Category: Videos

Saturday Matinee – Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials, The Damned and Dirty, and The Nick Moss Band

Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials have been killing it for almost five decades. The band consists of Lil’ Ed Wiiliams / vocals, slide guitar; Ed’s half-brother James “Pookie” Young  / bass; Mike Garrett  / guitar, and Kelly Littleton / drums. Lil’ Ed and Pookie learned from their uncle,  J. B. Hutto.

The Damned and Dirty formed in Zaandam, Netherlands, in 2012; in 2024 they won the Dutch Blues Award for Best Blues Act.
“Kevin de Harde (vocals, harmonica) and Micha Sprenger (guitar) holed up in an Amsterdam-Noord studio for two days and cut a lo-fi delta blues album. Thirteen songs, self-released and free online, meant to stand alone. Then it won Best Dutch Blues Album, and the bookings started rolling in. The follow-up won too. So did the one after.”

The Nick Moss Band: Chicago native, guitarist and vocalist Nick Moss and New Jersey native, harmonica player and vocalist Dennis Gruenling, with Rodrigo Mantovani on bass, Taylor Streiff on keyboards and Pierce Downer on drums. Moss was named Traditional Blues Male Artist of the Year at the 40th Blues Music Awards in 2019, and the follow year the NMB (with Dennis Gruenling) won two Blues Music Awards for Band of the Year and Traditional Blues Album of the Year.

News of the Week: Post-election political infighting is underway in both the Democrat and Republican sides of the aisle. The SS United States was scuttled off the coast of Florida, a tanker rammed and capsized a docked river cruise boat in NOLA, and airports shut down nationwide due to a Microsoft update error. A NYC apartment building collapsed into an adjacent construction excavation, and measles are doing measle things again.

Rain is due and I’ll be on the porch regardless. Any time is a good time for porch time, and this time it’s tomorrow. Be there any time after the crack of noon time.

Saturday Matinee – Lettuce, Dustin Arbuckle & The Damnations, Selwyn Birchwood, and Max Hightower

Lettuce [aka Lettuce Funk] is a six-man combo that combines retro-future funk with soul, jazz, rock, and hip-hop, and it works.

Dustin Arbuckle & The Damnations are an eclectic blues band from Wichita, KS, playing a mix of Delta roots blues, honky tonk, Stax soul, and country. (Arbuckle was half of the now defunct team of Moreland & Arbuckle.)

Selwyn Birchwood is an American blues guitarist, vocalist and songwriter from Tampa, Florida. He plays what he calls “Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues,” and was the winner of the Blues Foundation’s 2013 International Blues Challenge (band category), as well the winner of the Albert King Guitarist of the Year award. [Wiki]

Max Hightower is a multi-instrumentalist (harmonica, guitar, bass, piano and vocals), writer and producer, and a founding member of Plate Full O’ Blues.He has toured across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, performing alongside greats like Hubert Sumlin and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith. Born and raised in Upstate South Carolina, Hightower was inspired by a Muddy Waters cassette when he was 12.

New of the Week: The midterm elections were a wondrous mix of surprises, anomalies and statistical impossibilities. Aside from that, a lot of other stuff went down that I don’t recall.

Remind me tomorrow, on the porch, at Porchtime o’clock. Be there.

Saturday Matinee – Tommy Castro & the Painkillers, The Danielle Nicole Band & The Nimmo Brothers

Tommy Castro & the Painkillers play a mix of blues, soul, R&B and rock. Castro began his career in the 1970s performing in cover groups in and around the San Francisco area, and has led his own bands since 1991. In 2010, The Blues Foundation awarded Castro multiple Blues Music Award honors for Blues Male Artist of the Year, Contemporary Blues Album of the Year, B. B. King Entertainer of the Year, and with his band, Band of the Year.

The Danielle Nicole Band: Bass player and vocalist Danielle Nicole Schnebelen is an American blues/soul musician born in Kansas City, Missouri. She began her career with her brothers Nick and Kris in the band Trampled Under Foot, receiving local and international recognition. Since going solo, she was inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame and earned eight Blues Music Awards

The Nimmo Brothers cover The Allman Brothers‘ cover of the Elmore James classic. In 1995 guitarists Stevie Nimmo and his brother Alan formed the band in Glasgow. Performing here with Matt Beable on bass and Craig Bacon on drums.

News of the Week: Iran’s IRGC are still being d-bags and there are rumors of a pending firestorm. Meanwhile “student protesters” are still burning down France. Midterm election season is in full swing with reports of a surge in early voting; California is already facing accusations of fraud. There was much rain and flooding in the western states.

Tomorrow seems like a good day for Time on the Porch. If it’s missing from the itinerary, show up at the crack of noon anyway. If you don’t see me, just stomp a few times.

Saturday Matinee – Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado, American Standard, and The Guy Forsyth Blues Band

“This is the sort of band that gets booked by unwary festival promoters as an early evening support only to discover they’ve stolen the show by 8 pm.”
Since their beginnings as a Copenhagen bar band, Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado have been dubbed Denmark’s premier roots rockers. The septet has performed in Scandinavia, Europe, Canada, the US and Asia for the past twenty years.

