Tag: Blues

Saturday Matinee – BALTHVS, Johnny Rawls & Dan Patlansky

BALTHVS is a Colombian psychedelic funk surf rock group consisting of Balthazar Aguirre / guitar; Johanna Mercuriana / bass; Santiago Lizcano /drums. Four albums and over three dozen singles in only four years, plus world tours makes for a busy schedule and a lot of spacey retro vibes.

Johnny Rawls is a true soul-blues renaissance man. He’s been recording and performing for over fifty years, winning many awards in the process. Ten of his recordings have been nominated for Soul Blues Album of the Year and two of them won in that category (which didn’t exist until Rawls showed up).

Dan Patlansky was voted the No. 4 Best Guitarist in the world and remains the only artist with two worldwide No.1, and two worldwide No.2 Best Blues Rock albums to his name, as voted by Blues Rock Review USA.

Great googly moogly, the weekend his here already. Too many time flies buzzing about, and that means we have some serious porching to attend to. See you tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Jimmie Vaughan, Ruzz ‘Guitar’ Evans Blues Revue & Los Lonely Boys

“Stevie had the intensity, but Jimmie had the feel; Custodian of a genre, master and eternal student, genius born of passion for honoring those who came before.” – YouTube comment
Jimmie Vaughan & The Fabulous Thunderbirds  – Extra Jimmies (ca. 1980).

From Bristol, UK, Ruzz ‘Guitar’ Evans Blues Revue cranks out a variety of  blues styles, from big band swing to rockabilly to western space retro rock. Evans won the Guitarist Of The Year award and was nominated Artist Of The Year (runner up to Jimmie Vaughan!) in The Blues Lounge Radio Show 2021 Awards.

Los Lonely Boys:
“Leveraging the power of their connection, brothers communicate in their own vernacular understood by one another, yet alien to the rest of the world. Scaling one mountain at a time, they have summited unprecedented heights.”
Whew. Seems like someone’s girlfriend wrote that description, but these guys rock. San Angelo, Texas, brothers Henry (vocals, guitar), Jojo (bass, vocals) and Ringo Garza (drums) have been performing since 1996.

Time compression kicked in for me again this week, exacerbated by ad-libbed napping and the leftovers of a drive-by head cold. Be back here tomorrow, porchtime-ish, and we’ll discuss variable speed quantum hypotheticals and, you know, stuff.

Saturday Matinee – The Raveonettes, Fred & the Healers, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers

Award winning indie retro post-punk noise rock duo from Denmark channels Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. The Raveonettes are Sune Rose Wagner on guitar, instruments and vocals, and Sharin Foo on bass, guitar and vocals. From the album Chain Gang of Love, the lineup includes Manoj Ramdas on guitar and Jakob Hoyer on drums.

Belgian blues band Fred & the Healers cover Junior Wells‘ classic from 1960. Current lineup is Frédéric Lani / guitar and vocals; Bertrand Lani / bass; Nicolas Sand / drums.

John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers performed at Mayall’s 70th Birthday Concert, Liverpool, England ,on 19 July 2003. Dubbed the Godfather of British Blues, Mayall passed away on 22 July 2024 at the age of 90.

Anyone watching the Olympics? If so, keep it to yourselves because I’m not interested. Tomorrow’s porch time shall commence promptly at whenever so see you then.

Saturday Matinee – The Electric Device Orchestra, Reverend Peyton, The Luca Giordano Band w/ Jj Thames, and Dirty Sweet

Electric Device Orchestra: Electric Toothbrush 1 / lead vocals, Electric Toothbrush 2 / bass, The Four Credit Card Machines / backing harmonies, with Typewriters 1 & 2 / percussion. [h/t Mme. Jujujive.]

Reverend Peyton (sans his Big Damn Band) in the cotton gin at Dockery Farm in the Mississippi Delta, the place where Charley Patton was raised.

Hurricane Jj Thames backed by The Luca Giordano Band at the Cafe’ De Amer in Amen, Netherlands November 2023. In 2005 Giordano left Italy for Chicago, made a name for himself backing various blues greats, and eventually returned to Europe where his trio spreads the word.
Jj Thames is nothing but amazing. Born in Motown, moved to the Delta, and has an impressive style (and resume). Apparently she had a rough time in the music business and announced her retirement in 2020.

San Diego based Dirty Sweet is/was a roots rock blues band who took their name from a lyric in T.Rex’ Bang A Gong.

A lot of disturbing history happened this week and it ain’t over yet. Interesting times indeed. I’ll be on the porch by the time I get out there. See you then.

Saturday Matinee – Hermeto Pascoal, Sugaray Rayford & The Rhythm Shakers

Known as o Bruxo (the Sorcerer), Pascoal often makes music with unconventional objects such as teapots, children’s toys, and animals, as well as keyboards, button accordions, melodica, saxophones, guitars, flutes, voices, various brass and folkloric instruments. [Wiki]

Brazilian improvisational avant-garde musician Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo play with water in Música da Lagoa, a scene from the 1985 movie Sinfonia do Alto Ribeira by Ricardo Lua.

