2024 – Tampa Bay Blues Festival Tickets
2024 – Tampa Bay Blues Festival Tickets
*** FINAL DAY FOR DISCOUNTED TICKETS is March 31st 2024 ***
10th Anniversary Camping With the Blues
October 20-22, 2023
The venue is now the Florida Sand Music Ranch managed by the Will McLean Foundation. It was previously the Sertoma Youth Ranch, and its emphasis on music is now even stronger.
Day 1 Friday –
Day 2 Saturday –
Day 3 Sunday –
Lafayette Reid
TGRN True Grit Roots Network, LLC. Launches TGRN BLUES
Austin, TX, September 1, 2023 – TGRN True Grit Roots Network (TGRN), a Digital Radio Network dedicated to roots music, is pleased to announce the launch of TGRN BLUES, a 24×7, Digital Radio Channel dedicated to keeping the Blues alive and thriving as of September 5, 2023. TGRN BLUES is readily available through any streaming device in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom through our Mobile App, Live365 Player, Alexa, Roku, Samsung TV, Apple TV, and other popular streaming platforms. We are a FREE, non-subscription-based service for all Blues music fans to enjoy.
Led by Founder and CEO, Jonathan Richards, “TGRN BLUES fills a widening void of quality, original programming with educated and passionate Blues Personalities.” Vinny Marini, a veteran radio personality, and newly named Program Director of TGRN BLUES, feels the same, “It has been a dream to put together a group of Blues lovers & educators, to allow them to share their passion for this genre, and we are just beginning.”
Eleven radio personalities will bring a diverse mix of Blues along with R&B, Zydeco and Gospel programming from across North America. Radio Personalities include: The Real Lady A, Gina Coleman, Ray Brown, Angela Easley, Holly Harris, Jeff Hayes, “Big Daddy” Ray Hansen, Amber Hill, “Memphis” Mark Sonnemann, Vinny Marini, and Jonathan “Oogie” Richards.
More information for show schedules and station news is available at TGRN.net (info@tgrn.net TGRN True Grit Roots Network – Austin, TX
Book Review: Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson
Every popular music genre has its stories, legends, and famous characters. For the Blues, no legend is bigger than the story of Robert Johnson. As the tale goes, on a clear Mississippi night, Robert went down to the crossroads of Highway 61 and Highway 49 and struck a deal with the Devil, selling his soul for the ability to play guitar better than any man alive.
The story of Robert Johnson and the Devil has been around for almost 90 years. While it lurked in Mississippi for its first few decades, when the Blues gained popularity through Rock and Roll in the 1960s, Robert’s legend grew. Although there are many other stories of musicians dealing with the Devil, Robert Johnson’s is perhaps the most popular.
But is it true?
If you go to Clarksdale, Mississippi, home of the famous Crossroads sign, locals will be quick to tell you that Highway 61 isn’t where it used to be, and that the real crossroads is up the road, north of Clarksdale. There isn’t much at the old intersection of Highway 61 and Highway 49. There isn’t much to prove Robert Johnson was or wasn’t there.
Proof has been difficult to come by for Blues researchers. Fortunately for those of us who value the truth and who are curious what the real story is, writers Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow published Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson in 2019. As a fellow writer who used the crossroads, Robert Johnson, and the Devil in my own novel Curveball at the Crossroads, I found Up Jumped the Devil incredible.
Up Jumped the Devil is the product of 50 years of research. Conforth and Wardlow conducted interviews with people throughout Mississippi for decades. They combed county and state census records, filings, and licenses. They dug through the archives and annals to find whatever they could about Robert Johnson.
It is hard to believe given today’s omnipotent media and communications that 100 years ago someone could disappear and reappear at whim, especially in the rural areas of the United States. At the time, most of Mississippi was rural and especially in the Black community, records were often sparse or done haphazardly. This makes retracing the steps of a wandering musician very difficult. And most Bluesmen were itinerant wanderers. They would travel from town to town, play different juke joints, rest with family or friends or new found lover, and take the train, hitch a ride, or walk to the next town for the next night’s gig. Although it is romanticized now, there was nothing glorious about the life of a Bluesman in the early 20th century.
