Andrew Sullivan met his music teacher at an Alice Cooper concert when he was six. By the time he was 11 he’d shared the stage with Cheap Trick, performed with Blues Oyster Cult and Gary Hoey and player the Biscuit. He plays keyboards, drums and trumpet, but guitar is his favorite. “They all have different tones, and they’re fun to play, and it’s fun to have a lot ’cause I can experiment with different sounds.”
This 16-year-old guitarist was named Youth Performer of The Year in 2018 and 2017 by the Colorado Blues Society in their Member’s Choice Awards. She’s played the Biscuit as well as Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge, The Big Blues Bender and The Greeley Blues Jam. She sat in with The North Mississippi Allstars in 2016.
The Biscuit welcomes this family band from Sulphur Springs which plays Texas blues. Singer and guitarist “Diamond” Jack Holdsworth has recruited the whole family into the act, with wife Elan on bass, daughter Dani at the drums, and son DR showing talent beyond his years on vocals and guitar. They list their influences as Stevie Ray Vaughn, Albert King, Howlin’ Wolf, BB King, Freddie King, Jimmy Vaughn, Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin, Son House, Muddy Waters, Lightnin Hopkins, Sam Carr, Jack Johnson, Frank Frost, and Pinetop Perkins.
Eighty-four-year-old Clarence Sims, aka The West Coast Godfather of The Game, aka The Pope of Pimping is an expimp who estimates in his 1999 documentary American Pimp that in his entire career he had more than 9000 prostitutes working for him. The 14 originals on Fillmore Slim’s 2007 The Legend of Fillmore Slim album profile a character whose music is somewhere between Bo Diddley’s “I’m A Man” braggadocio and Snoop Dogg shout outs. His music is full of colorful references to the kind of scenes Willie Dixon could only imagine. Slim’s lived them. “I got a knock at the door,” he sings on the title cut. “I looked up and there was the man. I was put away for a long time. I paid my dues, and now I play the guitar in my hand.”
If you made up Marcus Lamont Cartwright, who some call “Mookie,” as a fictional bluesman in a Hollywood movie or a Broadway show, chances are the character would be rewritten for being too unbelievable. He just couldn’t be that stereotypically perfect. Acoustic bluesmen have acted in similar roles. Guy Davis played in Mulebone and Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil. Chris Thomas King played Tommy Johnson in Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou; Keb Mo played Robert Johnson in Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl. All of them acted well, but Marcus Cartwright is not acting. He could play all those roles because, at the tender age of 22, he wouldn’t have to learn the part – he already lives it. Everything anybody has ever imagined about long lost personas of idealized bluesmen, Marcus Cartwright is in real life today. He’s been shot at, has seen his action of entering and fleeing out “my husband just now left” back doors, and a whole lot more. Yes, the cliché teaches us that reality can be stranger than fiction. Marcus Cartwright is really all that and then some.
Alabama Bluesman Brotha Ric Patton will host Thursday’s Front Porch Blues Bash Jam to kick off the Annual Front Porch Blues Bash at the DCC Miller Annex. The jam provides the perfect opportunity for many of King Biscuit’s festival-goers to show off their own talents as musicians. Everyone interested is invited to participate in the annual free event, sign the participation sheet, and demonstrate their blues skills to their fellow fans during the 2-hour affair.
This act is as close as we’ll ever get to capturing the treasure of a Muddy Waters performance in Muddy’s heyday. Each member has an up close and intimate tie to the heritage of Muddy Waters’ Chicago blues royalty extending back to the ’50s and ’60s. Each walks the tightrope between that electric legacy sound that changed American popular music for the next 60 years and today’s contemporary blues. Living history performed with consummate style.
Blues journalist Stacy Jeffress has described The Mississippi Spoonman a.k.a Bob Rowell as “a man who can coax more music out of a pair of spoons than she can out of radio.” An annual performer at the Biscuit, he’s lived in Helena for a decade and a half. He told Stacy, “I wanted to listen to blues, I wanted to be where the blues is really from. The real deal’s here. It’s life. I see it. I know what it’s about. Hopefully I can write about it and make it real for somebody.” He’s been in rock bands and heavy metal bands where he’d entertain the other band members by setting his spoons on fie and then play them. He’s still an incendiary performer.
A Helena, Arkansas native, Sterling was born into the blues, is a walking encyclopedia of the genre, and a talented guitarist who loves to showcase others in his band. He also happens to be President of The Sonny Boy Blues Society and Music Chairman of The King Biscuit Blues Festival. He does not consider it hyperbole when he calls the Biscuit The Holy Grail of blues festivals.
CW Gatlin is an Arkansas Delta native and a regular at the Biscuit. A lifelong friend of Levon Helm, he’s also performed with The Band, appearing on their 1993 Jericho album. Like The Band, his music has elements of rock, country and he’s a member of The Rockabilly Hall of Fame. In his long career he has performed with Mack Self, W.S. Holland of Johnny Cash’s band The Tennessee Three, Robert Nighthawk, Ace Cannon, Paul Burlison, Frank Frost and Sam Carr of The Jelly Roll Kings.
Reba’s “Heaven Came to Helena” has become the festival’s unofficial signature song. Reba was Memphis’ top rocker until Rufus Thomas heard her in a cover band in 1992 and told her, ‘Ya got it! You use it! Do it!’ She’s done background vocals for John Nemeth, Tracy Nelson, Huey Lewis & The News, Jimmy Thackery, and Jim Dickinson. That’s Reba on background vocals for U2 and B.B. King on “When Love Comes to Town” on Rattle & Hum recorded in 1990 at Sun Studios. But it’s the Biscuit that puts the fire in her belly. “Being here made me realize that there’s a lot more to this music stuff than I ever expected, and everybody that plays here can kick ass. So, it was like, yeah, I’m doing this come hell or high water. I don’t care, but until I kinda gave myself over to (realizing) Delta roots music was what was moving me, I was just peddling till then. Memphis is blues, but King Biscuit is the freaking deal. This is it. It’s like are you kidding me?”
Jesse Cotton Stone weaves together the stylistic threads of definitive regional styles of the Blues ranging from Pre-War Acoustic Delta Blues, Electric Juke Joint Boogie, North Mississippi Hill Country, and Cotton Patch Soul Blues to the Urban Chicago Blues Roots of Soul-Funk and Psychedelic Rock, bringing his listeners through the doors of a Heart-Wrenching Boutique of Vintage-Toned American Blues Music with relentless showmanship of a True Entertainer. Jesse Cotton Stone creates a comprehensive scope of the Original American Music, not only by playing his role in keeping the traditions of Blues music alive, but also by contributing to the evolution of this Storytelling Tradition with his own Original Flavor of what he calls “HELLCOUNTRY” and “Electric-Cotton Soul” Blues.
His soulful sax backed by his tight band have been perennial favorites at the Biscuit. He is the grandson of Houston Stackhouse who was one of the King Biscuit Boys on King Biscuit Time radio show from 1946 into the ’60s. The third generation of Stackhouses to call Helena home, Phillip carries on a family tradition of blues artists who’ve played with Delta royalty from Sonny Boy Williamson and Pinetop Perkins to Robert Nighthawk.
There’s a yin and a yang to Anson Funerburgh. His electric guitar burns with Texas fire that Guitar Player Magazine compared to Otis Rush and Magic Sam. But his guitar can also soothe as the subtle support for Delta blues vocalists who have included Sam Myers, Nick Nixon, and Alabama Mike. Anson has that Austin strut, but his Delta creds are highlighted by being the only artist to have played all of Arkansas’ King Biscuit Blues Festivals.
Andy Talamantez spent 23 years in the aerospace industry before becoming a fulltime blues guitarist, first with Nick Nixon, a veteran Nashville blues singer whose background included jamming with a young Jimi Hendrix. When Nixon retired in 2016, Andy T. teamed with Alabama Mike releasing his fourth album Double Strike co-produced with Anson Funderburgh, the only artist to have appeared at all the King Biscuit Blues Festivals. Both Nixon and Alabama Mike handled vocals reminiscent of Sam Myers, Funderburgh’s late vocalist. Andy T.’s early influence was Eric Clapton, but he honed his style playing with Smokey Wilson and Guitar Shorty in the late ’90s.
Ms. Margie Turner hails out of Eldorado, AK. She began singing at age 8 at Union Ark Baptist Church. At the age of 12 she moved with her family to Oakland, CA. Margie began singing the Blues at an early age while being chaperoned by her mother. Her skills and vocal stylings eventually led her to Dallas, TX where she met and background sang for Johnny Taylor and she eventually became an opening act for Marvin Sease. Today, Margie shares her talent on stages in the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area with her band, The Outback Blues Band, and has performed on various festivals including The Hayward/Russell City Blues Festival, Oakland’s Art & Soul Festival, The Dusk til Dawn Festival, Rentiesville, OK, The King Biscuit Blues Festival, W. Helena, AK and at countless venues throughout California. Margie’s performance is “Delta Smooth” with a little “Oakland Grit”. It’s Blues that will make you wanna’ dance or, most certainly pat your feet.
