Celebrating the Hill Country Tradition at Como’s Annual Day
Each October, the City of Como, Mississippi sponsors a large, daylong festival and picnic called Como Day, featuring vendors, food trucks, custom cars and excellent …
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R. L. Boyce, Lightnin Malcolm & Jimbo Mathus at Clarksdale’s Deep Blues Festival
Robert Palmer’s movie and book “Deep Blues” was instrumental in introducing the world to the Hill Country Blues style and its stars, R. L. Burnside …
Another Day of Blues in Helena
I was late in getting to the second day of the King Biscuit Blues Festival because I had visited the massive Coldwater Trade Day sale …
The King Biscuit Blues Festival and the Decline of Helena
Like all of Eastern Arkansas, Helena had seen better days by the late 1970’s, but the worst was yet to come. When the Mohawk Tire …
Bikes and Blues On Historic Ground near Como
On the last weekend of September, Memphis-based blues and southern soul singer Gerod Rayborn asked me if I would play keyboards with his band for …
Uptown with the Young Men Olympian and the TBC Brass Band
Sherena had never been to a second-line, so on our weekend trip to New Orleans, I wanted her to experience one first-hand. And by chance, …
An Afternoon in Biloxi and Ocean Springs, Dinner in Gulfport
My friend and I had visited my cousin in the Handsboro neighborhood of Gulfport, and then we had headed on east into Biloxi. We noticed …
The Kimbrough Blues Legacy Lives On At Rooster’s Blues House in Oxford
Robert Kimbrough Sr. calls his style of music “cotton patch blues”, but he is the son of one of the biggest legends of what blues …
Music on the Square in Somerville, Tennessee
Due north of Marshall County, the quintessential county of the Mississippi Hill Country is Fayette County, Tennessee, which perhaps could be considered Tennessee’s only Hill …
Around the Tennessee Delta on Labor Day Weekend
After Bradley Hanson of the Tennessee State Archives sent me a link to recordings made of a fife and drum band in rural Fayette County …