The Water Dogs

 

 

The Water Dogs are an Indie/Alternative sibling trio based out of Buffalo, NY, USA. The Water Dogs have been heard on radio stations in England, Spain,Italy, Germany, Australia, South Africa, NYC, and in their hometown of Buffalo, NY.They perform at various venues, including Staten Island’s Richmond County Fair, Artpark’s Artbar, and six years at the Music is Art Festival! 

 

The Water Dogs have been actively creating music together since 2014. The siblings released their first full length album in 2018, entitled:‘For Someone Else’, an EP in 2020: ‘Pure Confusion’, and in 2021 they

released their second full length album: ‘Kind Words’! In February 2022 they released their single: “Kaleidoscope”. Their latest single: “Come on Now was released on April 8th. They look forward to

their next single “Human Mind” which will be made available in May! 

 

https://www.thewaterdogsband.com/

Tony Joe White

 

An unforeseen album more than a decade in the making, Smoke From the Chimney offers nine previously unknown home recordings by the legendary songwriter Tony Joe White. Discovered after his death, these unadorned voice/guitar demos have been transformed by producer Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys) and Nashville’s most seasoned studio players, in service to White’s eclectic style.

“It’s tough to put Tony Joe into a genre and always has been,” says Jody White, his son and longtime manager. “But, Dan took some of the songs I felt were the most difficult to fit in any genre and built them into amazing, amazing tracks.”

Listening to Smoke From the Chimney as a whole, the result is stunning. Not only are these songs magnificently written, the rich layers of production harken back to the albums he recorded in the late ’60s and early ‘70s in Nashville and Muscle Shoals, just as he was emerging as an internationally recognized songwriter and recording artist.

The imagery and character development in narratives like “Over You” and “Billy” are especially staggering when you consider they are purely fiction. Meanwhile, “Scary Stories” and “Bubba Jones” will satisfy fans of the swamp rock side of Tony Joe’s discography, even as the pulsating “Listen to Your Song” stands out as a modern message of empowerment. 

“These songs feel like a collection to me and they all seem to work together, in a weird way, even though they’re so different,” says Auerbach, who is releasing the album on his Easy Eye Sound label. “There’s some heartbreaking ballads and some really raunchy carnal blues. But it all works together like scenes of a movie.”

Across five decades as a performer and storyteller, Tony Joe White left an indelible mark on American music. His catalog offers indisputable classics such as “Polk Salad Annie” and “Rainy Night in Georgia,” and his songs have been recorded by Ray Charles, Kenny Chesney, Waylon Jennings, Tim McGraw, Willie Nelson, Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, and Tina Turner.

In the last 10 to 15 years of his life, Tony Joe would preserve new compositions or revisit older tracks in his home studio with only a guitar (usually his Stratocaster) and that inimitable voice. Most of that material would ultimately wind up on his late-career albums. But when an unproven song didn’t make the cut for a release, or if he couldn’t get another artist interested, the song stayed right where it was, as Tony Joe moved on to other things. This dismissal was not a reflection of the song’s quality; in fact, it meant quite the opposite, as he would only consider pitching his best material.

After his father’s death in 2018, Jody started transferring those multitrack home recordings to digital files. Looking back on the moment he unearthed the demo of “Smoke From the Chimney,” he recalls a mix of happiness, gratification, and shock. As he continued to find other songs that didn’t make an album, he moved the material into a separate folder. Within a year, those select recordings would evolve into Smoke From the Chimney.

Jody says that even in those basic tracks, that definitive Tony Joe White groove instantly stood out. “He always finds a tempo and a pocket that is exactly right. And it’s a little bit different than anybody else would choose themselves,” he says.

On the songs “Del Rio You’re Making Me Cry” and “Boot Money,” that groove allows the storyline to unfold at precisely the right pace, ensuring that the listener doesn’t miss the West Texas rainbow or the end-of-the-work-week reward. Drawing from the natural landscape, the dramatic visuals of “Someone Is Crying” call to mind the opening moments of an epic film, or perhaps the point of no return. In contrast, the wistful title track simply wouldn’t capture such intimacy at any other tempo.