There was one big way a wandering Bluesman in the 1930s could increase his value on the road and put money in his pocket – recording an album. Conforth and Wardlow go into detail about Johnson’s two recording sessions. They discuss the songs, the order in which they were recorded, and the technology used. They also detail the environment around Johnson and what Johnson might have been doing during his time in Dallas and San Antonio. Although electric Blues was starting to make inroads, and acoustic Blues was already losing favor in popular audiences when Johnson recorded, the record companies thought they had something in Johnson’s talent and unique style. Generations of musicians have Vocalion Records to thank.
Although I gave Up Jumped the Devil a 5-star rating on Goodreads.com, I have two critiques with the book. The first is that the legend of the deal at the crossroads is glossed over. I would like to have read a chapter on how the legend grew and how it has been displayed in media. Conforth and Wardlow’s premise is that they debunk the myth, but they give little background on how it has grown to its current stature. I guess for that I will have to read Adam Gussow’s Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition (2017).
My second critique is the need to separate the art from the artist. Not of Robert Johnson, who while a guitar genius was also a heavy drinker and womanizer, but of writer Bruce Conforth. A highly recognized name in music history and former curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Conforth’s reputation took a huge blow when he was accused of sexually harassing and stalking students while working as a professor at University of Michigan. He was recommended to resign after over ten years of accusations. Take knowledge from the book without praising the author.
Did Robert Johnson go to the crossroads and make a deal with the Devil? Some of his lyrics say he might have. If he didn’t, how did he learn a technique that has influenced the Blues and Rock ‘n’ Roll for decades? To find out, you will have to read Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson.
Bio: Michael Lortz is a music and sports writer from Tampa. He has been a Blues fan for decades and has twice visited the Crossroads tourist marker in Clarksdale. He is the author of the Blues-baseball novel Curveball at the Crossroads.
Sticks & Strings
In September 2023, Kight released her 10th blues album, STICKS & STRINGS which again features the EG Kight Trio in a simple, acoustic setting. EG and her “boys,” as she affectionately calls them – Gary Porter and Ken Wynn – offer a wide variety of blues/roots music with these songs, nine of which were written or co-written by Kight. EG and the “boys” put on a great show for your Suncoast Blues Society at the Palladium Side Door in June – after listening to her new CD (several times!), we hope to have them back for a CD release party. One of our members, Gary Weeks, wrote a review for us.
Dublin, Georgia artist EG Kight has been a road warrior for many years. At the clubs, festivals, ans WRFG Blues Barbeques in Atlanta, GA, her style of Southern blues always goes over well with the audiences who wish to lie back and let the music wash over them.
The acoustic harp driven “Talk to Me” kicks off the album and its front porch ambience conveys the down-home vibe Kight brings to her music. No blues rock here folks. Just sweet Southern Soul that is a gulp of fresh air carrying into album cut, “If You Have No Reservations,” which could have been recorded in Muscle Shoals Studio.
The big surprise is Kight’s rendering of the Allman Brothers classic, “Come and Go Blues.” In EG’s hands, the tune is an acoustic laid-back gem that the late Gregg Allman would have admired.
“Already Gone,” with its snaky slide lines, sounds like it was conceived in the Mississippi mud well after midnight. The introspective “All Things Considered” sees Kight climbing out of the well of despair to reach for the light. The pace heats a tad bit in “God, Goats and Guitars” and really warms up in “My Baby’s Hiding Something,” with harp and acoustic guitar playing pushing this number on a delicious groove.
Kight’s percussive acoustic attack pushes “Two Sides To Every Story” into defiant ground until “Changes Coming Down” trots out to the Western Plains with its country blues lines. And EG Kight has no problems switching into victory mode with “I Won’t Ever Give Up.”
Kight’s acoustic guitar stands at the forefront of the CD which goes to show heavy amplification and loud guitars don’t need to make the music. This philosophy has served Kight well. No need to change anything.
Gary Weeks