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Earnestine Barze , “Lady E”, was born in Glendora, Mississippi, the state that has produced more blues men and women than any other state in the US. Earnestine loved to sing and dance when she was young. In 1971 she migrated to California, continuing her education and receiving a degree in Business. Shortly after, Earnestine began singing again. Her Gospel roots made it an easy transition for her into the R&B and Blues scene. She performs at many clubs in Oakland, the surrounding Bay Area and throughout California. She has performed on the Monterey Blues Festival, Hayward-Russell City Blues Festival, The Red, White, & Blues Festival Stage, Alameda CA County Fair, and at The King Biscuit Blues Festival, W. Helena, AK. When on stage, in true Mississippi tradition, “Lady E” delivers a raw energy, soulful performance one you will remember and she will tell you, that’s what she’s about.
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DeJeana Burkes was born and raised in Detroit, MI. Growing up vibin’ with the Motown sound and singing in church is how DeJeana developed her interest in both music and production. DeJeana spent all of her babysitting money as a teenager going to the Motown Revue, watching them sing and perfect their acts before hitting the road. It was in those seats she decided she could both sing and produce shows. Today, she resides in Richmond, CA in the San Francisco Bay Area. She performs locally in clubs, on festivals and is a producer of the North Richmond Music Festival. She has performed on the Polk Street Festival, San Francisco, Hayward Russell City Blues Festival, Richmond Juneteenth, Blues Ball, Medicine Park, OK and The King Biscuit Blues Festival in Arkansas. When DeJeana hits the stage it’s all business. While witnessing her passion, drive, and sass coupled with her strong vocals and melodic tones audiences do understand what she means when she exclaims “When you’ve got Burkes, It Works and the “It” is, she leaves It all on the stage to enjoy.
According to Blues Blast Magazine, “he’s one part soul crooner (as on the title track), one part guitar hero (as on ‘Blues Mama’ and ‘Gone Too Long’) and one part dance-track master (as on ‘Bourbon Street Bounce’).” Jamiah grew up in a household of musicians. The first hands-on experience with music came at the age of three. Jamiah’s father and guitarist, Tony Rogers, had a band that rehearsed every now and then in the basement of [their] home. On ten of his original songs, he brings out the best of his blues abilities and those of his co-musicians.
2018 $25,000 Kresge Fellowship Awardee and the official “Detroit’s Queen of Blues” Thornetta Davis’ latest CD Honest Woman, which she wrote and produced, has won over 30 Detroit Music Awards including eight DMAs in 2017. Thornetta is a six time National BLUES MUSIC AWARDS Nominee including two for the 2021 BMAs for “Best Soul/Blues female and Best instrumentalists/vocals. Thornetta also received a French 2017 La Academie du Jazz Award for Best Blues Album. Thornetta’s live performances will leave you feeling uplifted and asking for more. Supported by some of the best musicians all hailing from Detroit MI.
New York Music Daily says “What better place than Lincoln Center for Thornetta Davis.” “In an era where the blues has become a legacy style, like bluegrass and roots reggae – and a lot of bands play it like it’s an artifact in a museum – Davis and her band are a blast of fresh air.” AXS Gary Schwind says “Thornetta Davis is a Blues Powerhouse.”
Down Beat Magazine 2018 Monterey Jazz Fest performance “Thornetta, sang with no-nonsense sass, fearless in her missives against lovers, as she preached the blues.” Barry Kerzner of American Blues Scene says of her latest CD “Honest Woman’ by Thornetta Davis, “It’s Everything an Album Should Be.”
The Fabulous Thunderbirds is best known for their 1986 hit “Tuff Enuff.” A rallying cry for nearly four decades, the song has never meant more than it does right now. It was written by lead singer and harmonica player Kim Wilson whose history with Biscuit goes way back to when he donated money to the Sonny Boy Blues Society to try and save Sonny Boy Williamson’s Helena home. Wilson, who founded The T-Birds in 1976 feels the current lineup is the best yet. It features 12-year band veteran and guitarist Johnny Moeller. “The good thing about Johnny is he’s got his own take on things,” Wilson explained. “He really has his own style. That’s very important to me. I need people who really have their own minds. I don’t want to hear somebody [imitating] Johnny Guitar Watson or B.B. King. I’d rather hear people do their own deal.”
Paul Thorn all but stole the show from B.B. King at King Biscuit in 2010. His 2018 album, Don’t Let The Devil Ride debuted in the Billboard Top 100 the first week of release. Thorn calls the music on the album dance pole gospel: “If you listen to the music that’s really sexy sounding, it sounds exactly like the music we sang in church when I was growing up. When we’d go visit the black churches, it was raunchy, man. It was spiritual, but it almost had a sexual undertone to it, and that’s what you hear on some of these songs on this record.” “Every time I play a festival, I don’t want the last slot. You get more people to see you when you go on next to last ’cause when you go on last, they’re gonna be leavin’ on your last song which is a bummer. When you’re playing that last song, and you’re the headliner, you’re watching people walk out as you’re singing. That’s a bummer, man!”
Blues journalist Stacy Jeffress has described The Mississippi Spoonman a.k.a Bob Rowell as “a man who can coax more music out of a pair of spoons than she can out of radio.” An annual performer at the Biscuit, he’s lived in Helena for a decade and a half. He told Stacy, “I wanted to listen to blues, I wanted to be where the blues is really from. The real deal’s here. It’s life. I see it. I know what it’s about. Hopefully I can write about it and make it real for somebody.” He’s been in rock bands and heavy metal bands where he’d entertain the other band members by setting his spoons on fie and then play them. He’s still an incendiary performer.
Billy Branch is a true Chicago blues legacy. He was one of the first to develop a blues in the schools program and has made over 70 international tours. A three-time GRAMMY® nominee, he’s backed by The Sons of The Blues, a band of veterans that includes bass player Nick Charles, drummer Mose Rutues Jr., and pianist Sumito Ariyoshi, aka Ariyo.This year Billy Branch teams up with a Legend with a capital L. Bobby Rush! Bobby Rush! Bobby Rush! The mantra has been ringing out at the Biscuit from the beginning. Known the world over as the King of the Chitlin Circuit, he is one of the Biscuit’s most beloved members of our extended family. He keeps re-inventing himself year in and year out. As fundamental as blues itself, he is a walking history lesson in the form. His 2019 CD Sitting on Top of The Blues says it all, coming on the heels of his 2017 Grammy-winning Porcupine Meat as Best Traditional Blues Album. But we knew him back when, and we embrace him as the visionary he’s always been as we head into a new world order.
The half-century legacy of southern rock’s premiere band The Allman Brothers with their treasured classics like “Whipping Post” and “Midnight Rider” lives on in Saturday night’s headliner the Allman Betts Band, featuring Gregg Allman’s son Devon Allman and Dickey Betts’ son Duane Betts.
Both artists earned their musical chops at the feet of their legendary fathers. Their Biscuit appearance comes on the heels of a 60-date world tour in 2019 and the release of their debut album Down to the River, the culmination of a 31-year history of playing with each other.
Devon Allman told Forbes magazine: “On stage every night we have a certain responsibility to tip the hat to our dads. And what I think balances the legacy, but also moving forward as our own men and as our own musicians, is balancing the two. So, if we have a set that’s 17 songs, we’re going to play a couple Allman Brothers songs. We’re not going to fill our set, but we’re also not going to turn our back on it. The balance is everything and I think that we’ve been lucky to strike that balance.”
“I’ll Take You There,” The Staple Singers’ 1972 number one Billboard Hot 100 hit, has taken on more poignant meaning for all humanity in this year of the pandemic.
This song was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame in 1999 and remains the most successful and recognizable single of the Staples’ half-century-long career. Forty-eight years later, that inspirational song remains the centerpiece of Friday’s headliner Mavis Staples’ repertoire. And she’s just one of more than 100 storied acts performing during four days at the south’s premiere blues festival in the heart of the Delta on the banks of the Mississippi River.
“You can root her in the church. You can root her in the blues. You can root her in jazz It doesn’t matter. She is ageless and genre-less because she brings joy,” says Cheryl Pawelski, co-founder of Ominvore Entertainment Group, who has spent 25 years of reserving, curating and championing some of music’s greatest legacies. “Mavis is, as the continuing voice of the Staple Singers, is just pure, shear joy, and that cuts through every genre. That cuts through every era.”
Mavis recently told NPR: “I’m happiest when I’m singing. I’m just grateful that I have so many fans that still want to hear me, you know, and grateful to the record company for making room for me to continue. It’s my gift — it’s what God put me here for, I do believe.”