Hard to find info on the Wisconsin band named American Standard, but it was a side project of The Chris Aaron Band, both fronted by Chris Aaron Shoemaker. Shoemaker passed away in 2014 due to a heart attack. He was 44. “Aaron was one of Wisconsin’s most prominent blues musicians, based for much of his career in the Fox Valley but playing regularly all over the state. He fronted a number of bands, from the Chris Aaron Band to American Standard to National Standard, and played often with other notable blues artists.”

(This video has an annoying smoke alarm beep at 2:15. Ignore it.)
Blues legend based in Austin, Texas, Guy Forsyth has a long resume of recording and performing around the world, with many awards to boot. He’s got a knack for storytelling also, as evidenced in his bio.

News of the Week: Iran’s IRGC is still dicking around, Volod Zelenskyy got bitchy during peace negotiations. An armed civilian took out a 16 year old school shooter in Oregon. The Russian plague is MIA, but there’s a brain fungus on the loose, and Elon launched a Tesla.

I may not have covered everything, but it’s hot, dry and windy here and I get easily distracted. Besides, there’s porch time to take care of whenever you get here. See you tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Pokey LaFarge, the Nikki Hill Band, Shawn Pittman w/ The Özdemirs & La Perra Blanco

Pokey LaFarge (aka Andrew Heissler) got his nickname from his mom because he moved too slowly as a child. His chose his professional moniker because he thought it matched the music styles he was drawn to early  country swing and bluegrass (ala Bill Monroe).

“If Tina Turner and Little Richard had a daughter and raised her with the help of uncles James Brown and Chuck Berry, she’d be like Nikki Hill.”
–Minneapolis Star Tribune
This line up of the Nikki Hill Band includes husband Matt Hill and Laura Chavez trading guitar solos. I’m unsure of the identities of the bassman and drummer.

Texas bluesman Shawn Pittman backed by The Özdemirs: Erkan Özdemir / bass, Kenan Özdemir / guitar and Levent Özdemir / drums. Pittman is a regular on the European blues scene, touring since 1998.

La Perra Blanco (The White Bitch), aka Alba Blanco, is a high energy blues/rockabilly guitarist from Cádiz, Spain, and has been performing since the age of 14. [More about her here.]

News of the Week:  Iran still won’t stop dicking around. Tropical storm Rachel is getting things wet on the California coast and hurricane Isaias is slamming the Florida panhandle. France is burning, and the Russian plague may or may not exist. ICE is doing what ICE is supposed to do, the MSM misquoted DJT again, and some are upset that the Fort Hood mass murderer’s execution by firing squad is planned to be televised.
That’s about all I can stomach for now. Rain is expected tomorrow, but we have a Porch and the Time to sit and watch it. See you at the arbitrary hour.

Saturday Matinee – Texas Blues Guitar Summit (ft. Mike Morgan, Anson Funderburgh & Shawn Pittman), The Hoax, and Vargas Blues Band

Texas Blues Guitar Summit is “a high-energy, no-frills Texas blues collaboration, featuring guitar greats Mike Morgan, Anson Funderburgh and Shawn Pittman, with a full rhythm section. Legendary players. One stage. No two shows alike.”

From Devizes, Wiltshire, England, The Hoax is/was a blues band who got a lot of attention in the 1990s. Their debut album Sound Like This was named Best British Blues Album of the Year at the British Blues Connection Awards in 1994 and they’ve recorded several more since. [Their website appears to be defunct, but they have a FB page.]

Vargas Blues Band: “Javier Vargas was born in Madrid Spain shortly after his parents had left Buenos Aires where they had migrated some years before. Nine years later, the family returned to Argentina, and it is there where Javier started playing the guitar. In the 70’s, he lived in Nashville and L.A. playing the clubs and working recording sessions. He played with and impressed the likes of Alvin Lee, Roy Buchanan and Canned Heat, who also influenced his style.”
[By request from Suz P.]

News of the Week: Iran’s IRGC are still being dicks, the FlyDubai hijacking was thwarted, and France is burning. The Cornell rape accuser won’t testify, an execution was botched, and former Director of the Domestic Policy Council Susan Rice called CA candidate for governor Xavier Becerra a “bitchass idiot”.
On the homefront, temperatures in the hallway hit 90 degrees yesterday, today it’s supposed to get hotter, but we have a remedy for the heatwave. Porch Time shall commence promptly at whenever o’clock. See you there.

Saturday Matinee – Docteur Legume et Les Surfwerks, Marcus King w/ MonoNeon & Chris “Daddy” Dave, and The BluesBones

“This is a fine set of slightly disturbed surf-space-euro instrumentals. The writing is excellent, and the tone quite intense. Spaghetti, surf, sci-fi, and creativity!” -Phil Dirt, Reverb Central
Docteur Legume et Les Surfwerks is a mysterious retro surf space rock one-man band from Allessandria, Italy. Docteur Legume (aka Klänge, aka Modified Ambience) appears to be Massimiliano Bocchio.