Texas born Caron “Sugaray” Rayford grew up in starvation-level poverty. His mother struggled to raise three boys alone while battling cancer; when she died, the siblings were relieved. “She suffered and we suffered. Then, we moved in with my grandmother and our lives were a lot better. We ate every day and we were in church every day, which I loved. I grew up in gospel and soul.”

From The Rhythm Shakers‘ website:

As red hair is flailing and double bass pounding, Marlene Perez of the Rhythm Shakers closes out another show in Los Angeles. Ripping wails and howling vocals are rocketed from her torso more reminiscent of Tina Turner and Amy Winehouse than the echo dripped hiccups of the 1950’s rock and roll genre the band exists within.

Happy weekend to all, and tomorrow porch time shall commence promptly at whenever. See you then.

Floccilating Hot Links

Kiss My, Sean Healan Band (2008)
Nice groove from New Mexico singer / songwriter Sean Healan.

Bartkira.

A rescue.

Sarah’s Attic.

Make it count.

No gold for you.

Scout was a ham.

Norty Blues Episode 70.

The Master of Photoshop.

Still my favorite Norm joke.

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

The white line is lava [via Mme. Jujujive].

The longest green light [via Bunkerville].

Loki’s horned face that looks like a caribou.

MPGe is how far an EV can go on a “gallon of electrons”.

Photos by a NYC nightshift cabbie [via Memo Of The Air].

Will Bradley & Ray McKinley: Best of the Big Bands [free download].

[Top image: Sock puppet by Natalie Karine.]

From the Archives: 1 year ago. 5 years ago. 10 years ago. 15 years ago.

Saturday Matinee – Joanne Shaw Taylor, Altered Five Blues Band & Ana Popovic

When she was 16, U.K. blues rocker Joanne Shaw Taylor was invited by Dave Stewart  (of the Eurythmics) to join his supergroup DUP  (Da Universal Playaz). Since then Taylor has recorded several albums and has won numerous awards, including Best Female Vocalist at the British Blues Awards two years in a row.

Award winning group from Milwaukee, Altered Five Blues Band features frontman Jeff Taylor with Jeff Schroedl / guitar, Mark Solveson / bass, Alan Arber / drums and Steve Huebler / keyboard.

Called “one helluva a guitar-player” by Bruce Springsteen and nominated for seven Blues Music Awards, Ana Popovic was added as the only female guitarist to the 2014 -2018 all-star Experience Hendrix lineup, a nationwide tour celebrating the music and legacy of Jimi Hendrix.

Tomorrow’s scheduled porch meetup may be postponed as I have important business to attend to regarding Bunkessa’s birthday. Help yourselves to whatever’s left in the cooler and I’ll see you when I get back.

Saturday Matinee – JP Soars & The Red Hots, The Bruce Katz Band, and Eric Slim Zahl & The South West Swingers

JP Soars & The Red Hots go on a roadtrip. There are exactly two Red Hots: drummer Chris Peet and Cleveland Frederick on standup bass.

The Bruce Katz Band: Bruce Katz on keyboards, Aaron Lieberman on guitar and drummer Ray Hangen.

Award winning rockers Eric Slim Zahl & The South West Swingers hail from Stavanger, Norway.  Other than a brief discography, I could find scant info about this group, and that’s a damn shame.

We’re barely past the Summer Solstice and the days are getting shorter already, but it doesn’t matter to me because my watch is set to porch time. See you tomorrow when the big hand points at something.

Saturday Matinee – The David Gogo Band, The Atomic 44’s and Kevin Borich, John Watson & Harry Brus

Canadian singer, songwriter and bluesman David Gogo began playing guitar at the age of five; at 15 he met and was encouraged by Stevie Ray Vaughan; a year later he formed his first band. He’s won numerous awards, including three JUNOs (despite EMI spiking his solo album in the US).

Blues/roots supergroup The Atomic 44’s formed in 2020 when Eric Von Herzen (harmonica player for Walter Trout, Social Distortion, The Atomic Road Kings, Junior Watson) joined guitarist/vocalist Johnny Main (The 44’s).

Another power trio of rockers from down under: Kevin Borich / guitar, John Watson / drums & Harry Brus / bass.  [h/t John McL.]

That should be enough to fill your earbuckets for now. Happy Fathers Day to all you fathers (including those of you who don’t know yet) and we’ll have some quality porch time tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Tom Waits, Joe Louis Walker & Kid Anderson (with Tommy Harkenrider, Brent Harding & Derrick D’Mar Martin)

Tom Waits‘ Telephone Call From Istanbul was released on his album Frank’s Wild Years (1987) and was featured in the movie Big Time (1988).

Joe Louis Walker at Broadway Studios, San Francisco, December 1999. Walker has recorded with Ike Turner, Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal, and Steve Cropper, opened for Muddy Waters and Thelonious Monk, hung out with Jimi Hendrix, Freddie King, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and was a close friend and roommate of Mike Bloomfield, and that’s some serious cred.

Kid Anderson / lead guitar, Tommy Harkenrider / rhythm guitar, Brent Harding / bass and Derrick D’Mar Martin / drums at the Beatnik Bandito Emporium, Santa Ana, California, February 2020.

Nice set for St. Medarus Day. Celebrations will commence on the front porch whenever you get here. If I’m not out you’ll need to holler at the door because the doorbell doesn’t work.