Andrew Sullivan met his music teacher at an Alice Cooper concert when he was six. By the time he was 11 he’d shared the stage with Cheap Trick, performed with Blues Oyster Cult and Gary Hoey and player the Biscuit. He plays keyboards, drums and trumpet, but guitar is his favorite. “They all have different tones, and they’re fun to play, and it’s fun to have a lot ’cause I can experiment with different sounds.”
This 16-year-old guitarist was named Youth Performer of The Year in 2018 and 2017 by the Colorado Blues Society in their Member’s Choice Awards. She’s played the Biscuit as well as Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge, The Big Blues Bender and The Greeley Blues Jam. She sat in with The North Mississippi Allstars in 2016.
The Biscuit welcomes this family band from Sulphur Springs which plays Texas blues. Singer and guitarist “Diamond” Jack Holdsworth has recruited the whole family into the act, with wife Elan on bass, daughter Dani at the drums, and son DR showing talent beyond his years on vocals and guitar. They list their influences as Stevie Ray Vaughn, Albert King, Howlin’ Wolf, BB King, Freddie King, Jimmy Vaughn, Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin, Son House, Muddy Waters, Lightnin Hopkins, Sam Carr, Jack Johnson, Frank Frost, and Pinetop Perkins.
Eighty-four-year-old Clarence Sims, aka The West Coast Godfather of The Game, aka The Pope of Pimping is an expimp who estimates in his 1999 documentary American Pimp that in his entire career he had more than 9000 prostitutes working for him. The 14 originals on Fillmore Slim’s 2007 The Legend of Fillmore Slim album profile a character whose music is somewhere between Bo Diddley’s “I’m A Man” braggadocio and Snoop Dogg shout outs. His music is full of colorful references to the kind of scenes Willie Dixon could only imagine. Slim’s lived them. “I got a knock at the door,” he sings on the title cut. “I looked up and there was the man. I was put away for a long time. I paid my dues, and now I play the guitar in my hand.”
If you made up Marcus Lamont Cartwright, who some call “Mookie,” as a fictional bluesman in a Hollywood movie or a Broadway show, chances are the character would be rewritten for being too unbelievable. He just couldn’t be that stereotypically perfect. Acoustic bluesmen have acted in similar roles. Guy Davis played in Mulebone and Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil. Chris Thomas King played Tommy Johnson in Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou; Keb Mo played Robert Johnson in Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl. All of them acted well, but Marcus Cartwright is not acting. He could play all those roles because, at the tender age of 22, he wouldn’t have to learn the part – he already lives it. Everything anybody has ever imagined about long lost personas of idealized bluesmen, Marcus Cartwright is in real life today. He’s been shot at, has seen his action of entering and fleeing out “my husband just now left” back doors, and a whole lot more. Yes, the cliché teaches us that reality can be stranger than fiction. Marcus Cartwright is really all that and then some.
Alabama Bluesman Brotha Ric Patton will host Thursday’s Front Porch Blues Bash Jam to kick off the Annual Front Porch Blues Bash at the DCC Miller Annex. The jam provides the perfect opportunity for many of King Biscuit’s festival-goers to show off their own talents as musicians. Everyone interested is invited to participate in the annual free event, sign the participation sheet, and demonstrate their blues skills to their fellow fans during the 2-hour affair.
This act is as close as we’ll ever get to capturing the treasure of a Muddy Waters performance in Muddy’s heyday. Each member has an up close and intimate tie to the heritage of Muddy Waters’ Chicago blues royalty extending back to the ’50s and ’60s. Each walks the tightrope between that electric legacy sound that changed American popular music for the next 60 years and today’s contemporary blues. Living history performed with consummate style.
Blues journalist Stacy Jeffress has described The Mississippi Spoonman a.k.a Bob Rowell as “a man who can coax more music out of a pair of spoons than she can out of radio.” An annual performer at the Biscuit, he’s lived in Helena for a decade and a half. He told Stacy, “I wanted to listen to blues, I wanted to be where the blues is really from. The real deal’s here. It’s life. I see it. I know what it’s about. Hopefully I can write about it and make it real for somebody.” He’s been in rock bands and heavy metal bands where he’d entertain the other band members by setting his spoons on fie and then play them. He’s still an incendiary performer.
A Helena, Arkansas native, Sterling was born into the blues, is a walking encyclopedia of the genre, and a talented guitarist who loves to showcase others in his band. He also happens to be President of The Sonny Boy Blues Society and Music Chairman of The King Biscuit Blues Festival. He does not consider it hyperbole when he calls the Biscuit The Holy Grail of blues festivals.
CW Gatlin is an Arkansas Delta native and a regular at the Biscuit. A lifelong friend of Levon Helm, he’s also performed with The Band, appearing on their 1993 Jericho album. Like The Band, his music has elements of rock, country and he’s a member of The Rockabilly Hall of Fame. In his long career he has performed with Mack Self, W.S. Holland of Johnny Cash’s band The Tennessee Three, Robert Nighthawk, Ace Cannon, Paul Burlison, Frank Frost and Sam Carr of The Jelly Roll Kings.
Reba’s “Heaven Came to Helena” has become the festival’s unofficial signature song. Reba was Memphis’ top rocker until Rufus Thomas heard her in a cover band in 1992 and told her, ‘Ya got it! You use it! Do it!’ She’s done background vocals for John Nemeth, Tracy Nelson, Huey Lewis & The News, Jimmy Thackery, and Jim Dickinson. That’s Reba on background vocals for U2 and B.B. King on “When Love Comes to Town” on Rattle & Hum recorded in 1990 at Sun Studios. But it’s the Biscuit that puts the fire in her belly. “Being here made me realize that there’s a lot more to this music stuff than I ever expected, and everybody that plays here can kick ass. So, it was like, yeah, I’m doing this come hell or high water. I don’t care, but until I kinda gave myself over to (realizing) Delta roots music was what was moving me, I was just peddling till then. Memphis is blues, but King Biscuit is the freaking deal. This is it. It’s like are you kidding me?”
Jesse Cotton Stone weaves together the stylistic threads of definitive regional styles of the Blues ranging from Pre-War Acoustic Delta Blues, Electric Juke Joint Boogie, North Mississippi Hill Country, and Cotton Patch Soul Blues to the Urban Chicago Blues Roots of Soul-Funk and Psychedelic Rock, bringing his listeners through the doors of a Heart-Wrenching Boutique of Vintage-Toned American Blues Music with relentless showmanship of a True Entertainer. Jesse Cotton Stone creates a comprehensive scope of the Original American Music, not only by playing his role in keeping the traditions of Blues music alive, but also by contributing to the evolution of this Storytelling Tradition with his own Original Flavor of what he calls “HELLCOUNTRY” and “Electric-Cotton Soul” Blues.
His soulful sax backed by his tight band have been perennial favorites at the Biscuit. He is the grandson of Houston Stackhouse who was one of the King Biscuit Boys on King Biscuit Time radio show from 1946 into the ’60s. The third generation of Stackhouses to call Helena home, Phillip carries on a family tradition of blues artists who’ve played with Delta royalty from Sonny Boy Williamson and Pinetop Perkins to Robert Nighthawk.
There’s a yin and a yang to Anson Funerburgh. His electric guitar burns with Texas fire that Guitar Player Magazine compared to Otis Rush and Magic Sam. But his guitar can also soothe as the subtle support for Delta blues vocalists who have included Sam Myers, Nick Nixon, and Alabama Mike. Anson has that Austin strut, but his Delta creds are highlighted by being the only artist to have played all of Arkansas’ King Biscuit Blues Festivals.
Andy Talamantez spent 23 years in the aerospace industry before becoming a fulltime blues guitarist, first with Nick Nixon, a veteran Nashville blues singer whose background included jamming with a young Jimi Hendrix. When Nixon retired in 2016, Andy T. teamed with Alabama Mike releasing his fourth album Double Strike co-produced with Anson Funderburgh, the only artist to have appeared at all the King Biscuit Blues Festivals. Both Nixon and Alabama Mike handled vocals reminiscent of Sam Myers, Funderburgh’s late vocalist. Andy T.’s early influence was Eric Clapton, but he honed his style playing with Smokey Wilson and Guitar Shorty in the late ’90s.
Ms. Margie Turner hails out of Eldorado, AK. She began singing at age 8 at Union Ark Baptist Church. At the age of 12 she moved with her family to Oakland, CA. Margie began singing the Blues at an early age while being chaperoned by her mother. Her skills and vocal stylings eventually led her to Dallas, TX where she met and background sang for Johnny Taylor and she eventually became an opening act for Marvin Sease. Today, Margie shares her talent on stages in the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area with her band, The Outback Blues Band, and has performed on various festivals including The Hayward/Russell City Blues Festival, Oakland’s Art & Soul Festival, The Dusk til Dawn Festival, Rentiesville, OK, The King Biscuit Blues Festival, W. Helena, AK and at countless venues throughout California. Margie’s performance is “Delta Smooth” with a little “Oakland Grit”. It’s Blues that will make you wanna’ dance or, most certainly pat your feet.