Atomic Habitz is a jazz fusion funk rock supergroup trio consisting of Marcus King /guitar & vocals, MonoNeon / bass, and Chris”Daddy” Dave / drums. Amazing talents.

The BluesBones are a blues rock band from Belgium, founded by frontman Nico De Cock in 2011. They’ve won numerous awards, and are the only group to hit No. 1 on the UK Blues Charts three times in a row.

News of the Week: Iran is still being dickish. CNN, MS NOW and Politico threw tantrums for being told to stand in the corner. NBC released a report recommending that we keep refrigerator doors closed, and Xi Jinping chuckled at a picture of an autopen. A big nor’easter is pounding the northeast, while Hurricane Polo is headed for the Baja peninsula and Hurricane Nolo is about to whack Hawaii.

I probably missed some things, but we can cover those and more at Porch Time tomorrow. Be there or be equilateral rectangle.

Saturday Matinee – Big Daddy Wilson, Los Lonely Boys & Ryan Newman

Big Daddy Wilson (born Adam Wilson Blount in 1960) worked in the cotton and tobacco plantations of North Carolina during his childhood. He quit school at 16, and to escape poverty, enlisted in the US Army in 1979. While stationed in Germany he became interested in the blues, and having sung in gospel choirs he decided to pursue a career in music. [More details here.]

From San Angelo, Texas, Los Lonely Boys are brothers Henry (vocals, guitar), Jojo (bass, vocals) and Ringo Garza (drums). They’ve been performing Latino soul since 1996.

Guitar prodigy from Chester, Connecticut, Ryan Newman was eleven years old when he performed with blues great John Mayall, and not as a novelty act. Since then Newman has built a reputation across Southern New England and New York, and in 2021, the New England Music Hall of Fame awarded him their inaugural Best New Artist honor.

News of the Week: Iran is still effing around in the Strait of Hormuz, Greenland has agreed to allow new US military bases, and ugly women are upset with Sydney Sweeney’s looks. The Texas Big Bend border wall is starting construction, people are protesting the Kennedy Center repairs, and someone found a cat in Bolivia. The heat wave finally broke before our windows melted, and that means some time on the porch has been scheduled for tomorrow. See you at noon thirty o’clock.

Saturday Matinee – Vargas Blues Band, The Smoke Wagon Blues Band & Los Mambo Jambo Arkestra

Vargas Blues Band: “Javier Vargas was born in Madrid Spain shortly after his parents had left Buenos Aires where they had migrated some years before. Nine years later, the family returned to Argentina, and it is there where Javier started playing the guitar. In the 70’s, he lived in Nashville and L.A. playing the clubs and working recording sessions. He played with and impressed the likes of Alvin Lee, Roy Buchanan and Canned Heat, who also influenced his style.”

Formed in 1996 in Hamilton, Ontario, The Smoke Wagon Blues Band plays original roots blues rock in a variety of styles. They have won several Maple Blues Awards (Canada) and Independent Blues Awards (US), with albums scoring high on the charts in Canada, the US and Australia.

Los Mambo Jambo Arkestra is a Spanish instrumental rock & roll and rhythm & blues quartet-plus based in Barcelona. They don’t have an active website, but their Bandcamp page says that they’re “a crazy mix between power energy R&B and insane 50’s rock to create the one and only Jambophonic sound.”

News of the Week: Iran’s still dicking around and repercussions are imminent. Someone leaked info about US weapons stockpiles. There’s some Asian longhorned tick talk about a nairovirus, three bigass cyclones in the Pacific, and the UN voted to enlarge the size of Africa on maps because the country of Togo said to. (The US voted “gfys.”)
Another three day weekend is upon us, and one of the highlights is Porch Time. Bring. It. On.

Saturday Matinee – Philip Sayce, John Primer & Fleetwood Mac

Philip Sayce is a Welsh-born American / Canadian guitarist, singer, songwriter,  producer and performer. At 16, Sayce began playing in Toronto clubs, eventually joined Jeff Healey‘s band in 1997, and toured with him for over three years before joining Uncle Kracker. A year and a half later he was backing Melissa Etheredge… and on and on and on.

John Primer was born in 1945 to a family of dirt-poor Mississippi sharecroppers. His story is a true rags-to-riches saga, going from singing work songs and gospel, to playing diddley bow, then guitar. When he turned 18 in 1963 he moved to Chicago, busking at the legendary Maxwell Street market alongside blues superstars and others just breaking into the blues scene. The Blues Hall of Fame artist and three-time Grammy Nominee is still performing at 81 years.
[More in Wiki.]

Fleetwood Mac, the early years. “All our wealth and we can’t make a single that sounds as good as Green Manalishi“. ~John Lennon

Breaking News: Dolly Parton and Tim Curry have moved on. DJT announced a crude oil deal with Venezuela, and then pissed off the Canadians again. The US is sending aid to Nepal after the disastrous ice, mud & rock flood. Joro spiders are coming to gitcha, and our heatwave needs to move out and get a job somewhere else. There’s much more, but it can wait until quarter past porchtime. See you tomorrow.