American Blues News - "Dedicated to the promotion and celebration of the Blues."

I have a lot on my mind these days. My mind is consumed by the blues. Blues in my personal life and blues in the music world. So many shows to go to, so little time to attend them. I have a busy week ahead of me with 3 shows in one weekend. First on the bill is Friday night at Madam's Organ In D.C. Saturday I will make the trek down to Lewisburg West Virginia to see Janiva Magness and blues great John Hammond. It should be a great weekend of blues, and you can expect to see pictures and show reviews in the near future.

The more I listen to the blues ... the more I hear up and coming bands ... the more I hear hungry local artists playing their hearts out for sometimes very small audiences, the more I fall in love with the blues. Small town bands like Eye Soar and The Rumblers , both bands out of the Front Royal Virginia area , play in local clubs with small but appreciative audiences. I realize that most of these bands are "stuck" playing these small clubs, but that doesn't lessen the fact that they are totally enjoyable musicians. Will these bands ever hit the big time? Probably not, but often times, they show up the so called big time bands.



Another band that is well worth checking out is The Bloody 9's out of West Virginia. They are a combination Blues. Punk Rock, Metal, Classic Rock band that is sure to blow your mind. I am especially excited about The Skyla Burrell Band from Pennsylvania. The band is fronted by Skyla Burrell. She takes the blues to a different level, going from traditional blues to more modern blues. She is a hot guitarist backed by a hot Pennsylvania band. Lisa Lim from Fredericksburg has proven over time that she can entertain a crowd. It's great to see females being such a force in the music word today. Ana Popovic , Laurie Morvan, Laura Chavez and others are showing the blues world that girls can play guitar too ... and pretty good, at that.



My goal at the web site is to seek out and find musicians, bands etc that are worthy of more attention, but are not getting it. A great place to check out up and coming as well as established acts is Madam's Organ in
Washington DC. It's a great place to watch a show, a great place to party, and it's smack dab in the middle of the DC action.

One very active blues musician is Debbie Davies. She has an interesting facebook page and actually does her own posts. It's great to see that many of the musicians are actually running ther facebook pages, unlike other celebrities who have somebody make their posts for them. DC favorites Tony Fazio and Stacy Brooks make regular posts, and actually respond to friends "hello's". A couple of my favorites on facebook have to be Gina Sicilia and Bob Margolin. Both of these artists make regular posts, and Gina posts many videos of her music or sometimes backstage Hello's to her many fans.

Some "misunderstood" artists who sometimes don't get the credit for being blues musicians are people like Lucinda Williams, Aerosmith, Bob Dylan, and even Amy Winehouse, to a smaller degree of course. Lucinda can sing with the best of 'em, and her music is deeply rooted in the blues. Aerosmith put out a blues CD recently and it was actually a pretty good one. It is hard to out a label on Bob Dylan's music, but all you have to do is listen to It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry from his amazing album titled Highway 61 Revisited to see that he has a definite blues sound to him. This is as good as it gets. While these artists may not be able to be labeled pure blues artists, they are, in my opinion, still good blues musicians.

As Lucinda Williams put it soooo well ... If all you're listening to is the main stream music, then you are missing out on so much good music. I couldn't agree more with Lucinda. Check out some of the artists we have mentioned in this article, and hopefully your horizons will be expanded. Look for articles on John Hammond, Jania Magness and The Skyla Burrell Band here. We have the Washington DC area covered, but if anyone has any up and coming bands that you feel deserves some attention, please feel free to EMail me at virginiabluesman@gmail.com. I can't promise we can cover these artists, but serious consideration will be given to all submissions.