It's a Tour. Way over fifty dates now now. Nine provinces. Two coasts. One big ride on the Blues Highway. It'll be hot when we set out in September. The blacktop shimmering in the heat. Waves of baked air rolling up like a strange surf from the horizon. Fast roads without much traffic. School in, and the tourists changing like the leaves on the trees. Slowly, slowly. The changing of the colours, the changing of the guard. And then. Suddenly they'll be gone. The Tourists. The travellers. Like the hummingbirds, fleeing south at the hint of cool. Then these roads will belong to the Tour. The Lincoln sucking back the miles, the kilometres, the gasoline, as it was born to do. Me, and Albert Frost: we'll suck back big black coffees. Red wine, reefer. Fred McDowell and Big Joe Williams crackling in the back seat. We'll share this Blues Highway with the big trucks. "Breaker 1-9 for information, breaker 1-9."
- Wisconsin Music Industry (WAMI) award for best blues band in 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2015 -AND- People’s Choice Award in 2006, 2008, 2010
- Voted the Best Blues Band In Milwaukee by The Shepherd Express Reader’s Poll in 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017
- 2011 Blues Blast Music Award Nominee for “Band of the Year” and “Song of the Year”
- 2016 Blues Blast Music Award WINNER for “Live Blues Recording”
- 2016 Independent Blues Award for “Best Live CD”
- Reverend Raven’s and Westside Andy’s 2015 Albums both hit the Root Music Reports Top 30
- 20th Anniversary CD, My Life, hit # 1 on the Roots Radio Music Chicago Blues Chart
- 2018 Blues Blast Award Nominee for "Band of the Year" and "Vintage/Historical Recording"
Bringing crowds to their feet at the hardest to please and sophisticated night clubs in the Midwest, Reverend Raven and the Chain Smoking Altar Boys play traditional blues, straight up with a big dose of passion. With smoking grooves, served up with hot harmonica and smooth stinging guitar they play original songs peppered with nods to Slim Harpo, Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers, Billy Boy Arnold, Junior Wells and the three Kings.
Born and raised on south side of Chicago, the Reverend has been playing the blues since 1971 when he first saw Freddy King play at the Kinetic Theatre in Chicago. After 15 year hitch in the Navy, Chief Raven moved to Milwaukee where he began a long friendship and collaboration with Madison Slim, long time harmonica player for Jimmy Rogers.
Since 1990 he has opened for B.B King, Gatemouth Brown, Pinetop Perkins, Koko Taylor Band, Junior Wells, Billy Branch, Magic Slim, Elvin Bishop, Sugar Blue, Lonnie Brooks, William Clarke, Lefty Dizz, Rod Piazza, Fabulous Thunderbirds, Duke Robillard, Jeff Healy, Trampled Underfoot, Mike Zito, Nick Moss, Tommy Castro and numerous others at festivals and at Buddy Guy’s Legends where he has been on rotation for over 18 years.
October 19th, 2018. Come celebrate the end of prohibition with Terry Gillespie and his band.
You really ought to meet Terry Gillespie.
An easy guy to hang with. He’ll probably play in your town sooner or later, so you can get into his music, shake his hand and let him sell you his new CD, Home Boy.
He’s an unlikely guy for a musician, this Terry Gillespie. For starters, he’s been playing blues-based roots music professionally for 50 years.
And he’ll tell you that now is the time when all the years seem to add up to make a perfect equation: experience = smarts = the ability to play and sing better than ever.
Born in Canada, raised in the United States, he returned home in a hurry in the 60s when the possibility of being blown up in Vietnam seemed almost inevitable.
But by the time he came back to Canada, he’d already been infected, inspired and influenced by the blues. He had dug deep into the still- segregated world of the blues by smuggling himself into blues bars to hear — and later play with — Howling Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and a youngster called Buddy Guy.
“I was 17 when I heard those guys, maybe 16. The drinking age was 21, but I was tall, and I’d wear shades and a sports coat and draw a skinny moustache on my upper lip.
“Once, a cop checked me out, asked whether I was drinking beer and I said I was. The whole joint fell silent to see what he’d do about it. ‘Get the kid a pop,’ he said, and let me stay. And the crowd applauded.”
Fifty years on, his musical palette is now far wider. And how that happened is another story.
Settling in Ottawa, Terry helped form Heaven’s Radio, a pioneer rock band that had a strong measure of local success well before the Canadian content regulations came into force at the beginning of 1971.
By the mid-70s there was a single on United Artists, and — later — two LPs on Posterity, the well-remembered label owned and operated by local radio mogul Harvey Glatt. The band’s influence was considerable in the heady days when, suddenly, Canadian music was coming of age.
In the years since Heaven’s Radio disbanded (there was a brief revival of the band in 2007) he built a steady career playing solo or with a band that often includes musicians from Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and South Africa.
Each winter Terry and his wife Kathy spend their winters in Jamaica, where that island’s distinctive music has added to his own eclectic sound.
He’s the “artist in residence” and Kathy is the reservation manager for a number of small rental cabins on an idyllic, uncrowded beachfront part of the island, and they have long become accepted in the local community in a way that tourists visiting the popular resort hotels simply can’t experience.
Playing daily with local musicians immersed him in a different musical community — in the same way that it had when he discovered the blues in his teen years and as it did in Ottawa playing rock and roll.
You can hear the results on his new album, Home Boy. It’s his fifth solo CD, and it has a warm “island” feel that permeates the whole record — even though it was recorded last summer live off the floor at the Granary Restaurant in Vankleek Hill, east of Ottawa, where the Gillespies have made their home.
October 26th. 2018. Richard Inman Band.
“I wanted to be a history teacher originally, but that didn’t really pan out,” Richard Inman chuckles. Be thankful that he got derailed in this pursuit, as his storytelling talents are now reaching a broader audience through music, putting this songwriter on a path to go from Manitoba’s best-kept secret to national recognition.
Growing up in the small town of Grunthal in the southern depths of Manitoba, Inman’s musical upbringing was heavy on country gospel artists like Vern Gosdin, Don Williams and George Jones. His songwriting father introduced him to his first chords around the age of eight, but didn’t really pick up the guitar until his teen years.
“I started playing drums in a Christian metal band as a teenager—that was my great rebellion,” Inman laughs.
As all high school bands go, they soon broke up and Inman returned to his country roots on his own with an acoustic guitar. Spending his summers as a child at his grandparents’ ranch in the small village of Hill Spring, Alberta, Inman also felt the influence of cowboy culture creeping into his musical world.
“I’ve got those southern Alberta roots that I cling to,” Inman says. “My cousins were all horse people—real cowboys—so there were lots of stories. It was a really beautiful time in my life.”
October 27th, 2018. The Taverns annual Halloween Party featuring Virgin Tweed!
This years theme the 1980's so come dressed as your favourite 80's character!! prizes for best costume, dancing, and all sorts of shenanigans!!!
