West Memphis Kicks Off its Annual May Celebration of the Blues with Ra’Shad the Blues Kid
The city of West Memphis, Arkansas is a youngster as American cities go, having been founded really about the time of World War I, and …
Blues
Grind City Brewing Gives Memphis A New Amphitheatre and Kicks It Off With Great Music
Anyone familiar with Memphis’s Grind City Brewing Company knows that their beers are named for various aspects of the city’s music scene, particularly its soul …
Big Memphis: Big Don Valentine is a Living Link with Memphis’s Blues Past
Long before rap music was a thing or synthesizers, drum machines or sequencers were invented, Memphis was a blues town, but despite the city’s long …
A Night of Hill Country and Cotton Patch Soul Blues in Olive Branch For the R. L. Burnside Museum
1836 Grill and Bar-B-Que is a new bar and grill in Olive Branch, Mississippi and on February 15, 2026, it was the scene of a …
Mason, Tennessee Celebrates Its Heritage With The Annual Fall Jubilee
Every fall, the small town of Mason in Tipton County, Tennessee holds an annual fall festival with vendors food trucks and live music. It generally …
On the Patio with Joshua McCain and the Soul Seven at the Greyhound
After I walked up to the Dollar General Store on the Main Street Mall to buy batteries for my camera, I was closer to Union …
The Blues’s Last Outpost in an Out of the Way North Memphis Bar
Visitors to Memphis’s Beale Street are usually disappointed. Although the street is famous for blues, blues is rarely heard there these days; the street’s fate …
A Beautiful Day and Great Fun at Coldwater Day
The phenomenon of “town days” is fairly unique to the state of Mississippi, and occurs mainly in predominantly-Black towns. It is possible that they began …
Two Night of Jam Band Fun at the inaugural Duwayne Burnside Festival in Marshall County
Over the last decade or so, Hill Country bluesman Duwayne Burnside has sponsored a fall picnic, usually in September. It was usually called the R. …
75 Years of Hollering “Goat” in Tate County, Mississippi: Blues and Fife and Drum
For 75 years, there has been a Labor Day picnic in Tate County, Mississippi, featuring barbecued goat and fife and drum music. The tradition was …