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Washboard Productions presents....


FIONA BOYES, MOOKIE BRILL & RICH DELGROSSO


What happens when you bring together 3 international award-winning blues musicians/vocalists from far-flung corners of the world AND PUT THEM IN THE STUDIO? After Beale St jam sessions during the 2007 Blues Music Awards in Memphis, nominees Fiona Boyes, Mookie Brill, and Rich DelGrosso decided to find out! A couple of months later, the trio were in the XM Bluesville Studios in Washington, DC, recording their first album together - ‘Live From Bluesville’ – a unique, contemporary take on traditional acoustic blues.

Fiona Boyes ~ Australia’s multi-award winning blueswoman, nominated in the 2007 Blues Music Awards (USA) for ‘Contemporary Blues Album of the Year’ and now again in 2008 for ‘Contemporary Female Blues Artist of the Year’ Fiona is at her finger-picking and vocal best. Rolling Stone’s Jeff Tamarkin describes Fiona as ‘an exceptional blues guitarist, vocalist and songwriter who displays enormous skills … this is one wicked slab of blues!’ Fiona picks up her acoustic guitar on ‘Live from Bluesville’ & shows why Blues Hall of Fame Inductee, Pinetop Perkins, calls her ‘the best gal guitar player I heard since Memphis Minnie’

Tom ‘Mookie’ Brill ~ two time Blues Music Awards (USA) winner ‘Bass Player of the Year’ plays up-right bass with Bob Margolin’s Chicago All Stars, Pinetop Perkins, Willie Smith, & Hubert Sumlin. He’s toured the world and recorded with the All-Stars, John Brim, Louisiana Red, Carey Bell, Nappy Brown and Jimmy Rogers. When not on the blues circuit you’ll find Mookie playing with rockabilly outfits ‘The Belmont Playboys’ and the ’Parodi Kings’. A great deep blues, doo-wop and rockabilly vocalist who also plays guitar & harmonica, Mookie lays a groove that’ll make you weep. Originally from Brooklyn, NY, he takes no prisoners!

Rich DelGrosso ~ Howlin Wolf’s biographer calls Rich ‘the greatest living blues mando-man and the best since Yank Rachell’. Reknowned as a teacher and writer on mandolin and guitar techniques, Rich is considered America’s leading proponent of mandolin blues. He was mentored by and played with legends Yank Rachell and Howard Armstrong, and is twice nominated for Blues Music Awards (USA) ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’. Rich is also a powerful vocalist and guitarist but ‘what this ravioli eatin’, espresso-drinkin’ italian-american bluesman does is play the blues on mandolin’’


‘Live from Bluesville’ brings together two great traditions in blues the stripped back power and pathos of acoustic performance and the raw urgency of a live recording session. Boyes, Brill, & DelGrosso combine their prodigious talents on this cd, recorded in one take on a rainy sunday in Washington, DC, at the XM Satellite ‘Bluesville’ studios. Capturing the dynamics of the earliest recording sessions when players played straight to tape on a front porch, an old hotel room or studio, ‘Live from Bluesville’ honors that tradition and those players, and yet brings fresh expression to the timeless art form that is ‘the blues’.

Web:
www.fionaboyes.com
www.myspace.com/mookiebrill
www.mandolinblues.com
www.boyesbrilldelgrosso.com

Booking info:
Washboard Productions
booking@washboardproductions.com
www.washboardproductions.com

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DELTA HIGHWAY - High Octane Blues from Memphis, Tennessee


Delta Highway is the next generation of authentic Blues. Brandon Santini and Justin Sulek were born in the piedmont region of North Carolina but grew up in Memphis on Beale Street. Once getting to the Blues Mecca, it did not take long for them to land a coveted spot in Blues Hall. This afforded them the opportunity to play with a who’s who of great musicians. Delta Highway has taken the influences of the Blues greats before them, and created a traditional sound that has its roots in the past but its branches reaching far into the future.

These young men where turned on by the sounds of John Popper (Brandon) and Stevie Ray Vaughan (Justin) but early on in their musical journey they found the true masters of this genre. They were awe struck by the pure power of the blues founders. They immersed themselves in recordings and early performances of these bluesman and honed a sound all their own. This sound is self described as “high octane blues”.

“The Devil Had a Woman” shows the maturity of these growing artists. It grabs you with the opening track and does not let you go. The CDs 10 songs are written by Delta Highway and prove that they are equally gifted blues musicians as they are song writers. Though out the CD, this band shows its different influences while delivering pure blues.

Whether it is in the studio or on the stage, this act is sure to please even the toughest critic.


Blues Revue Magazine- June/ July 2008

The Devil Had A Woman, a strong sophomore release self-release from Memphis' Delta Highway, concentrates on tough rhythms, the meat-and-potatoes songcraft of singer Brandon Santini, and an instrumental apprach that balances Justin Sulek's taut guitar work with Santini's note -heavy harp approach and makes excellent use of keyboardists Chris Stephenson and Victor Wainwright. Evocative slow blues ("Feelin' Bad"), rub against shuffles ("Got To Be On My Way") and the slinky title track. The Latin-flavored "Funky Little Baby" and "We Got A Thang Goin' On," with it's ominous Chicago sound, stand out.