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Earnestine Barze , “Lady E”, was born in Glendora, Mississippi, the state that has produced more blues men and women than any other state in the US. Earnestine loved to sing and dance when she was young. In 1971 she migrated to California, continuing her education and receiving a degree in Business. Shortly after, Earnestine began singing again. Her Gospel roots made it an easy transition for her into the R&B and Blues scene. She performs at many clubs in Oakland, the surrounding Bay Area and throughout California. She has performed on the Monterey Blues Festival, Hayward-Russell City Blues Festival, The Red, White, & Blues Festival Stage, Alameda CA County Fair, and at The King Biscuit Blues Festival, W. Helena, AK. When on stage, in true Mississippi tradition, “Lady E” delivers a raw energy, soulful performance one you will remember and she will tell you, that’s what she’s about.
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DeJeana Burkes was born and raised in Detroit, MI. Growing up vibin’ with the Motown sound and singing in church is how DeJeana developed her interest in both music and production. DeJeana spent all of her babysitting money as a teenager going to the Motown Revue, watching them sing and perfect their acts before hitting the road. It was in those seats she decided she could both sing and produce shows. Today, she resides in Richmond, CA in the San Francisco Bay Area. She performs locally in clubs, on festivals and is a producer of the North Richmond Music Festival. She has performed on the Polk Street Festival, San Francisco, Hayward Russell City Blues Festival, Richmond Juneteenth, Blues Ball, Medicine Park, OK and The King Biscuit Blues Festival in Arkansas. When DeJeana hits the stage it’s all business. While witnessing her passion, drive, and sass coupled with her strong vocals and melodic tones audiences do understand what she means when she exclaims “When you’ve got Burkes, It Works and the “It” is, she leaves It all on the stage to enjoy.
According to Blues Blast Magazine, “he’s one part soul crooner (as on the title track), one part guitar hero (as on ‘Blues Mama’ and ‘Gone Too Long’) and one part dance-track master (as on ‘Bourbon Street Bounce’).” Jamiah grew up in a household of musicians. The first hands-on experience with music came at the age of three. Jamiah’s father and guitarist, Tony Rogers, had a band that rehearsed every now and then in the basement of [their] home. On ten of his original songs, he brings out the best of his blues abilities and those of his co-musicians.
2018 $25,000 Kresge Fellowship Awardee and the official “Detroit’s Queen of Blues” Thornetta Davis’ latest CD Honest Woman, which she wrote and produced, has won over 30 Detroit Music Awards including eight DMAs in 2017. Thornetta is a six time National BLUES MUSIC AWARDS Nominee including two for the 2021 BMAs for “Best Soul/Blues female and Best instrumentalists/vocals. Thornetta also received a French 2017 La Academie du Jazz Award for Best Blues Album. Thornetta’s live performances will leave you feeling uplifted and asking for more. Supported by some of the best musicians all hailing from Detroit MI.
New York Music Daily says “What better place than Lincoln Center for Thornetta Davis.” “In an era where the blues has become a legacy style, like bluegrass and roots reggae – and a lot of bands play it like it’s an artifact in a museum – Davis and her band are a blast of fresh air.” AXS Gary Schwind says “Thornetta Davis is a Blues Powerhouse.”
Down Beat Magazine 2018 Monterey Jazz Fest performance “Thornetta, sang with no-nonsense sass, fearless in her missives against lovers, as she preached the blues.” Barry Kerzner of American Blues Scene says of her latest CD “Honest Woman’ by Thornetta Davis, “It’s Everything an Album Should Be.”
The Fabulous Thunderbirds is best known for their 1986 hit “Tuff Enuff.” A rallying cry for nearly four decades, the song has never meant more than it does right now. It was written by lead singer and harmonica player Kim Wilson whose history with Biscuit goes way back to when he donated money to the Sonny Boy Blues Society to try and save Sonny Boy Williamson’s Helena home. Wilson, who founded The T-Birds in 1976 feels the current lineup is the best yet. It features 12-year band veteran and guitarist Johnny Moeller. “The good thing about Johnny is he’s got his own take on things,” Wilson explained. “He really has his own style. That’s very important to me. I need people who really have their own minds. I don’t want to hear somebody [imitating] Johnny Guitar Watson or B.B. King. I’d rather hear people do their own deal.”
Paul Thorn all but stole the show from B.B. King at King Biscuit in 2010. His 2018 album, Don’t Let The Devil Ride debuted in the Billboard Top 100 the first week of release. Thorn calls the music on the album dance pole gospel: “If you listen to the music that’s really sexy sounding, it sounds exactly like the music we sang in church when I was growing up. When we’d go visit the black churches, it was raunchy, man. It was spiritual, but it almost had a sexual undertone to it, and that’s what you hear on some of these songs on this record.” “Every time I play a festival, I don’t want the last slot. You get more people to see you when you go on next to last ’cause when you go on last, they’re gonna be leavin’ on your last song which is a bummer. When you’re playing that last song, and you’re the headliner, you’re watching people walk out as you’re singing. That’s a bummer, man!”
Blues journalist Stacy Jeffress has described The Mississippi Spoonman a.k.a Bob Rowell as “a man who can coax more music out of a pair of spoons than she can out of radio.” An annual performer at the Biscuit, he’s lived in Helena for a decade and a half. He told Stacy, “I wanted to listen to blues, I wanted to be where the blues is really from. The real deal’s here. It’s life. I see it. I know what it’s about. Hopefully I can write about it and make it real for somebody.” He’s been in rock bands and heavy metal bands where he’d entertain the other band members by setting his spoons on fie and then play them. He’s still an incendiary performer.
Billy Branch is a true Chicago blues legacy. He was one of the first to develop a blues in the schools program and has made over 70 international tours. A three-time GRAMMY® nominee, he’s backed by The Sons of The Blues, a band of veterans that includes bass player Nick Charles, drummer Mose Rutues Jr., and pianist Sumito Ariyoshi, aka Ariyo.This year Billy Branch teams up with a Legend with a capital L. Bobby Rush! Bobby Rush! Bobby Rush! The mantra has been ringing out at the Biscuit from the beginning. Known the world over as the King of the Chitlin Circuit, he is one of the Biscuit’s most beloved members of our extended family. He keeps re-inventing himself year in and year out. As fundamental as blues itself, he is a walking history lesson in the form. His 2019 CD Sitting on Top of The Blues says it all, coming on the heels of his 2017 Grammy-winning Porcupine Meat as Best Traditional Blues Album. But we knew him back when, and we embrace him as the visionary he’s always been as we head into a new world order.
The half-century legacy of southern rock’s premiere band The Allman Brothers with their treasured classics like “Whipping Post” and “Midnight Rider” lives on in Saturday night’s headliner the Allman Betts Band, featuring Gregg Allman’s son Devon Allman and Dickey Betts’ son Duane Betts.
Both artists earned their musical chops at the feet of their legendary fathers. Their Biscuit appearance comes on the heels of a 60-date world tour in 2019 and the release of their debut album Down to the River, the culmination of a 31-year history of playing with each other.
Devon Allman told Forbes magazine: “On stage every night we have a certain responsibility to tip the hat to our dads. And what I think balances the legacy, but also moving forward as our own men and as our own musicians, is balancing the two. So, if we have a set that’s 17 songs, we’re going to play a couple Allman Brothers songs. We’re not going to fill our set, but we’re also not going to turn our back on it. The balance is everything and I think that we’ve been lucky to strike that balance.”
“I’ll Take You There,” The Staple Singers’ 1972 number one Billboard Hot 100 hit, has taken on more poignant meaning for all humanity in this year of the pandemic.
This song was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame in 1999 and remains the most successful and recognizable single of the Staples’ half-century-long career. Forty-eight years later, that inspirational song remains the centerpiece of Friday’s headliner Mavis Staples’ repertoire. And she’s just one of more than 100 storied acts performing during four days at the south’s premiere blues festival in the heart of the Delta on the banks of the Mississippi River.
“You can root her in the church. You can root her in the blues. You can root her in jazz It doesn’t matter. She is ageless and genre-less because she brings joy,” says Cheryl Pawelski, co-founder of Ominvore Entertainment Group, who has spent 25 years of reserving, curating and championing some of music’s greatest legacies. “Mavis is, as the continuing voice of the Staple Singers, is just pure, shear joy, and that cuts through every genre. That cuts through every era.”
Mavis recently told NPR: “I’m happiest when I’m singing. I’m just grateful that I have so many fans that still want to hear me, you know, and grateful to the record company for making room for me to continue. It’s my gift — it’s what God put me here for, I do believe.”
