Bandstand July 2015

Bottleneck Blues Band
2015 has been the year of Bottleneck Blues Band. After the release of our first CD, Twenty First Century Blues, in December, the band took off. The first big event was performing at the Winter Blues Fest which led us to a slot at the Gorge Blues Fest. The band comes off a win at the first round of the Journey to Memphis and is flying high into the Waterfront Blues Fest at noon on the 4th of July at the Backporch Stage for the second round. August is shaping up to be a great month for us as well. We are headlining the Crawdad Fest at The Skyway Bar in Zig Zag on the 16th at 7:00PM followed by a big show at Director Park in Portland on the 18th at 6.30PM. At the end of the month, on the 29th at 7:00PM, the band is the featured artist at The White Salmon Concert Series in White Salmon, WA. The real blues are alive! Come dance with us! Find the Bottleneck at http://www.bottleneckbluesband.com See you soon and thanks for your support!

Lloyd “Have Mercy” Jones
Europe in July…So sorry to miss our magnificent “Waterfront Blues Festival” this year. It is truly one of the greatest in the country.

The good news is, I’ll be playing other wonderful festivals for several weeks in July throughout Denmark, Holland and Germany! For more details please visit www.lloydjonesmusic.com. I’m proud and pleased to be able share this music around the globe and look forward to returning next year to be a part of this great musical community at home.

Ya’ll have a fantastic 28th Annual Waterfront Blues Festival and I want to hear all about it when I get back!

The Thunder Brothers
The Thunder Brothers (Timmer Thunder and J.M. Thunder) would like to thank everyone for your support on the launch of our new product, the Thunder Brothers Rhythm Section. After nearly two decades of backing national and regional blues acts together, it’s time for us to have our own identity. A special BIG thank you goes out to Jason Ricci, John Lisi, Karen Lovely, and Doug Rowell for so enthusiastically introducing us on such a large scale. In addition to continuing to back many of the Pacific Northwest’s finest artists, we will also be backing visiting regional and national artists in need of tour support. You will find our dates listed in the BluesNotes calendar section. Find and like us on Facebook to stay updated on events as they come in. And coming soon, Thunderwear!

JT Wise Band
We appreciated the supportive audience and dancers at the CBA General Membership meeting in February. Slim told us it was an exciting show and people raved about it. The videos that were taken have a lot of oohhs and aahhs — how nice and thank you. We are happy to report that we will be performing at the CBA picnic on August 2nd. It will be great to see you again!

For those of you who missed the February performance, JT’s musical influences read like a Clapton Crossroads Festival including the full spectrum from Clapton, to Billy Gibbons, to Vince Gill, Robin Ford, with a touch of Garcia and Betts thrown in as well. Band members include JT Wise on guitar, Margaret Wise on bass, Jim Stein on slide guitar, and Ken Woodside on drums.

We play mostly original rock’n blues and Americana.

Summer is a busy time for us and some highlights besides the CBA picnic will be performances at the Central Hotel in St. Johns, Saturday, July 25, from 7 to 9 PM; White Eagle, Thursday, July 30, from 8 to 10PM; Music Millennium Customer Appreciation Barbecue, August 8 at 11AM; Arts on Mainstreet Wednesday, August 12 from noon to 1PM; and Buffalo Gap Saloon and Eatery on Macadam, Saturday, August 15 9PM.

This will be our first time playing at the Central Hotel 7/25 at 7PM and Buffalo Gap Saloon and Eatery 8/15 at 9PM, please try to make it out if you can. We would love to see you! The Central Hotel has amazing cocktails and outdoor seating and the Buffalo Gap is known for their food, liquor selection, and atmosphere. No cover charge to boot.

We look forward to being part of the CBA and hopefully next year participating in the Journey to Memphis competitions. If all goes well, we will have a self-produced CD available later in the year. Wish us luck.

JT and Margaret Wise
www.reverbnation.com/jtwiseband

James Clem
Hi friends, Proud to say that I will be performing at the Waterfront Blues Festival on July 2. I will be kicking things off on Thursday with a set on the Front Porch Stage from noon to 1 pm. That same afternoon will find me on the Crossroads Stage giving a slide guitar workshop and performance from 3 to 4 pm. Harmonica man Stan Street from Clarksdale, Miss will join me for part of the set. Should be a fun time.

My new Blues CD Road’s Gettin’ Muddy was released at the end of June and will be available at Music Millennium and at their booth at the blues fest. Also, go to CD Baby for downloads and CD’s by mail. This CD has the hot rhythm section of Ken West and Craig Snazelle and we have lots of special guests. Mary Flower and I do good old blues duet on Lonnie Johnson’s “You Had Too Much” and she joins me on vocals and dobro on a vintage Carter Family tune. Lots of surprises on this recording like an electric slide surf instrumental and producer Ron Rogers out did himself dialing in the sound on this live in the studio all analog recording.

My other recent swing/blues ukulele CD Sugar Moon is getting great reviews and is now available on iTunes and Amazon for downloads and CD Baby for mail order sales. I just got word that Pandora Radio is also going to be playing tunes from the CD so it may be up and running by the time you read this.

Anyway, stop and say hi at my gigs or at the blues fest and check out some song samples from my new recordings on my website or at the sites I mentioned above. Keep supporting the blues (tell a friend)!

Cheers,

James Clem
www.jamesclem.com