Carnival of Soul

As venues adapt to COVID guidelines, live music is returning with many outdoor events.

The one thing to pay attention to is the schedule of bands. Sometimes a band has a date listed but the club doesn’t. Best bet is to contact the club. Blues Beat cannot even guarantee all the dates it sees.

Eran Troy Danner continues his solo acoustic work with 5:30 p.m. Friday gig at Rock Garden Café and Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Red Rooster Saloon. Friday, Ed Peabody and The Big Blue Thang are at the Black Dog Bar & Grille.

Sunday, Jake Kulak and the LowDown are back at Black Hall Outfitters for “Rock the Dock. Join him at 6 pm for a socially distanced night of blues, rock, soul and jams.

The Center Line Trio is at Winchester Café on Sunday at 3 p.m.

Also, try Milestone in Redding for the Old School Revue and The Saugatuck Horns, with special guests Aztec Two-Step, Dave Anderson, and Billy Foster, with Frank Barrese, Bob Cooper, Roger Kaufman, Tyger MacNeal, Joe Meo, Fred Scerbo

Rich Badowski Trio performs at 3 p.m. Saturday at the Brewery At Maple View Farm. Sunday, the Mighty Soul Drivers have an afternoon date at the Brass Horse Café.

If you are in Rhode Island, Greg Sherrod will host Beach Bingo at The Andrea Misquamicut Beach on Friday nights. Due to COVID guidelines, tables will be limited to 6 people, and masks are required when moving throughout the facility, but not while at your table. In Cranston, live blues is back on Wednesday nights at Pub on Park.

The Fairfield Theatre continues its memorabilia auctions with a Grateful Dead 50th Anniversary Poster. The print poster by Mike DuBois is signed and numbered #264/350. The auction ends July 28. It was printed in 2015 and measures 18″x18.”

This is a great piece of art celebrating the 50th Anniversary of The Grateful Dead. The art of Michael DuBois has been described as visionary, surrealistic, psychedelic, a body of work that transcends conventional categorization. DuBois has established himself as a pioneer in the work of contemporary music art, with commissions by the Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers Band, Hot Tuna, The Jerry Garcia Band, Pink Floyd, Dead & Company, the Jimi Hendrix estate and many more.

Walter Trout has released a second lyric video in front of his upcoming new studio album Ordinary Madness out globally Aug. 28. The song, “All Out Of Tears,” was co-written with Teeny Tucker and Marie Trout.

Trout said, “In January, I was walking around at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis and ran into my friend Teeny Tucker. I asked her how she’s doing and she told me of recently losing her son, Boston. She said ‘my heart is crying but my eyes are dry. I guess I’ve just run out of tears to cry.’ I felt so bad for her and asked her if she’d like to write a song with me to honor her son’s memory using those words. We worked with her to turn it into a song about the loss and grief one feels when losing a loved one.” View “All Out Of Tears” video at https://youtu.be/JGEYiF58Be8 .

Delta Blues Museum Director Shelley Ritter announced that the museum has been awarded an $11,100 MAC CARES Emergency Grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission. This grant is a portion of the approximately $441,100 in CARES Act COVID-19 recovery funding MAC received from the National Endowment for the Arts. The grant will be used to support the immediate and necessary operational functions of the Museum. For more information on events or programs, call 662-627-6820, or visit the Museum website.

The King Biscuit Blues Festival, which won Best Live Music Festival in our 2020 Best of Arkansas poll, is postponed until 2021. Executive Director Munnie Jordan said, “We sincerely believe the ongoing pandemic potentially threatens the safety of our musicians, patrons, volunteers and staff, and we cannot take that chance.”

Since 1986, the King Biscuit Blues Festival has presented a remarkable lineup of blues from the Delta and around the world, and this year would have marked its 35th anniversary celebration.

Next year’s event promises to be the best ever, and follows the tradition of being held the weekend before Columbus Day. Artists who were scheduled for 2020 have been invited back, and they include headliner Mavis Staples and favorites Bobby Rush and Reba Russell.

A major news story concerns blues and soul singer Anita White aka Lady A, the moniker she’s used for decades. “I have built this name for decades,” White said. “Sometimes all we have is our name. We don’t want to have that taken away from us,” She continued.

White was speaking in reference to country music group Lady Antebellum, which recently shortened its name to “Lady A,” a nickname used by the band’s fans for years. The band made the decision last month to drop “Antebellum” from its name amid an international reckoning on racial inequality. The word refers to the period of American history before the Civil War and is associated with slavery.

The group tried to reach an agreement with White, a Seattle-based artist, so they could both use the name without conflict. When talks failed, the country group brought a lawsuit seeking a declaratory judgment affirming its right to use the name.

Any questions or comments should be sent to Domenic Forcella at TWBlus@aol.com.