Andrew Sullivan met his music teacher at an Alice Cooper concert when he was six. By the time he was 11 he’d shared the stage with Cheap Trick, performed with Blues Oyster Cult and Gary Hoey and player the Biscuit. He plays keyboards, drums and trumpet, but guitar is his favorite. “They all have different tones, and they’re fun to play, and it’s fun to have a lot ’cause I can experiment with different sounds.”
This 16-year-old guitarist was named Youth Performer of The Year in 2018 and 2017 by the Colorado Blues Society in their Member’s Choice Awards. She’s played the Biscuit as well as Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge, The Big Blues Bender and The Greeley Blues Jam. She sat in with The North Mississippi Allstars in 2016.
The Biscuit welcomes this family band from Sulphur Springs which plays Texas blues. Singer and guitarist “Diamond” Jack Holdsworth has recruited the whole family into the act, with wife Elan on bass, daughter Dani at the drums, and son DR showing talent beyond his years on vocals and guitar. They list their influences as Stevie Ray Vaughn, Albert King, Howlin’ Wolf, BB King, Freddie King, Jimmy Vaughn, Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin, Son House, Muddy Waters, Lightnin Hopkins, Sam Carr, Jack Johnson, Frank Frost, and Pinetop Perkins.
Eighty-four-year-old Clarence Sims, aka The West Coast Godfather of The Game, aka The Pope of Pimping is an expimp who estimates in his 1999 documentary American Pimp that in his entire career he had more than 9000 prostitutes working for him. The 14 originals on Fillmore Slim’s 2007 The Legend of Fillmore Slim album profile a character whose music is somewhere between Bo Diddley’s “I’m A Man” braggadocio and Snoop Dogg shout outs. His music is full of colorful references to the kind of scenes Willie Dixon could only imagine. Slim’s lived them. “I got a knock at the door,” he sings on the title cut. “I looked up and there was the man. I was put away for a long time. I paid my dues, and now I play the guitar in my hand.”
If you made up Marcus Lamont Cartwright, who some call “Mookie,” as a fictional bluesman in a Hollywood movie or a Broadway show, chances are the character would be rewritten for being too unbelievable. He just couldn’t be that stereotypically perfect. Acoustic bluesmen have acted in similar roles. Guy Davis played in Mulebone and Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil. Chris Thomas King played Tommy Johnson in Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou; Keb Mo played Robert Johnson in Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl. All of them acted well, but Marcus Cartwright is not acting. He could play all those roles because, at the tender age of 22, he wouldn’t have to learn the part – he already lives it. Everything anybody has ever imagined about long lost personas of idealized bluesmen, Marcus Cartwright is in real life today. He’s been shot at, has seen his action of entering and fleeing out “my husband just now left” back doors, and a whole lot more. Yes, the cliché teaches us that reality can be stranger than fiction. Marcus Cartwright is really all that and then some.
Alabama Bluesman Brotha Ric Patton will host Thursday’s Front Porch Blues Bash Jam to kick off the Annual Front Porch Blues Bash at the DCC Miller Annex. The jam provides the perfect opportunity for many of King Biscuit’s festival-goers to show off their own talents as musicians. Everyone interested is invited to participate in the annual free event, sign the participation sheet, and demonstrate their blues skills to their fellow fans during the 2-hour affair.
This act is as close as we’ll ever get to capturing the treasure of a Muddy Waters performance in Muddy’s heyday. Each member has an up close and intimate tie to the heritage of Muddy Waters’ Chicago blues royalty extending back to the ’50s and ’60s. Each walks the tightrope between that electric legacy sound that changed American popular music for the next 60 years and today’s contemporary blues. Living history performed with consummate style.
Blues journalist Stacy Jeffress has described The Mississippi Spoonman a.k.a Bob Rowell as “a man who can coax more music out of a pair of spoons than she can out of radio.” An annual performer at the Biscuit, he’s lived in Helena for a decade and a half. He told Stacy, “I wanted to listen to blues, I wanted to be where the blues is really from. The real deal’s here. It’s life. I see it. I know what it’s about. Hopefully I can write about it and make it real for somebody.” He’s been in rock bands and heavy metal bands where he’d entertain the other band members by setting his spoons on fie and then play them. He’s still an incendiary performer.
A Helena, Arkansas native, Sterling was born into the blues, is a walking encyclopedia of the genre, and a talented guitarist who loves to showcase others in his band. He also happens to be President of The Sonny Boy Blues Society and Music Chairman of The King Biscuit Blues Festival. He does not consider it hyperbole when he calls the Biscuit The Holy Grail of blues festivals.
CW Gatlin is an Arkansas Delta native and a regular at the Biscuit. A lifelong friend of Levon Helm, he’s also performed with The Band, appearing on their 1993 Jericho album. Like The Band, his music has elements of rock, country and he’s a member of The Rockabilly Hall of Fame. In his long career he has performed with Mack Self, W.S. Holland of Johnny Cash’s band The Tennessee Three, Robert Nighthawk, Ace Cannon, Paul Burlison, Frank Frost and Sam Carr of The Jelly Roll Kings.
Reba’s “Heaven Came to Helena” has become the festival’s unofficial signature song. Reba was Memphis’ top rocker until Rufus Thomas heard her in a cover band in 1992 and told her, ‘Ya got it! You use it! Do it!’ She’s done background vocals for John Nemeth, Tracy Nelson, Huey Lewis & The News, Jimmy Thackery, and Jim Dickinson. That’s Reba on background vocals for U2 and B.B. King on “When Love Comes to Town” on Rattle & Hum recorded in 1990 at Sun Studios. But it’s the Biscuit that puts the fire in her belly. “Being here made me realize that there’s a lot more to this music stuff than I ever expected, and everybody that plays here can kick ass. So, it was like, yeah, I’m doing this come hell or high water. I don’t care, but until I kinda gave myself over to (realizing) Delta roots music was what was moving me, I was just peddling till then. Memphis is blues, but King Biscuit is the freaking deal. This is it. It’s like are you kidding me?”
Jesse Cotton Stone weaves together the stylistic threads of definitive regional styles of the Blues ranging from Pre-War Acoustic Delta Blues, Electric Juke Joint Boogie, North Mississippi Hill Country, and Cotton Patch Soul Blues to the Urban Chicago Blues Roots of Soul-Funk and Psychedelic Rock, bringing his listeners through the doors of a Heart-Wrenching Boutique of Vintage-Toned American Blues Music with relentless showmanship of a True Entertainer. Jesse Cotton Stone creates a comprehensive scope of the Original American Music, not only by playing his role in keeping the traditions of Blues music alive, but also by contributing to the evolution of this Storytelling Tradition with his own Original Flavor of what he calls “HELLCOUNTRY” and “Electric-Cotton Soul” Blues.
His soulful sax backed by his tight band have been perennial favorites at the Biscuit. He is the grandson of Houston Stackhouse who was one of the King Biscuit Boys on King Biscuit Time radio show from 1946 into the ’60s. The third generation of Stackhouses to call Helena home, Phillip carries on a family tradition of blues artists who’ve played with Delta royalty from Sonny Boy Williamson and Pinetop Perkins to Robert Nighthawk.
There’s a yin and a yang to Anson Funerburgh. His electric guitar burns with Texas fire that Guitar Player Magazine compared to Otis Rush and Magic Sam. But his guitar can also soothe as the subtle support for Delta blues vocalists who have included Sam Myers, Nick Nixon, and Alabama Mike. Anson has that Austin strut, but his Delta creds are highlighted by being the only artist to have played all of Arkansas’ King Biscuit Blues Festivals.
Andy Talamantez spent 23 years in the aerospace industry before becoming a fulltime blues guitarist, first with Nick Nixon, a veteran Nashville blues singer whose background included jamming with a young Jimi Hendrix. When Nixon retired in 2016, Andy T. teamed with Alabama Mike releasing his fourth album Double Strike co-produced with Anson Funderburgh, the only artist to have appeared at all the King Biscuit Blues Festivals. Both Nixon and Alabama Mike handled vocals reminiscent of Sam Myers, Funderburgh’s late vocalist. Andy T.’s early influence was Eric Clapton, but he honed his style playing with Smokey Wilson and Guitar Shorty in the late ’90s.
Ms. Margie Turner hails out of Eldorado, AK. She began singing at age 8 at Union Ark Baptist Church. At the age of 12 she moved with her family to Oakland, CA. Margie began singing the Blues at an early age while being chaperoned by her mother. Her skills and vocal stylings eventually led her to Dallas, TX where she met and background sang for Johnny Taylor and she eventually became an opening act for Marvin Sease. Today, Margie shares her talent on stages in the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area with her band, The Outback Blues Band, and has performed on various festivals including The Hayward/Russell City Blues Festival, Oakland’s Art & Soul Festival, The Dusk til Dawn Festival, Rentiesville, OK, The King Biscuit Blues Festival, W. Helena, AK and at countless venues throughout California. Margie’s performance is “Delta Smooth” with a little “Oakland Grit”. It’s Blues that will make you wanna’ dance or, most certainly pat your feet.
