QUICK FACTS
Wednesday, March 16th through
Sunday,
March 20th, 2011
The Main Concerts:
Fri. & Sat., March 18 - 19, at The
Coral Bay Ball Field
2011 St. John
Blues
Festival
Date: Wednesday,
March 16th
through Sunday,
March 20th, 2011
Location:
The main concerts:
Friday, March 18, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
- Coral Bay Ball Field
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Tickets purchased in advance: Tickets are sold on St. John at: Tickets are sold on St. Thomas at: |
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FOR BOTH FRIDAY AND SATURDAY NIGHT’S CONCERTS
IN THE BALL FIELD:
Bring a blanket, bring a chair... but please be cool, no coolers.
Food & Beverage available all evening both Friday and Saturday nights.
$5 Safari taxi rides all night long Friday and Saturday from
Cruz Bay to Coral Bay and from Coral Bay to Cruz Bay
Late night 1:00am ferry trip from Cruz Bay
to Red Hook
will be available both Friday and Saturday nights.
Albert Cummings | Candye Kane | Grady Champion
Curtis Salgado | Reba Russell | Moreland & Arbuckle
Albert Cummings
Albert Cummings was born in Williamston, MA, and has made his home in the New England region all his life, where he runs a successful home construction business. He started playing the five-string banjo when he was 12 and appeared headed for a regional career in bluegrass when he encountered the music of Stevie Ray Vaughan in his late teens, and soon made the transition to electric guitar. 
His first public performance on guitar came at a wedding reception when he was 27 years old, but soon he was on the Northeast blues circuit with his band, Swamp Yankee, and an independent CD, The Long Way, was released in 1999. A chance encounter with Vaughan's old band, Double Trouble, led to Cummings' first solo record, From the Heart, which was recorded in Austin, TX, and featured Cummings fronting Double Trouble. The record was self-released by Cummings, but was soon picked up for distribution by Under the Radar and released in 2003.
Cummings' soulful and explosive approach to blues and rock caught the attention of Blind Pig Records, which signed him to a multi-album deal. His debut album on the label, True to Yourself, was released in 2004. He has since shared the bill with B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Charlie Musselwhite, John Hammond, Susan Tedeschi, Tommy Castro, Chris Duarte, Bernard Allison, the Neville Brothers, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Sheryl Crow, and Duke Robillard. He released his third album, Working Man, in 2006, following it up with a live set, Feel So Good, in 2008.
Visit Albert Cummings' Website
Candye Kane
Superhero is the name of Candye Kane’s original song and the title of her latest CD for Los Angeles based label, Delta Groove records. It is also an apt description of the jump blues singer and songwriter from East Los Angeles who has earned this moniker the hard way. Nominated for three 2010 National Blues Foundation Awards for BB King Entertainer of the Year, Best Blues Contemporary CD and Best Contemporary Blues Female (the highest honor for blues artists) and beating down pancreatic cancer in the last two years, Kane is one tough cookie. She has performed worldwide for presidents and movie stars but her path to success was not always glamorous or easy.
Raised in a dysfunctional, blue-collar family, Candye became a teenage mother, a pin up cover girl and a punk rock, hillbilly and blues-belting anarchist by the time she was just 21 years old. Ten cds, six record labels, millions of international road miles and countless awards later, Miss Kane has proven to be a true survivor as she scrambled her way to the top of the roots music heap, creating a world renowned reputation that has spanned two decades.
A colorful mixture of the traditional and the eclectic, Kane cut her musical teeth in the early 80's onstage with Hollywood musicians and friends, Social Distortion, Dwight Yoakum, Dave Alvin, The Blasters, X, Fear and Los Lobos, to name just a few. While raising two sons, this role model for the disenfranchised, championed large sized women, fought for the equal rights of sex workers and the GLBT community and inspired music lovers everywhere. Her fans are a mixture of true outsiders: bikers, blues fans, punk rockers, drag queens, fat girls, queers, burlesque dancers, porn fans, sex workers, rockabilly and swing dancers, grey haired hippies, sex positive feminists and everyday folk of all ages, flock to see Candye and hear her musical messages of love, hope and empowerment.
