I walked back in the barracks and everyone else walked back in laughing. After we came back to the states Michael told the story everywhere we went. It was the joke of the year.” Quote: “Music is medicine. Wherever I play I’m trying to heal somebody. I’m hoping when people come to the show and leave they say they feel better.” | |
Moved? Changed email addresses? Please let us know of any changes in your address, email, or phone number so we can keep you informed about the Blues community in Arizona. Email us at: info@phoenixblues.org or write to: Phoenix Blues Society P.O. Box 36874 Phoenix, Arizona 85067 PBS WEBPAGE: https://phoenixblues.org/ | | GOT BLUES? If you are a Blues musician, a group, or a club that features Blues music, and would like to be listed, please send your info to info@phoenixblues.org and we'll be happy to list your event in our weekly Out & About section of the newsletter. Feel free to suggest content for the newsletter. We welcome your input. View as Webpage CHECK OUT OUR SOCIAL MEDIA PAGES | | |
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