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Earnestine Barze , “Lady E”, was born in Glendora, Mississippi, the state that has produced more blues men and women than any other state in the US. Earnestine loved to sing and dance when she was young. In 1971 she migrated to California, continuing her education and receiving a degree in Business. Shortly after, Earnestine began singing again. Her Gospel roots made it an easy transition for her into the R&B and Blues scene. She performs at many clubs in Oakland, the surrounding Bay Area and throughout California. She has performed on the Monterey Blues Festival, Hayward-Russell City Blues Festival, The Red, White, & Blues Festival Stage, Alameda CA County Fair, and at The King Biscuit Blues Festival, W. Helena, AK. When on stage, in true Mississippi tradition, “Lady E” delivers a raw energy, soulful performance one you will remember and she will tell you, that’s what she’s about.
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DeJeana Burkes was born and raised in Detroit, MI. Growing up vibin’ with the Motown sound and singing in church is how DeJeana developed her interest in both music and production. DeJeana spent all of her babysitting money as a teenager going to the Motown Revue, watching them sing and perfect their acts before hitting the road. It was in those seats she decided she could both sing and produce shows. Today, she resides in Richmond, CA in the San Francisco Bay Area. She performs locally in clubs, on festivals and is a producer of the North Richmond Music Festival. She has performed on the Polk Street Festival, San Francisco, Hayward Russell City Blues Festival, Richmond Juneteenth, Blues Ball, Medicine Park, OK and The King Biscuit Blues Festival in Arkansas. When DeJeana hits the stage it’s all business. While witnessing her passion, drive, and sass coupled with her strong vocals and melodic tones audiences do understand what she means when she exclaims “When you’ve got Burkes, It Works and the “It” is, she leaves It all on the stage to enjoy.
According to Blues Blast Magazine, “he’s one part soul crooner (as on the title track), one part guitar hero (as on ‘Blues Mama’ and ‘Gone Too Long’) and one part dance-track master (as on ‘Bourbon Street Bounce’).” Jamiah grew up in a household of musicians. The first hands-on experience with music came at the age of three. Jamiah’s father and guitarist, Tony Rogers, had a band that rehearsed every now and then in the basement of [their] home. On ten of his original songs, he brings out the best of his blues abilities and those of his co-musicians.
2018 $25,000 Kresge Fellowship Awardee and the official “Detroit’s Queen of Blues” Thornetta Davis’ latest CD Honest Woman, which she wrote and produced, has won over 30 Detroit Music Awards including eight DMAs in 2017. Thornetta is a six time National BLUES MUSIC AWARDS Nominee including two for the 2021 BMAs for “Best Soul/Blues female and Best instrumentalists/vocals. Thornetta also received a French 2017 La Academie du Jazz Award for Best Blues Album. Thornetta’s live performances will leave you feeling uplifted and asking for more. Supported by some of the best musicians all hailing from Detroit MI.
New York Music Daily says “What better place than Lincoln Center for Thornetta Davis.” “In an era where the blues has become a legacy style, like bluegrass and roots reggae – and a lot of bands play it like it’s an artifact in a museum – Davis and her band are a blast of fresh air.” AXS Gary Schwind says “Thornetta Davis is a Blues Powerhouse.”
Down Beat Magazine 2018 Monterey Jazz Fest performance “Thornetta, sang with no-nonsense sass, fearless in her missives against lovers, as she preached the blues.” Barry Kerzner of American Blues Scene says of her latest CD “Honest Woman’ by Thornetta Davis, “It’s Everything an Album Should Be.”
The Fabulous Thunderbirds is best known for their 1986 hit “Tuff Enuff.” A rallying cry for nearly four decades, the song has never meant more than it does right now. It was written by lead singer and harmonica player Kim Wilson whose history with Biscuit goes way back to when he donated money to the Sonny Boy Blues Society to try and save Sonny Boy Williamson’s Helena home. Wilson, who founded The T-Birds in 1976 feels the current lineup is the best yet. It features 12-year band veteran and guitarist Johnny Moeller. “The good thing about Johnny is he’s got his own take on things,” Wilson explained. “He really has his own style. That’s very important to me. I need people who really have their own minds. I don’t want to hear somebody [imitating] Johnny Guitar Watson or B.B. King. I’d rather hear people do their own deal.”
Paul Thorn all but stole the show from B.B. King at King Biscuit in 2010. His 2018 album, Don’t Let The Devil Ride debuted in the Billboard Top 100 the first week of release. Thorn calls the music on the album dance pole gospel: “If you listen to the music that’s really sexy sounding, it sounds exactly like the music we sang in church when I was growing up. When we’d go visit the black churches, it was raunchy, man. It was spiritual, but it almost had a sexual undertone to it, and that’s what you hear on some of these songs on this record.” “Every time I play a festival, I don’t want the last slot. You get more people to see you when you go on next to last ’cause when you go on last, they’re gonna be leavin’ on your last song which is a bummer. When you’re playing that last song, and you’re the headliner, you’re watching people walk out as you’re singing. That’s a bummer, man!”
Blues journalist Stacy Jeffress has described The Mississippi Spoonman a.k.a Bob Rowell as “a man who can coax more music out of a pair of spoons than she can out of radio.” An annual performer at the Biscuit, he’s lived in Helena for a decade and a half. He told Stacy, “I wanted to listen to blues, I wanted to be where the blues is really from. The real deal’s here. It’s life. I see it. I know what it’s about. Hopefully I can write about it and make it real for somebody.” He’s been in rock bands and heavy metal bands where he’d entertain the other band members by setting his spoons on fie and then play them. He’s still an incendiary performer.
Billy Branch is a true Chicago blues legacy. He was one of the first to develop a blues in the schools program and has made over 70 international tours. A three-time GRAMMY® nominee, he’s backed by The Sons of The Blues, a band of veterans that includes bass player Nick Charles, drummer Mose Rutues Jr., and pianist Sumito Ariyoshi, aka Ariyo.This year Billy Branch teams up with a Legend with a capital L. Bobby Rush! Bobby Rush! Bobby Rush! The mantra has been ringing out at the Biscuit from the beginning. Known the world over as the King of the Chitlin Circuit, he is one of the Biscuit’s most beloved members of our extended family. He keeps re-inventing himself year in and year out. As fundamental as blues itself, he is a walking history lesson in the form. His 2019 CD Sitting on Top of The Blues says it all, coming on the heels of his 2017 Grammy-winning Porcupine Meat as Best Traditional Blues Album. But we knew him back when, and we embrace him as the visionary he’s always been as we head into a new world order.
The half-century legacy of southern rock’s premiere band The Allman Brothers with their treasured classics like “Whipping Post” and “Midnight Rider” lives on in Saturday night’s headliner the Allman Betts Band, featuring Gregg Allman’s son Devon Allman and Dickey Betts’ son Duane Betts.
Both artists earned their musical chops at the feet of their legendary fathers. Their Biscuit appearance comes on the heels of a 60-date world tour in 2019 and the release of their debut album Down to the River, the culmination of a 31-year history of playing with each other.
Devon Allman told Forbes magazine: “On stage every night we have a certain responsibility to tip the hat to our dads. And what I think balances the legacy, but also moving forward as our own men and as our own musicians, is balancing the two. So, if we have a set that’s 17 songs, we’re going to play a couple Allman Brothers songs. We’re not going to fill our set, but we’re also not going to turn our back on it. The balance is everything and I think that we’ve been lucky to strike that balance.”
“I’ll Take You There,” The Staple Singers’ 1972 number one Billboard Hot 100 hit, has taken on more poignant meaning for all humanity in this year of the pandemic.
This song was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame in 1999 and remains the most successful and recognizable single of the Staples’ half-century-long career. Forty-eight years later, that inspirational song remains the centerpiece of Friday’s headliner Mavis Staples’ repertoire. And she’s just one of more than 100 storied acts performing during four days at the south’s premiere blues festival in the heart of the Delta on the banks of the Mississippi River.
“You can root her in the church. You can root her in the blues. You can root her in jazz It doesn’t matter. She is ageless and genre-less because she brings joy,” says Cheryl Pawelski, co-founder of Ominvore Entertainment Group, who has spent 25 years of reserving, curating and championing some of music’s greatest legacies. “Mavis is, as the continuing voice of the Staple Singers, is just pure, shear joy, and that cuts through every genre. That cuts through every era.”
Mavis recently told NPR: “I’m happiest when I’m singing. I’m just grateful that I have so many fans that still want to hear me, you know, and grateful to the record company for making room for me to continue. It’s my gift — it’s what God put me here for, I do believe.”