Ever since meeting Tony Joe backstage at an Australian music festival in 2009, Auerbach sought to make a record with him. For nearly a decade, Jody tried to line up session time for them but Tony Joe demurred. “For one reason or another, my Dad would never just want to go into a studio and write with somebody, or go work with somebody,” Jody says. “He liked to do it at his place, and his way, and it turned out how it turned out, you know what I mean? So, this album really all worked out perfectly. He was making these tracks for Dan all along, but we just didn’t know it.”

Auerbach agrees. “Jody and I had been talking about this record for so long, and it didn’t happen for a reason,” he says. “It’s because it wasn’t supposed to happen. I was in a nervous cast of characters until the last few years, and if you’d given it to me any earlier, it wouldn’t have been right. I felt like all these people on the record were the right people and they laid in there behind Tony Joe. It felt really magical when we were making it happen.”

While recovering these recordings, Jody encountered an envelope of vintage photographs of Tony Joe White in his prime, taken during some downtime at his Nashville-area farm. Auerbach opted to hang those pictures in the studio as the session players and special guests like Marcus King built around the guitar-vocal demos. There was no speeding up or slowing down the source material, nor was there any vocal manipulation. When Auerbach realized that Tony Joe didn’t have any treble in his voice, he arranged the songs with a darker approach, one that suits the mood of these nine songs.

Jody believes that his father would love the way Smoke From the Chimney turned out. “I feel like it’s validation that Tony Joe was one of the greatest of all time,” he says. “That he could make something so potent, even so late in life, is something that not many people can do. I think it’s going to make people who loved him already love him even more.”

  https://www.tonyjoewhite.com

Jay Hawkins

 

 "Screaming" Jay Hawkins was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. At the age of 18 months, Hawkins was put up for adoption and shortly thereafter was adopted and raised by Blackfoot Indians. Hawkins studied classical piano as a child and learned guitar in his 20s. In a 1993 interview, Hawkins recounts telling his music tutor,   ...to leave before I make your life miserable [...] because with the type of music I want to play. The things I want to do with music and don't want to do it the old conventional way that everybody knows. I want to come up with my own ideas. I've got all the information that I need to get from you to do what I want, now if you stick around, I'm going to make your life miserable.

His initial goal was to become an opera singer (Hawkins cited Paul Robeson as his musical idol in interviews), but when his initial ambitions failed, he began his career as a conventional blues singer and pianist. Other influences included Mario Lanza, Enrico Caruso, Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Brown, Amos Milburn, Wynonie Harris, Nellie Lutcher, Roy Brown, Jimmy Witherspoon, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Roy Milton, Elmore James, Lightnin' Hopkins and H-Bomb Ferguson.

He joined the US Army with a forged birth certificate in 1942 (aged 13), and allegedly served in a combat role, with his fellow soldiers and higher-ups around him ignoring the fact he was substantially underage. During this time, he also entertained the troops as part of his service. In 1944, he enlisted in the Army Air Forces, being honorably discharged in 1952. Hawkins was an avid and formidable boxer during his years in the US Army (and later Air Force) boxing circuit. In 1949, he was the middleweight boxing champion of Alaska. In 1951, he joined guitarist Tiny Grimes' band, and was subsequently featured on some of Grimes' recordings. When Hawkins became a solo performer, he often performed in a stylish wardrobe of leopard skins, red leather, and wild hats.

Hawkins' later releases included "Constipation Blues" (which included a spoken introduction by Hawkins in which he states he wrote the song because no one had written a blues song before about "real pain"), "Orange Colored Sky", and "Feast of the Mau Mau". Nothing he released, however, had the monumental success of "I Put a Spell on You". In Paris in 1999 and at the Taste of Chicago festival, he actually performed "Constipation Blues" with a toilet onstage.

