TBC Brass Band Back at The Hi-Ho Lounge
My love affair with New Orleans brass bands actually began with a disappointment during the Cutting Edge Music Business Conference back in 2010. Hearing of …
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Robert Kimbrough and Lady’s Night at The Hut
Authentic blues in an authentic environment is hard to come by these days, and when the Memphis juke joint Wild Bill’s closed in December, it …
Fife and Drum Returns to West Tennessee at the Sleepy John Estes Blues Jam
Although fife and drum bands once were common in West Tennessee, the phenomenon had largely died out by 1980. The Tennessee State Archives created a …
Soulful Sounds of Bird Williams and The Lyric Band at Mr. P’s Hot Wings in Southwind
The nightlife space at 4202 Hacks Cross Road in the Southwind area of Memphis has been through many incarnations, from its opening as The Daq …
Debut of the Lucky 7 Brass Band at Growlers
I got an invitation on Facebook a week or so ago from a musician friend, trombonist Victor Sawyer, to come to the debut performance of …
Akeem Kemp: The Future of the Blues
Sometime before New Year’s Eve, a lady friend had shared a link with me on social media about a young musician named Akeem Kemp who …
A Fife-and-Drum Workshop in Brownsville, Tennessee
Fife and drum music once flourished in West Tennessee, but similar to what happened in Georgia, disappeared rapidly in the 1970’s. The last evidence we …
Remembering the Legacy of Bartlett’s Shadowlawn High School
Back in 1979, I had attended Shadowlawn Middle School in a rural area along Shadowlawn Road north of Ellendale. I was in the sixth grade …
Willy and the Planks Performing at Memphis’ Center for Southern Folklore
Willy and the Planks is a Nashville-based blues band with strong Hill Country influence, led by Bill Gibbs, whom I met through his friendship with …
Celebrating Tate County’s Blues Legacy at Senatobia Blues and Brews
On November 4, 2017, Senatobia launched its inaugural Blues and Brews festival in Gabbert Park, in unusually warm and wet weather. In fact, dense fog …