-Reviewed by Tom Hyslop

Web:
www.deltahighwayblues.com

Booking info:
Washboard Productions
booking@washboardproductions.com
www.washboardproductions.com

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JON SHORT - "HAVE BLUES, WILL TRAVEL"

Specializing in the music and storytelling of the prewar blues masters Jon Short picks away at his National Steel Guitar with hypnotic passion, typically feeling his way through with his eyes closed and feet stomping time on the floorboards. Based in the Northeast US, he travels and performs between 100-150 shows per year in clubs, blues rooms and festivals from Massachusetts to Mississippi holding residencies at Vincent's in Worcester, MA and Terra Blues in New York City.

Having recently returned from his first European tour, Short has continued his work with Blues in Schools programs passing the music to another generation of performers and audiences. Representing the Downstate NY Blues Association, he competed in the Semi-Finals at the 2008 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, TN.

His high energy solo performances bring a foot-stomping show that captivates audiences and taps into the heart of the songs, history and folklore of blues. When backed by his band The Barrelhouse Ramblers, acoustic sets feature an old-timey pre-war sound while the electric sets creep up to North Mississippi hill country, Memphis & Chicago showing the influence of early Muddy, Howlin’ Wolf, the 3 Kings and R.L. Burnside.

Currently working with seasoned industry professionals "Hubcap Brian" Rost on upright bass, drummer "Captain Billy" Nadeau and fiddle/harp player Chip Smith, this band has the players and the sound to bring the blues.

In April of 2006 while on tour in the Mississippi Delta Region, Jon recorded with Memphis-based harp player Brandon Santini of Delta Highway at Sam Phillips Recording Service with legendary guitarist and sound engineer, Roland Janes. This yielded a full length CD "Backporch Blues" that received rave reviews in the Blues Bytes section of the August/September issue of Blues Revue.

The summer of 2007 brought Short on his first European tour where he played two weeks of festivals in Italy with up and coming Italian harp player Giordano Valente of Ninuzzo Blues Band; before traveling to the UK to meet up with Nashville based harmonica player, Keith Carter to play blues rooms between London and Manchester. His "Busk'n'Barnstorming Blues Tour" continued with a return to Amsterdam for club dates and a radio show with poet John Sinclair.

Web:
www.jonshort.com

Booking info:
Washboard Productions
booking@washboardproductions.com
www.washboardproductions.com

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ROBERT "BILBO" WALKER

Blues guitarist and singer/songwriter Robert "Bilbo" Walker was raised in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. Born February 19, 1937, on the Kline's Plantation in Clarksdale, Walker counts Sam Cooke, Chuck Berry, and Ike Turner among his early stylistic influences.

The music Walker and his bandmates produce on their two Rooster Blues releases, 1997's Promised Land and 2001's Rock the Night, is raw and in your face, straight out of the juke joints of the Delta. Walker was named after his father, Robert "Bilbo" Walker Sr., who was also nicknamed "Bilbo" -- that's how Walker Jr. acquired the nickname, which he hates. As he explains in the liner notes to Promised Land, people in his Clarksdale home would distinguish between his father and him by referring to them as Big Bilbo and Little Junior Bilbo. Later, after he began making a name for himself in Delta juke joints, Walker was called Chuck Berry Jr.

Walker is a completely self-taught musician who plays piano, guitar, and drums. He got his musical education thanks to his father, who would have "Little Junior Bilbo" playing piano behind a curtain at country juke joints around his native Clarksdale. His father paid three dollars and got Walker his first guitar, and he began playing at age eight. He began playing guitar professionally in church as a teenager, but after his sister started dating one of the guys in one of Ike Turner's early bands, he had the opportunity to learn showmanship firsthand from Turner. He began teaching himself Turner and Muddy Waters tunes on guitar. When Chuck Berry's first recordings were released in the 1950s, Walker modeled much of his guitar style after Berry's, he said in his liner notes to Promised Land, his debut for Rooster Blues. He began making trips to Chicago, formed a band with bassist David Porter, and the two have performed together much of the time since then.

Walker spent 17 years in Chicago, much of the time living with Porter. After a chance booking at the Rodeway Inn in Bakersfield, CA, Walker decided he liked that city enough to stay out there, because he had by this point also learned to play traditional country music. He bought land near Bakersfield and grew cotton and watermelons for the next few years, moonlighting as a musician in and around Bakersfield and making frequent trips back home to the Delta or Chicago. Walker was so successful as a farmer and entrepreneur that he was able to buy himself a limousine, a bus, and a motorcycle.

Walker first developed his unique one-handed guitar style -- which he demonstrates a few minutes of at most of his shows -- while he was in Chicago, playing on Maxwell Street. As he explains in his liner notes to Promised Land: "Famous musicians like B.B. King and them, they done did about everything with a guitar could be done, as if you want to try to top them guys like B.B. King, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Buddy Guy, well, you really got to come up with somethin' the world maybe never seen did. And I'm the onliest man alive can put that kind of show on with the guitar with one hand like that....I wanted to be somethin' peoples could says, 'Well, no one else can do that but Robert Walker.'" Another 1990s release from Walker worth seeking out is Rompin' & Stompin' for the New York City-based Fedora label.

Web
www.robertbilbowalker.com


Booking info:
Washboard Productions
booking@washboardproductions.com
www.washboardproductions.com