He continued to tour and record through the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in Europe, where he was very popular. Hawkins released a single recording of mainstream ballads in 1969, "Too Many Teardrops" and the Hawaiian styled "Makaha Waves" on the flip-side. In February 1976, he suffered facial injuries when he was burned by one of his flaming props while performing with his guitarist Mike Armando at the Virginia Theater in Alexandria, Virginia. He appeared in performance (as himself) in the Alan Freed bio-pic American Hot Wax in 1978. Subsequently, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch featured "I Put a Spell on You" on the soundtrack – and deep in the plot – of his film Stranger Than Paradise (1983) and then Hawkins himself as a hotel night clerk in his Mystery Train and in roles in Álex de la Iglesia's Perdita Durango and Bill Duke's adaptation of Chester Himes' A Rage in Harlem.

In 1983, Hawkins relocated to the New York area. In 1984 and 1985, Hawkins collaborated with garage rockers the Fuzztones, resulting in Screamin' Jay Hawkins and the Fuzztones Live album recorded at Irving Plaza in December 1984. They performed in the 1986 movie Joey.

In 1990, Hawkins performed the song "Sirens Burnin'," which was featured in the 1990 horror film Night Angel.

In July 1991, Hawkins released his album Black Music for White People. The record features covers of two Tom Waits compositions: "Heart Attack and Vine" (which, later that year, was used in a European Levi's advertisement without Waits' permission, resulting in a lawsuit), and "Ice Cream Man" (a Waits original and not a cover of the John Brim classic). Hawkins also covered the Waits song "Whistlin' Past the Graveyard", for his album Somethin' Funny Goin' On. In 1993, his version of "Heart Attack and Vine" became his only UK hit, reaching No. 42 on the UK singles chart. In 1993, Hawkins moved to France.

When Dread Zeppelin recorded their "disco" album, It's Not Unusual in 1992, producer Jah Paul Jo asked Hawkins to guest. He performed the songs "Jungle Boogie" and "Disco Inferno". He also toured with the Clash and Nick Cave during this period, and not only became a fixture of blues festivals but appeared at many film festivals as well, including the Telluride Film Festival premiere of Mystery Train.

His 1957 single "Frenzy" (found on the early 1980s compilation of the same name) was included in the compilation CD, Songs in the Key of X: Music from and Inspired by the X-Files, in 1996. This song was featured in the show's Season 2 episode "Humbug". It was also covered by the band Batmobile.

In 2001, the Greek director and writer Nicholas Triandafyllidis made the documentary Screamin' Jay Hawkins: I Put a Spell on Me about various stages of his life and career, including a filming of his last-ever live performance, in Athens on December 11, 1999, two months before his death, following a performance the day before in Salonica. In the documentary notable artists such as Jim Jarmusch, Bo Diddley, Eric Burdon, Frank Ash, Arthur Brown and Michael Ochs talked about Screamin' Jay Hawkins' early life, personality and career, and about his incredible talent. 

Hawkins died after emergency surgery from an aneurysm on February 12, 2000, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, near Paris, at 70 years old.

Clive Gregson

 

Born and raised in Manchester, England, Clive Gregson is an accomplished singer, musician and record producer. He led cult band Any Trouble. The group toured extensively in support of five critically acclaimed albums and a number of singles that became radio hits before disbanding at the end of 1984. Fondly remembered and greatly missed, the band have occasionally reformed since 2007, recording two brand new albums: “Life In Reverse” (2007) and “Present Tense” (2015). The band toured to support these releases and the three CD box set of “The Complete Stiff Recordings 1980-1981” (2013). Grown men cried!

In 1985, Clive released his first solo album and he has maintained a solo profile ever since. His solo recordings and tours have been one of the main outlets for his prolific songwriting and a solo “Best Of…” compilation was released in April 2009. Clive’s solo albums feature an eclectic mix of pop and folk styles, ranging from a stripped down one man and his acoustic intimacy to a full on electric band approach. Clive’s live shows are usually solo performances and the guitar skills that prompted Guitar to include him in their “1,000 Great Guitarists” are always well in evidence.

