GTBB’s new album Shine debuted at #1 on the Billboard Blues Chart. Recently headlining the blues stage at The Montreal Jazz Festival and fresh off of their European debut at the Grolsch Blues Festival in Germany, Beale Street’s latest success story, 5-time Blues Blast Music Award Nominee and International Blues Challenge Runner-up is Ghost Town Blues Band. Not your grandpa’s blues band, their live show has been captivating audiences in the U.S., Canada and Europe with their “second-line horn entrance,” cigar box guitars and electric push brooms to Allman Brothers style jams and even a hip-hop trombone player. The band’s stage show and energy is unparalleled and has been called the best new live blues show in the world.
“With a shoot-from-the-hip Memphis attitude, and a STAX-busting explosion of modern blues vision, GTBB represents a welcome changing of the guard.”
Award-winning Soul-Blues & Funk national recording artist.
Sears, now 30, has spent most of his life as a professional musician, mentored and taught by the legendary guitarist Hubert Sumlin and Rock & Roll Hall Of Famer Solomon Burke, Sears played his first gig on his 12th birthday and began touring full time by age 14, with the release of his debut album “Transitions”.
Memphis Rub is a 4-piece band from Florida’s Suncoast area, performing a blend of blues and rock with a bit of R&B and funk mixed in.
The band’s lineup is “Hurricane” Gary Drouin (guitar), Scott Matzke (bass/vocals), Dan Ryan (keyboards), and David Wells (drums/vocals). None of the members are from Memphis, but they all have an appreciation for what the city represents musically.
The Memphis Rub Band performs at venues and festivals up and down the Florida Suncoast, putting their spin on music by Delbert McClinton, Tommy Castro, Ace Moreland, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, The Band and more.
The band also writes and performs its own original music. In 2018 Memphis Rub released their debut album, “Taste”, and tracks from this album have been played on local area radio stations WMNF and WSLR as well as several stations in other markets.
Billy the Kid and The Regulators are a high powered, guitar driven, rhythm and blues band based in Pittsburgh. Lead singer Billy Evanochko is widely known across the Steel City for his impassioned lyrics, seductive vocals, and stinging guitar riffs. Together with his band, The Regulators they deliver a well-balanced dose of funky rhythm and blues, with heart and soul being the main ingredient, playing countless clubs and festivals throughout the country. The band attracts fans with their fresh mix and interpretation of the iconic R&B experience.
Billy the Kid & The Regulators won over the Blues Society of Western Pa taking first place honors among the acts at the Blues Challenge in Pittsburgh in 2013 earning them a spot at the 2014 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, TN. The Band competed with acts from all over the world in Memphis January 22-25, 2014, earning them the 3rd Place Win among the best blues bands in the world! Their Sophomore CD “She Got a Hold on Me”, released in April 2012, wowed judges in Memphis, TN in which it placed in the top 5 best CD’s submitted from around the world for the Best Self Produced CD.
Billy the Kid and the Regulators earned a spot in the 2008 International Blues Competition in Memphis TN by winning the Appalachian Blues Challenge for the West Virginia Blues Society.
“Billy Evanochko and company deliver a unique blend of contemporary blues with a big side of funk. This definitely is a band to be reckoned with” – Scott Tady, Beaver County Times
“The boy can flat out play.” “Billy and the boys are one of the best kept secrets in the Blues. If you have not heard of them, you better ask somebody!” – Michael Burks, Alligator Records Recording artist
“Billy The kid & The Regulators are the best band I’ve had as an opening act this year period.” – Tinsley Ellis, Telarc Records Recording artist.
Respecting the rich tradition of the blues and always paying homage to the original blues architects, expand the genre to bring it to new audiences and deliver it with the passion, power and pizazz that keeps fans coming back for more…
Dockta D and the Powers That Be is a group of well-seasoned, dynamic, top-notch musicians who will lay you low with the blues, roll you over with rock, swing you to the moon and back and funk you up with groovy beats, all while opening up your aching heart with a soulfulness that permeates each note from their expertly played instruments. Bringing solid mind-blowing harmonica-driven blues-rock originals along with well-loved classics from rock, swing, blues, funk, boogie-woogie and soul, adapted to their own style, and with influences ranging diversely from Paul Butterfield to Lee Oskar, J. Geils to ZZ Top, Buddy Guy to Robin Trower, Johnny Winter to Lynard Skynard and the Stones to the Beatles, there is no jam that this band can’t handle.
“This is a new blues woman on the scene with fantastic chops and a command of songs. She is a valuable addition to the blues world, destined for wide recognition.”
— Steve Daniels, Big City Blues
There’s a tendency these days to try to pigeonhole any artist that attempts to breach the boundaries. Chalk it up to the restrictions of radio playlists or the media’s attempt to strictly define musicians by the music it believes artists ought to be making, creative instincts be damned.
Nevertheless Crystal Shawanda opted to defy those demands and chart her own path forward. Initially signed to RCA in 2007, she hit her stride as a country singer and songwriter when she scored a top 20 hit with her song “You Can Let Go” and subsequently tallied sales of over 50,000 copies of her debut album Dawn of a New Day and subsequently debuted in the Billboard Top 20. Nevertheless, she began to realize that the blues had captured her muse, and with that, she left the label, shifted her stance and began recording albums that reflected her love of blues and her natural affinity for that sound.
As she once told an interviewer, “The whole time I was singing Patsy Cline on stage, I was singing Etta James at home.”
Ben Prestage’s musical background began before he was born… even before his parents were born. Ben’s great-grandmother was a Vaudeville musican who toured with Al Jolson and also participated in medicine shows. Her daughter was a Boogie-Woogie pianist and painter who used to play for Ben when he was coming up. On the other side of the family tree, his grandfather, who was a Mississippi sharecropper turned Ben onto the sounds and culture of Mississippi and Blues in general.
“When my father was growing up in Mississippi,” states Ben, “ they never had running water and the only electricity was one light bulb that hung from the ceiling, but they had it better than some of their neighbors, because they didn’t have dirt floors. I grew up in rural Florida, on a 14-mile-long dirt road, near the headwaters of the Everglades. It was 7 miles either direction to the nearest paved road, and when you got to pavement, you still weren’t near a town. It was panther, gator, and cottonmouth country. Out there, there was only one kind of music in the house. Whether it was being played on an instrument, or on a recording, it was Blues.