Kanes' live shows are the stuff of legend. She honors the bold blues women of the past with both feet firmly planted in the present. She belts - growls - shouts - croons and moans from a lifetime of suffering and overcoming obstacles. She uses music as therapy and often writes and chooses material with positive affirmations that leave the audience feeling healed and exhilarated. A show that is part humor, revival meeting and sexuality celebration, she'll deliver a barrelhouse-tongue-in-cheek blues tune or a gospel ballad like Jesus and Mohammed, encouraging audiences to leave behind religious intolerance. She'll slay the crowd with her balls out rendition of Whole Lotta Love or glorify the virtues of zaftig women with 200 pounds of fun. She often says she is a "fat black drag queen trapped in a white woman's body" and she dresses the part. Bedecked in bright colored feathers, sequins and rhinestones, Kane's performance is Mississippi by way of Las Vegas with a quick stopover in San Francisco.
Kane's tenth CD release Superhero debuted at number nine on the Billboard Blues Charts. The cd continues to receive amazing reviews worldwide. It was produced by Kane and 27 year old guitar virtuoso, Laura Chavez who also plays in Candyes live band. It features guest performances by Kid Ramos, Dave Gonzales and Mitch Kashmar along with Kanes' rhythm section featuring eldest son, Evan Caleb on drums and bass veteran, Michael Turturro. This CD is chock full of the songs of triumph and empowerment that have made Kane a favorite with enlightened congregations everywhere.
Candye has been included in countless Blues and Jazz Anthologies including the Rolling Stone and Musichounds Guide to Jazz and Blues and Dan Akroyds' 30 Essential Women of the Blues. In addition to her music successes, she is an activist and philanthropist. In August 2009, she appeared in Dublin, Ireland for the World Congress for Downs Syndrome with her United by Music charity (unitedbymusic.eu). This project provides performance opportunities, blues history lessons and songwriting instruction to young people with disabilities, encouraging them to write their own blues songs to help them overcome their daily challenges.
Grady Champion
Grady Champion is a blues singer, harmonica player, guitarist and songwriter. The first thing that strikes you about him is his charisma and likeability. He looks you in the eye and speaks from his heart and he projects an image of respectability into his music as a clean cut bluesman on the rise.
Grady started out almost twenty years ago as a Blues Rapper…I know, I never heard of a Blues Rapper either. A friend pointed out to him that he had a raspy voice and that he would make a better blues singer than a rapper. He thought about that for a while and decided to give it a shot. He knew as a young man that you can’t just sing the blues; you have to feel the blues, live the blues. He had a great sense of who he was and where he wanted to go. He knew he would be forty years old before he could perfect what he wanted to do. He was cool with that. So many artists want to be on top yesterday, but like a fine wine or a slow smoked ham, it takes time to reach perfection. Grady is ready to pop the cork now and enjoy where his experiences have taken him.
Like almost all blues greats Grady is from the state of Mississippi, the small town of Canton in his case. He later moved to Florida. In 1998 he recorded Goin’ Back Home and drew such large crowds to Florida blues clubs he caught the attention of Shanachie Records executives, who signed him.
The album includes a version of “Don’t Start Me To Talkin’” that really shows Grady’s high energy singing and harmonica playing and an updated version of the traditional mournful “Goin’ Down Slow” with a hard-edged story of modern life. “You Got Some Explaining to Do” (co-written by his producer Dennis Walker, who helped Robert Cray reach national fame) demonstrates that Grady is an important new talent.
What makes Grady Champion doesn’t just cover other blues artist songs, he writes his own material too. When he does sing other’s songs it is never lick for lick the same as the original, as Simon Cowell would say, he makes it his own.
At the IBC’s in January 2010, Grady was the winner of the Blues Foundation 2010 International Blues Challenge against a field of over one hundred bands. He did it by being one of the few acts that played his own material, he had them dancing in aisles at the Orpheum Theatre during the finals.
As nice and polite as Grady is, he has no trouble speaking his mind as he did when he wrote songs like “Policeman Blues” (about racial profiling) and “Children of the Corn,” a song about the rising tide of youth violence. Champion is one of the best when it comes to the future of blues music.
Visit Grady Champion's Website
CURTIS SALGADO
Blues Music Award Nominee
Curtis Salgado has a lot to celebrate. Two years ago he was diagnosed with liver cancer and told he had eight months to live, unless he got a liver transplant which would generate medical bills upwards of half a million dollars. With no health insurance and few funds, the man who is one of America's finest blues/soul singers needed a little help from his friends.
When your friends and admirers include the likes of Steve Miller, Robert Cray, Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal, you've got a fighting chance. Numerous benefits were held in multiple cities including a benefit concert featuring Miller, Cray, Taj Mahal, The Phantom Blues Band, Everclear and Little Charlie & The Nightcats.