Andrew Sullivan met his music teacher at an Alice Cooper concert when he was six. By the time he was 11 he’d shared the stage with Cheap Trick, performed with Blues Oyster Cult and Gary Hoey and player the Biscuit. He plays keyboards, drums and trumpet, but guitar is his favorite. “They all have different tones, and they’re fun to play, and it’s fun to have a lot ’cause I can experiment with different sounds.”
This 16-year-old guitarist was named Youth Performer of The Year in 2018 and 2017 by the Colorado Blues Society in their Member’s Choice Awards. She’s played the Biscuit as well as Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge, The Big Blues Bender and The Greeley Blues Jam. She sat in with The North Mississippi Allstars in 2016.
The Biscuit welcomes this family band from Sulphur Springs which plays Texas blues. Singer and guitarist “Diamond” Jack Holdsworth has recruited the whole family into the act, with wife Elan on bass, daughter Dani at the drums, and son DR showing talent beyond his years on vocals and guitar. They list their influences as Stevie Ray Vaughn, Albert King, Howlin’ Wolf, BB King, Freddie King, Jimmy Vaughn, Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin, Son House, Muddy Waters, Lightnin Hopkins, Sam Carr, Jack Johnson, Frank Frost, and Pinetop Perkins.
Eighty-four-year-old Clarence Sims, aka The West Coast Godfather of The Game, aka The Pope of Pimping is an expimp who estimates in his 1999 documentary American Pimp that in his entire career he had more than 9000 prostitutes working for him. The 14 originals on Fillmore Slim’s 2007 The Legend of Fillmore Slim album profile a character whose music is somewhere between Bo Diddley’s “I’m A Man” braggadocio and Snoop Dogg shout outs. His music is full of colorful references to the kind of scenes Willie Dixon could only imagine. Slim’s lived them. “I got a knock at the door,” he sings on the title cut. “I looked up and there was the man. I was put away for a long time. I paid my dues, and now I play the guitar in my hand.”
If you made up Marcus Lamont Cartwright, who some call “Mookie,” as a fictional bluesman in a Hollywood movie or a Broadway show, chances are the character would be rewritten for being too unbelievable. He just couldn’t be that stereotypically perfect. Acoustic bluesmen have acted in similar roles. Guy Davis played in Mulebone and Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil. Chris Thomas King played Tommy Johnson in Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou; Keb Mo played Robert Johnson in Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl. All of them acted well, but Marcus Cartwright is not acting. He could play all those roles because, at the tender age of 22, he wouldn’t have to learn the part – he already lives it. Everything anybody has ever imagined about long lost personas of idealized bluesmen, Marcus Cartwright is in real life today. He’s been shot at, has seen his action of entering and fleeing out “my husband just now left” back doors, and a whole lot more. Yes, the cliché teaches us that reality can be stranger than fiction. Marcus Cartwright is really all that and then some.
Alabama Bluesman Brotha Ric Patton will host Thursday’s Front Porch Blues Bash Jam to kick off the Annual Front Porch Blues Bash at the DCC Miller Annex. The jam provides the perfect opportunity for many of King Biscuit’s festival-goers to show off their own talents as musicians. Everyone interested is invited to participate in the annual free event, sign the participation sheet, and demonstrate their blues skills to their fellow fans during the 2-hour affair.
This act is as close as we’ll ever get to capturing the treasure of a Muddy Waters performance in Muddy’s heyday. Each member has an up close and intimate tie to the heritage of Muddy Waters’ Chicago blues royalty extending back to the ’50s and ’60s. Each walks the tightrope between that electric legacy sound that changed American popular music for the next 60 years and today’s contemporary blues. Living history performed with consummate style.
Blues journalist Stacy Jeffress has described The Mississippi Spoonman a.k.a Bob Rowell as “a man who can coax more music out of a pair of spoons than she can out of radio.” An annual performer at the Biscuit, he’s lived in Helena for a decade and a half. He told Stacy, “I wanted to listen to blues, I wanted to be where the blues is really from. The real deal’s here. It’s life. I see it. I know what it’s about. Hopefully I can write about it and make it real for somebody.” He’s been in rock bands and heavy metal bands where he’d entertain the other band members by setting his spoons on fie and then play them. He’s still an incendiary performer.
A Helena, Arkansas native, Sterling was born into the blues, is a walking encyclopedia of the genre, and a talented guitarist who loves to showcase others in his band. He also happens to be President of The Sonny Boy Blues Society and Music Chairman of The King Biscuit Blues Festival. He does not consider it hyperbole when he calls the Biscuit The Holy Grail of blues festivals.
CW Gatlin is an Arkansas Delta native and a regular at the Biscuit. A lifelong friend of Levon Helm, he’s also performed with The Band, appearing on their 1993 Jericho album. Like The Band, his music has elements of rock, country and he’s a member of The Rockabilly Hall of Fame. In his long career he has performed with Mack Self, W.S. Holland of Johnny Cash’s band The Tennessee Three, Robert Nighthawk, Ace Cannon, Paul Burlison, Frank Frost and Sam Carr of The Jelly Roll Kings.
Reba’s “Heaven Came to Helena” has become the festival’s unofficial signature song. Reba was Memphis’ top rocker until Rufus Thomas heard her in a cover band in 1992 and told her, ‘Ya got it! You use it! Do it!’ She’s done background vocals for John Nemeth, Tracy Nelson, Huey Lewis & The News, Jimmy Thackery, and Jim Dickinson. That’s Reba on background vocals for U2 and B.B. King on “When Love Comes to Town” on Rattle & Hum recorded in 1990 at Sun Studios. But it’s the Biscuit that puts the fire in her belly. “Being here made me realize that there’s a lot more to this music stuff than I ever expected, and everybody that plays here can kick ass. So, it was like, yeah, I’m doing this come hell or high water. I don’t care, but until I kinda gave myself over to (realizing) Delta roots music was what was moving me, I was just peddling till then. Memphis is blues, but King Biscuit is the freaking deal. This is it. It’s like are you kidding me?”
Jesse Cotton Stone weaves together the stylistic threads of definitive regional styles of the Blues ranging from Pre-War Acoustic Delta Blues, Electric Juke Joint Boogie, North Mississippi Hill Country, and Cotton Patch Soul Blues to the Urban Chicago Blues Roots of Soul-Funk and Psychedelic Rock, bringing his listeners through the doors of a Heart-Wrenching Boutique of Vintage-Toned American Blues Music with relentless showmanship of a True Entertainer. Jesse Cotton Stone creates a comprehensive scope of the Original American Music, not only by playing his role in keeping the traditions of Blues music alive, but also by contributing to the evolution of this Storytelling Tradition with his own Original Flavor of what he calls “HELLCOUNTRY” and “Electric-Cotton Soul” Blues.
His soulful sax backed by his tight band have been perennial favorites at the Biscuit. He is the grandson of Houston Stackhouse who was one of the King Biscuit Boys on King Biscuit Time radio show from 1946 into the ’60s. The third generation of Stackhouses to call Helena home, Phillip carries on a family tradition of blues artists who’ve played with Delta royalty from Sonny Boy Williamson and Pinetop Perkins to Robert Nighthawk.
There’s a yin and a yang to Anson Funerburgh. His electric guitar burns with Texas fire that Guitar Player Magazine compared to Otis Rush and Magic Sam. But his guitar can also soothe as the subtle support for Delta blues vocalists who have included Sam Myers, Nick Nixon, and Alabama Mike. Anson has that Austin strut, but his Delta creds are highlighted by being the only artist to have played all of Arkansas’ King Biscuit Blues Festivals.
Andy Talamantez spent 23 years in the aerospace industry before becoming a fulltime blues guitarist, first with Nick Nixon, a veteran Nashville blues singer whose background included jamming with a young Jimi Hendrix. When Nixon retired in 2016, Andy T. teamed with Alabama Mike releasing his fourth album Double Strike co-produced with Anson Funderburgh, the only artist to have appeared at all the King Biscuit Blues Festivals. Both Nixon and Alabama Mike handled vocals reminiscent of Sam Myers, Funderburgh’s late vocalist. Andy T.’s early influence was Eric Clapton, but he honed his style playing with Smokey Wilson and Guitar Shorty in the late ’90s.
Ms. Margie Turner hails out of Eldorado, AK. She began singing at age 8 at Union Ark Baptist Church. At the age of 12 she moved with her family to Oakland, CA. Margie began singing the Blues at an early age while being chaperoned by her mother. Her skills and vocal stylings eventually led her to Dallas, TX where she met and background sang for Johnny Taylor and she eventually became an opening act for Marvin Sease. Today, Margie shares her talent on stages in the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area with her band, The Outback Blues Band, and has performed on various festivals including The Hayward/Russell City Blues Festival, Oakland’s Art & Soul Festival, The Dusk til Dawn Festival, Rentiesville, OK, The King Biscuit Blues Festival, W. Helena, AK and at countless venues throughout California. Margie’s performance is “Delta Smooth” with a little “Oakland Grit”. It’s Blues that will make you wanna’ dance or, most certainly pat your feet.