Along the road from pop frontman to singer-songwriter, Clive has followed many musical diversions. Between 1985 and 1992, he formed a partnership with Christine Collister that Rolling Stone called “the state of the art in British folk-rock”. They released five albums and toured the UK, USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Christine’s distinctive voice allied to Clive’s songs, instrumental and production skills created something truly special and their decision to call it a day left a huge gap in the roots music scene. The entire Gregson & Collister catalogue plus a “Best Of…” compilation were re-issued in 2009.

Clive has also toured and recorded with Richard Thompson (1982 to 1992), Nanci Griffith (1996 to 2007), Eddi Reader and Boo Hewerdine (1993 and 1999), Plainsong (1997) and he was the musical director for the Dennis Locorriere “Hits & History” tour in 2007, which resulted in a gold album and a concert DVD that also charted. His songs have been recorded by many artists, including Nanci Griffith, Kim Carnes, Fairport Convention, Claire Martin, Norma Waterson and Smokie. Nanci’s version of “I Love This Town” (performed as a duet with Jimmy Buffett) was released as a single in 2006 and became a radio hit in both America and the UK, receiving more than 5,000 spins in the USA.

Clive relocated to the USA in 1993. He continued to tour regularly, write prolifically and remain in demand as a record producer and session musician. Clive has decided to retire from solo touring at the end of 2020 in order to concentrate on writing and studio work. He will still consider live projects that capture his interest… but his days of sitting alone in the car in a Friday afternoon traffic jam on the M6 are now numbered!

https://clivegregson.com

Hilde Vos

 

 

Hilde Vos is an Americana roots singer songwriter born in 1986 in Nijmegen. She has already built up some fame with her voice and guitar. 

She sang together with Dick Van Altena, Ilse De Lange, Sandra Vanreys and Ruud Hermans. In 2012 she proudly played at various beautiful locations in Norway. In addition to artists such as Bobby Bare and Vince Gill, she sang the  Norsk Country Treff at the annual Country Festival.

With her very own sound, and sources of inspiration such as Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris and Bob Dylan, Hilde writes beautiful songs. She only touches the audience with a guitar and her voice.
She is a popular duo with her 'discoverer' Dick Van Altena, with whom she has performed a lot.

 https://www.hildevos.com

James Henry Cotton

 

 James Henry Cotton was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, who performed and recorded with many of the great blues artists of his time and with his own band. He played drums early in his career but is famous for his harmonica playing.

Cotton began his professional career playing the blues harp in Howlin' Wolf's band in the early 1950s. He made his first recordings in Memphis for Sun Records, under the direction of Sam Phillips. In 1955, he was recruited by Muddy Waters to come to Chicago and join his band. Cotton became Waters's bandleader and stayed with the group until 1965. In 1965 he formed the Jimmy Cotton Blues Quartet, with Otis Spann on piano, to record between gigs with the Muddy Waters band. He eventually left to form his own full-time touring group. His first full album, on Verve Records, was produced by the guitarist Mike Bloomfield and the singer and songwriter Nick Gravenites, who later were members of the band Electric Flag.

In the 1970s, Cotton played harmonica on Muddy Waters' Grammy Award–winning 1977 album Hard Again, produced by Johnny Winter.

Cotton was born in Tunica, Mississippi. He became interested in music when he first heard Sonny Boy Williamson II on the radio. He left home with his uncle and moved to West Helena, Arkansas, finding Williamson there. For many years Cotton claimed that he told Williamson that he was an orphan and that Williamson took him in and raised him, a story he admitted in recent years is not true. However, Williamson did mentor Cotton during his early years. Williamson left the South to live with his estranged wife in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, leaving his band in Cotton's hands. Cotton was quoted as saying, "He just gave it to me. But I couldn't hold it together 'cause I was too young and crazy in those days an' everybody in the band was grown men, so much older than me."