Through the generosity of Curtis's friends, fellow musicians, the Legendary Blues Cruise and thousands of fans who supported Curtis by attending benefits and auctions or by making private donations, upwards of half a million dollars was raised and Curtis received his life saving transplant.
Curtis Salgado's musical journey began with his birth in Everett, Washington, in 1954. His family moved to Eugene, Oregon when he was one and he grew up there listening to jazz, and to his father, an aspiring singer of classical music. His ambitions coalesced when, at age 12, he saw Count Basie's band perform in Eugene.
Curtis became a part of the burgeoning Northwest blues scene starting in 1972 with a band called Three-Fingered Jack. Eventually he hooked up with up-and-coming guitarist/vocalist Robert Cray, and recorded the album "Who's Been Talking." In six years with Robert Cray, the higher level of visibility enabled Salgado to sit in with the likes of Muddy Waters, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Albert Collins and Bonnie Raitt.
Aside from being a tremendous vocalist, Curtis is also one of the finest blues harmonica players in the country. In 1979, when John Belushi was in Eugene filming Animal House, he caught Curtis' act and liked what he heard and saw. Curtis took the actor under his wing and schooled him on blues and R & B history, which Belushi soaked up like a sponge, and used a good portion of Curtis' show as the basis for the Blues Brothers act he and Dan Akroyd put together. The first Blues Brothers album was dedicated to Curtis.
Curtis left the Cray band before it broke through nationally and from 1984 - 1986 he fronted Boston's Grammy- Winning Roomful Of Blues before returning to Portland where he formed The Stilettos, who toured nationally with such acts as Steve Miller and The Doobie Brothers. He even did a stint as lead vocalist with Santana in the 1990's.
Curtis released three albums (the first with The Stilettos, followed by one with his own band and the third, an acoustic gem, featuring guitarist Terry Robb). After three critically-acclaimed solo albums with Shanachie Entertainment, Clean Getaway may be the breakthrough that Curtis has been working toward. But the experiences of the past two years have given Curtis a new perspective.
Shortly after Curtis recovered from his life saving liver surgery, he recorded Clean Getaway, an album whose title has an obvious double meaning. Released on July 8, 2008, Clean Getaway is Curtis’s celebration of life, a sublime collaboration with the most respected session players in Los Angeles that goes to the heart of what music--and life--is all about.
Produced by Marlon McClain & Tony Braunagel, who is Steve Simon’s Music Director for his BLUZAPALOOZA concert tours, Clean Getaway is a seamless mix of blues, soul and rock 'n' roll all held together by the organic grooves of world class musicians and Curtis' superlative singing.
The title track, co-written by Curtis, reflects his love of the late, great Johnny "Guitar" Watson and effectively nails Watson's funkified mid-period Seventies style of such songs as "Ain't That A Bitch" and "A Real Mother For Ya." "Alone" is a percolating slab of Memphis R&B written by the under-rated Tommy Sims. "I Don't Want To Discuss It" is an obscure Little Richard tune, Curtis' favorite by the Georgia Peach; it has also been notably covered by Delaney & Bonnie. Curtis artfully blends the best of both versions. Another original, "20 Years Of BB King," is an impossibly clever song whose lyrics consist entirely of the titles of songs by BB King; instead of sounding like an entertaining gimmick it comes off as completely natural and effective.
Renowned Blues producer Steve Simon calls Curtis Salgado “the greatest Blues performer in the world.”
Curtis Salgado is the heir apparent to the great Blues throne.
Reba Russell
Queen of Memphis
Reba Russell, the reigning Queen of Memphis is one of the best contemporary Blues vocalists in the world today and The Reba Russell Band is blues at its roots.
Blues historian and Blues Revue Editor Art Tipaldi summed it all up in his Blues Wax article when he said, “I have been listening to Reba Russell since 1995. My first glimpse of her was on Beale Street at the Black Diamond on a Wednesday night. As she belted out the Blues, James Cotton came running in. He and Russell did a half hour of rockin’ Blues. 
Since then, I’ve been hooked on that voice. Reba Russell can belt it out down and dirty but she can also produce the most soulful vibrato a human voice can deliver. She can vent in one breath, roar in the next and then whisper with an amazingly honest and torrid delivery that just captivates your soul.”
Moreland & Arbuckle
Guitarist Aaron Moreland and harpist/vocalist Dustin Arbuckle have spent nearly a decade exploring the edges of American roots music. In the process – with help from the driving beat of drummer Brad Horner – Moreland & Arbuckle have forged a relentless and haunting sound that merges Delta blues, folk, rock, traditional country, soul and numerous other echoes and murmurs from an infinitely layered musical narrative that spans more than a century.