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Earnestine Barze , “Lady E”, was born in Glendora, Mississippi, the state that has produced more blues men and women than any other state in the US. Earnestine loved to sing and dance when she was young. In 1971 she migrated to California, continuing her education and receiving a degree in Business. Shortly after, Earnestine began singing again. Her Gospel roots made it an easy transition for her into the R&B and Blues scene. She performs at many clubs in Oakland, the surrounding Bay Area and throughout California. She has performed on the Monterey Blues Festival, Hayward-Russell City Blues Festival, The Red, White, & Blues Festival Stage, Alameda CA County Fair, and at The King Biscuit Blues Festival, W. Helena, AK. When on stage, in true Mississippi tradition, “Lady E” delivers a raw energy, soulful performance one you will remember and she will tell you, that’s what she’s about.
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DeJeana Burkes was born and raised in Detroit, MI. Growing up vibin’ with the Motown sound and singing in church is how DeJeana developed her interest in both music and production. DeJeana spent all of her babysitting money as a teenager going to the Motown Revue, watching them sing and perfect their acts before hitting the road. It was in those seats she decided she could both sing and produce shows. Today, she resides in Richmond, CA in the San Francisco Bay Area. She performs locally in clubs, on festivals and is a producer of the North Richmond Music Festival. She has performed on the Polk Street Festival, San Francisco, Hayward Russell City Blues Festival, Richmond Juneteenth, Blues Ball, Medicine Park, OK and The King Biscuit Blues Festival in Arkansas. When DeJeana hits the stage it’s all business. While witnessing her passion, drive, and sass coupled with her strong vocals and melodic tones audiences do understand what she means when she exclaims “When you’ve got Burkes, It Works and the “It” is, she leaves It all on the stage to enjoy.
According to Blues Blast Magazine, “he’s one part soul crooner (as on the title track), one part guitar hero (as on ‘Blues Mama’ and ‘Gone Too Long’) and one part dance-track master (as on ‘Bourbon Street Bounce’).” Jamiah grew up in a household of musicians. The first hands-on experience with music came at the age of three. Jamiah’s father and guitarist, Tony Rogers, had a band that rehearsed every now and then in the basement of [their] home. On ten of his original songs, he brings out the best of his blues abilities and those of his co-musicians.
2018 $25,000 Kresge Fellowship Awardee and the official “Detroit’s Queen of Blues” Thornetta Davis’ latest CD Honest Woman, which she wrote and produced, has won over 30 Detroit Music Awards including eight DMAs in 2017. Thornetta is a six time National BLUES MUSIC AWARDS Nominee including two for the 2021 BMAs for “Best Soul/Blues female and Best instrumentalists/vocals. Thornetta also received a French 2017 La Academie du Jazz Award for Best Blues Album. Thornetta’s live performances will leave you feeling uplifted and asking for more. Supported by some of the best musicians all hailing from Detroit MI.
New York Music Daily says “What better place than Lincoln Center for Thornetta Davis.” “In an era where the blues has become a legacy style, like bluegrass and roots reggae – and a lot of bands play it like it’s an artifact in a museum – Davis and her band are a blast of fresh air.” AXS Gary Schwind says “Thornetta Davis is a Blues Powerhouse.”
Down Beat Magazine 2018 Monterey Jazz Fest performance “Thornetta, sang with no-nonsense sass, fearless in her missives against lovers, as she preached the blues.” Barry Kerzner of American Blues Scene says of her latest CD “Honest Woman’ by Thornetta Davis, “It’s Everything an Album Should Be.”
The Fabulous Thunderbirds is best known for their 1986 hit “Tuff Enuff.” A rallying cry for nearly four decades, the song has never meant more than it does right now. It was written by lead singer and harmonica player Kim Wilson whose history with Biscuit goes way back to when he donated money to the Sonny Boy Blues Society to try and save Sonny Boy Williamson’s Helena home. Wilson, who founded The T-Birds in 1976 feels the current lineup is the best yet. It features 12-year band veteran and guitarist Johnny Moeller. “The good thing about Johnny is he’s got his own take on things,” Wilson explained. “He really has his own style. That’s very important to me. I need people who really have their own minds. I don’t want to hear somebody [imitating] Johnny Guitar Watson or B.B. King. I’d rather hear people do their own deal.”
Paul Thorn all but stole the show from B.B. King at King Biscuit in 2010. His 2018 album, Don’t Let The Devil Ride debuted in the Billboard Top 100 the first week of release. Thorn calls the music on the album dance pole gospel: “If you listen to the music that’s really sexy sounding, it sounds exactly like the music we sang in church when I was growing up. When we’d go visit the black churches, it was raunchy, man. It was spiritual, but it almost had a sexual undertone to it, and that’s what you hear on some of these songs on this record.” “Every time I play a festival, I don’t want the last slot. You get more people to see you when you go on next to last ’cause when you go on last, they’re gonna be leavin’ on your last song which is a bummer. When you’re playing that last song, and you’re the headliner, you’re watching people walk out as you’re singing. That’s a bummer, man!”
Blues journalist Stacy Jeffress has described The Mississippi Spoonman a.k.a Bob Rowell as “a man who can coax more music out of a pair of spoons than she can out of radio.” An annual performer at the Biscuit, he’s lived in Helena for a decade and a half. He told Stacy, “I wanted to listen to blues, I wanted to be where the blues is really from. The real deal’s here. It’s life. I see it. I know what it’s about. Hopefully I can write about it and make it real for somebody.” He’s been in rock bands and heavy metal bands where he’d entertain the other band members by setting his spoons on fie and then play them. He’s still an incendiary performer.
Billy Branch is a true Chicago blues legacy. He was one of the first to develop a blues in the schools program and has made over 70 international tours. A three-time GRAMMY® nominee, he’s backed by The Sons of The Blues, a band of veterans that includes bass player Nick Charles, drummer Mose Rutues Jr., and pianist Sumito Ariyoshi, aka Ariyo.This year Billy Branch teams up with a Legend with a capital L. Bobby Rush! Bobby Rush! Bobby Rush! The mantra has been ringing out at the Biscuit from the beginning. Known the world over as the King of the Chitlin Circuit, he is one of the Biscuit’s most beloved members of our extended family. He keeps re-inventing himself year in and year out. As fundamental as blues itself, he is a walking history lesson in the form. His 2019 CD Sitting on Top of The Blues says it all, coming on the heels of his 2017 Grammy-winning Porcupine Meat as Best Traditional Blues Album. But we knew him back when, and we embrace him as the visionary he’s always been as we head into a new world order.
The half-century legacy of southern rock’s premiere band The Allman Brothers with their treasured classics like “Whipping Post” and “Midnight Rider” lives on in Saturday night’s headliner the Allman Betts Band, featuring Gregg Allman’s son Devon Allman and Dickey Betts’ son Duane Betts.
Both artists earned their musical chops at the feet of their legendary fathers. Their Biscuit appearance comes on the heels of a 60-date world tour in 2019 and the release of their debut album Down to the River, the culmination of a 31-year history of playing with each other.
Devon Allman told Forbes magazine: “On stage every night we have a certain responsibility to tip the hat to our dads. And what I think balances the legacy, but also moving forward as our own men and as our own musicians, is balancing the two. So, if we have a set that’s 17 songs, we’re going to play a couple Allman Brothers songs. We’re not going to fill our set, but we’re also not going to turn our back on it. The balance is everything and I think that we’ve been lucky to strike that balance.”
“I’ll Take You There,” The Staple Singers’ 1972 number one Billboard Hot 100 hit, has taken on more poignant meaning for all humanity in this year of the pandemic.
This song was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame in 1999 and remains the most successful and recognizable single of the Staples’ half-century-long career. Forty-eight years later, that inspirational song remains the centerpiece of Friday’s headliner Mavis Staples’ repertoire. And she’s just one of more than 100 storied acts performing during four days at the south’s premiere blues festival in the heart of the Delta on the banks of the Mississippi River.
“You can root her in the church. You can root her in the blues. You can root her in jazz It doesn’t matter. She is ageless and genre-less because she brings joy,” says Cheryl Pawelski, co-founder of Ominvore Entertainment Group, who has spent 25 years of reserving, curating and championing some of music’s greatest legacies. “Mavis is, as the continuing voice of the Staple Singers, is just pure, shear joy, and that cuts through every genre. That cuts through every era.”
Mavis recently told NPR: “I’m happiest when I’m singing. I’m just grateful that I have so many fans that still want to hear me, you know, and grateful to the record company for making room for me to continue. It’s my gift — it’s what God put me here for, I do believe.”
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