TICKETS GO
ON SALE:
AUGUST 7, 2009
THE REICHHOLD CENTER
340-693-1559
$50: Zone "A" Covered Seats
$30: Zones "B" & "C" Uncovered Seats
The 1st annual
St. Thomas Blues Festival
Friday - January 22, 2010
8:00 PM at The Reichhold Center
The magnificent amphitheater on the grounds of the University of the Virgin Islands
Curtis Salgado | Trampled Under Foot | Eden Brent
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.
TRAMPLED UNDER FOOT
When was the last time you saw a three-piece family blues band with two left-handed guitarists? Let alone a blues band with three strong vocals, both female and male?
Trampled Under Foot, winners of the 2008 International Blues Challenge, is like no other band you will ever see or hear. Danielle is an amazing blues singer and an excellent bassist, her brother Kris fires right in the pocket on the drums and sings as well and brother Nick is a strong singer and an accomplished guitarist, winning the 2008 Albert King Award from the IBC.
For those of you who were at the 2009 Johnnie Walker St. John Blues Festival, you experienced the incredible magic of this world class band and the amazing talent of Danielle.
As Blues producer Steve Simon says,
“Danielle is the greatest female vocalist in the Blues today.”
Visit Trampled Under Foot's Website
EDEN BRENT
Two Time Blues Music Award Winner
Mississippi Number One is a tiny, two-lane state highway that meanders through blink-and-you'll-miss-'em communities like Rosedale, Benoit, Wayside, and Grace before it dead ends into Highway 61 at Onward.
In the masterful hands of blues and boogie pianist and vocalist Eden Brent, Mississippi Number One is a state of mind. The album, dedicated to her mother, the late Carole Brent, is Eden's debut for Yellow Dog Records and was released nationwide on April 15, 2008.
Both the self-penned title track and the album's leadoff song, "Mississippi Flatland Blues," which was written by Carole Brent, conjure up images of churning riverboats and prehistoric Indian mounds that rise like mysterious landmarks alongside the highway, the scent of honeysuckle at night, and the sounds that float from a raucous juke joint that stands at the end of a dirt road.
Critics laud Brent's "Bessie Smith meets Diana Krall meets Janis Joplin" attitude, compare her to jazz/pop dynamos Norah Jones and Sarah Vaughn, and wax effusively about that "whiskey-smoke" voice, which makes songs like "Darkness On The Delta" and Brent's own "All Over Me" unforgettable tunes.
Brent's supremely tasteful take on the classic "The Man I Love" makes you pause while time seemingly suspends around you, while an upbeat original, "Meet You Anywhere," encourages you to turn off your cell phone and re-engage in life.
Taken as a whole, Mississippi Number One serves as a uniquely southern correlation to the popular "slow life" movement, the aural interpretation of dictums established by food doyenne Alice Waters and Project Alabama designer Natalie Chanin.
The album fuses blues, soul, pop and jazz (after all, Greenville is located just a few hundred miles up the Mississippi river from New Orleans) into a heady roots-flavored concoction that turns lazy and lush on the bluesy "Why Don't You Do Right," heads straight to the kitchen for a rendition of fellow Greenvillian Jimmy Phillips' homespun "Fried Chicken," then veers into balladeer territory for her own "Afraid To Let Go."
Brent, who apprenticed with blues pioneer Boogaloo Ames for 16 years, actually grew up on Mississippi Number One, in a house located just north of Greenville, Miss., in the legendary Delta region that served as the birthplace for such iconoclasts as bluesman B. B. King, historian Shelby Foote, singer Mary Wilson, and puppeteer Jim Henson.
Her relationship with Ames was captured in the 1999 PBS documentary Boogaloo & Eden: Sustaining the Sound and in the 2002 South African production Forty Days in the Delta.
"A young woman made of less stern stuff would not have braved such an apprenticeship," writes author/journalist Julia Reed in the liner notes for Mississippi Number One. "Boogaloo was notoriously unreliable, often drunk, and never stayed in one place for long… but theirs is a phenomenal story of mutual admiration and need, of an unlikely but very real friendship that went well beyond that of student and teacher."
"Music school taught me to think, but Boogaloo taught me to boogie-woogie," says Brent, who achieved a Bachelor of Music while studying jazz at the University of North Texas, swept the Blues Foundation's 2006 International Blues Challenge, and was a 2004 inductee on the Greenville, Miss., Blues Walk.
Her unshakable talent and carefree demeanor have taken her across the country and around the world, with appearances at the Kennedy Center, the 2000 Republican National Convention, the venerable Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and tours of South Africa and Norway under her belt. Sharing a bill with B.B. King, Brent performed at the 2005 presidential inauguration, and solo, she's appeared at the British Embassy and at the My South celebration in New York. She's also burnished her reputation via appearances on radio shows like the syndicated Beale Street Caravan and XM's Live in the Studio at Bluesville, and at festivals like the Waterfront Blues Festival, Edmonton Blues Festival and the annual B.B. King Homecoming, and aboard the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise.
With the release of Mississippi Number One, Brent is now ready to take her place as one of the fresh voices propelling this vital American music forward. As Chip Eagle, publisher of Blues Revue, BluesWax, and Dirty Linen says, "in Eden's huge playing and singing you can hear the ghosts of Mississippi in duet with the future of the blues."
In late March, Eden toured Cairo,Egypt with Steve Simon on his BLUZAPALOOZA celebrity concert tour for the State Department and then in May, Eden won the Blues Music Awards for Acoustic Artist of the Year and Acoustic Album of the Year.
TICKETS GO ON SALE AUGUST 7, 2009 AT THE REICHHOLD CENTER
AND AT SELECT TICKET OUTLETS
Contact The Reichhold Center at
http://www.reichholdcenter.com
or call the Box Office at
340-693-1559
$50 For covered seats in
Zone "A"
$30 For uncovered seats in
Zone "B" & Zone "C"
For further information contact
Steve Simon at 340-643-6475 or at stevesimonlive@yahoo.com