Cotton played drums early in his career but is famous for his harmonica playing. He began his professional career playing the blues harp in Howlin' Wolf's band in the early 1950s. He made his first recordings as a solo artist for Sun Records in Memphis in 1953. In 1954, he recorded an electric blues single "Cotton Crop Blues", which featured a heavily distorted power chord–driven electric guitar solo by Pat Hare. Cotton began working with the Muddy Waters Band around 1955. He performed songs such as "Got My Mojo Working" and "She's Nineteen Years Old", although he did not play on the original recordings; Little Walter, Waters's long-time harmonica player, played for most of Waters's recording sessions in the 1950s. Cotton's first recording session with Waters took place in June 1957, and he alternated with Little Walter on Waters's recording sessions until the end of the decade.

In 1965 he formed the Jimmy Cotton Blues Quartet, with Otis Spann on piano, to record between gigs with Waters's band. Their performances were captured by producer Samuel Charters on volume two of the Vanguard recording Chicago/The Blues/Today! After leaving Waters's band in 1966, Cotton toured with Janis Joplin while pursuing a solo career. He formed the James Cotton Blues Band in 1967. The band mainly performed its own arrangements of popular blues and R&B from the 1950s and 1960s. Cotton's band included a horn section, like that of Bobby Bland's. After Bland's death, his son told news media that Bland had recently discovered that Cotton was his half-brother.

In the 1970s, Cotton recorded several albums for Buddah Records. He played harmonica on Waters's Grammy Award–winning 1977 album Hard Again, produced by Johnny Winter. In the 1980s he recorded for Alligator Records in Chicago; he rejoined the Alligator roster in 2010. The James Cotton Blues Band received a Grammy nomination in 1984 for Live from Chicago: Mr. Superharp Himself!, on Alligator, and a second for his 1987 album Take Me Back, on Blind Pig Records. He was awarded a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album for Deep in the Blues in 1996. Cotton appeared on the cover of the July–August 1987 issue of Living Blues magazine (number 76). He was featured in the same publication's 40th anniversary issue of August–September 2010.

In 2006, Cotton was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame at a ceremony conducted by the Blues Foundation in Memphis. He has won or shared ten Blues Music Awards.

Cotton battled throat cancer in the mid-1990s, but he continued to tour, using singers or members of his backing band as vocalists. On March 10, 2008, he and Ben Harper performed at the induction of Little Walter into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, playing "Juke" and "My Babe" together; the induction ceremony was broadcast nationwide on VH1 Classic. On August 30, 2010, Cotton was the special guest on Larry Monroe's farewell broadcast of Blue Monday, which he hosted on radio station KUT in Austin, Texas, for nearly 30 years.

Cotton's studio album Giant, released by Alligator Records in late September 2010, was nominated for a Grammy Award. His album Cotton Mouth Man, released by Alligator on May 7, 2013, was also a Grammy nominee. It includes guest appearances by Gregg Allman, Joe Bonamassa, Ruthie Foster, Delbert McClinton, Warren Haynes, Keb Mo, Chuck Leavell and Colin Linden. Cotton played harmonica on "Matches Don't Burn Memories" on the debut album by the Dr. Izzy Band, Blind & Blues Bound, released in June 2013. In 2014, Cotton won a Blues Music Award for Traditional Male Blues Artist and was also nominated in the category Best Instrumentalist – Harmonica.

Cotton's touring band included the guitarist and vocalist Tom Holland, the vocalist Darrell Nulisch, the bassist Noel Neal (brother of the blues guitarist and harmonica player Kenny Neal) and the drummer Jerry Porter. 

Cotton died of pneumonia on March 16, 2017, at the age of 81, at a medical center in Austin, Texas and was buried on July 11, 2017 in Texas State Cemetery in Austin.

Carie & the SoulShakers'

Carie & the SoulShakers' original music is a blend of blistering blues and sultry soul with New Orleans style and Memphis grit. Their covers include rare cuts from Allen Toussaint, Willie Dixon, Fats Domino, Johnny Taylor and Taj Mahal. 

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6I99B6nDPjKeCx6dUF4jpl