The Moreland & Arbuckle journey began when the two met at an open-mic jam at a club in Wichita, Kansas, in 2001. Moreland had just moved into town a few months earlier from Emporia – a city located some eighty-five miles to the northeast. A guitarist since age 15, his source material was admittedly diverse – Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Black Sabbath, Charley Patton, Motley Crue – but he’d settled into traditional blues by the time he’d arrived in Wichita in his mid-20s.
Arbuckle, a native of Wichita, had been playing in a blues rock bar band at the time, but his truest sensibilities ran a couple generations deeper, into the heart of the Mississippi Delta. He counts iconic figures like harpists Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williams and guitarist Son House among his most profound influences.
“It was kind of perfect,” says Arbuckle of the chance encounter between the two musicians. “We had a shared vision, in a place where there really wasn’t much interest in – or support for – country blues.”
Moreland joined Arbuckle’s blues rock band for the last few months before the project dissolved, then the two started a quartet called the Kingsnakes, which Arbuckle describes as “electrified Mississippi blues mixed with a sludgy, jam-oriented rock thing.” The project incorporated a range of sounds: soul, country, funk, jam rock, blues and whatever else worked. Horner joined in 2003, but left after just a few months. A few bass players came and went in the years that followed, until Moreland and Arbuckle discovered they could lay down a solid groove on their own – with the help of Horner, who had returned by the fall of 2006.
Then again, Moreland does his share of work at the bottom end. In addition to the more typical Telecaster and Les Paul guitars, his arsenal also includes a hand-crafted instrument consisting of four strings stretched across a cigar box. One string feeds into a bass amp, and the other three into a guitar amp. It’s a gritty, electrified descendent of the cigar box guitars played by countless Delta bluesmen of the early 1900s who, for all of their innate talents, were too impoverished to afford the real thing.
“There was no real adjustment for me,” Moreland says of his first encounter with the instrument, which was crafted by a friend in Memphis. “I just picked it up and played it. When I play a regular guitar, I hold down those bottom strings with my thumb and pluck those to get a kind of groove going. So when I first started playing the cigar box with the bass string, it just worked perfect with my style of playing.”
Moreland & Arbuckle crafted three self-produced album in rapid-fire succession – Caney Valley Blues in 2005, Floyd’s Market in 2006 and 1861 in 2008. “There have been times in the past when I’ve gone on a rant that we’re not writing enough,” says Moreland. “But then I look at our catalog and say, ‘Well, that’s stupid. We’ve put out all this stuff in a short period of time.’ When I look at it that way, I’d say we’re fairly prolific.”
In 2008 as part of Steve Simon’s BLUZAPALOOZA TOUR went to Iraq for nearly two weeks in the fall of 2008 to play for the American troops stationed there. “It was a crazy awesome experience,” says Moreland. “Super-grueling. Twelve days of about four hours of sleep per day. From a physical standpoint, it was pretty tough. But to go into a tattered, war-torn area where tens of thousands of fellow Americans were putting their lives on the line every day, minute by minute, was a very rewarding experience. I’d never experienced anything like it before.”
Moreland & Arbuckle make their debut on Telarc International, a division of Concord Music Group, with the February 2010 release of Flood. The album is the latest step in the trio’s never-ending quest to unearth the rawest and most honest elements of the American music tradition – without getting caught up in definitions and categories that would only serve to limit the vision.
“It’s hard to say exactly what we are and what we do,” says Arbuckle. “Blues is definitely at the core, but we’re huge fans of all sorts of American music, and all of that comes through as well. Obviously, there are elements of traditional country in what we do, elements of vintage rock and roll, soul and all that sort of stuff. We always try to stay grounded in that traditional blues center, and at the same time branch out and do as many different things as we can while still keeping it consistent with the sound we’ve developed.”
Nearly a decade into the journey, Flood represents a turning point in the Moreland & Arbuckle story – a new layer of excavation at that point in the road where powerful forces meet and new secrets are discovered. “The record is very spooky,” says Arbuckle. “We’ve never made a record before that has the earthy, spooky vibe that this one has. It creates an atmosphere that’s ripe for storytelling. There’s something about this music that makes you want to settle in and listen.”
Visit Moreland & Arbuckle's Website
The 9th Annual Steve Simon Johnnie Walker St. John Blues Festival
is brought to you by :
For further information contact
Steve Simon at 843-513-7777 or at stevesimonlive@yahoo.com