The Rivoli Theatre is located at 219 S. Main Street in Monmouth, IL. There is street parking, parking around Public Square, a city lot across the street and a parking lot behind the Bijou (which is next to the Rivoli). Doors open at 2pm and the first act begins at 2:30. We’ll see you at the show!
Archive for October, 2011
A blues festival like the 2011 Deep Blue Innovators Blues Festival can’t be done in a vacuum. We need deep commitments from sponsors and we need the hard work of a team of volunteers, and we’re lucky on both fronts. I want to send out a huge Thank You! to all of our 2011 sponsors:
- Security Savings Bank
- Midwest Bank of Western Illinois
- IH Mississippi Valley Credit Union
- Farmland Foods
- Jim Standard
- Maple City Family Dental
- Sid Smith, DDS
- Jon Ferguson Agency (State Farm)
- the personal support of Mayor Rod Davies
- and a small handful of anonymous donors… you know who you are… thank you!
We’ll see you all at the show!
At Market Alley Wines, October 28th:
- 6pm: Blue Mother Tupelo acoustic set
At the Buchanan Center for the Arts:
- 10-11am: Blue Mother Tupelo workshop
- 11:10-12:10pm: Paul Rishell & Annie Raines workshop
At the Rivoli Theatre:
- 2:00pm: doors open
- 2:30pm: Hayes and Fleming perform
- 4:00pm: Blue Mother Tupelo performs
- 5:30pm: Paul Rishell & Annie Raines perform
- 7:15pm : The Michelle Malone Banned performs
- 9:00pm : Rory Block performs
- 10:45pm : open jam
Once again, blues fans and guitar geeks have a chance to get up close and personal with some of the acts performing at the Deep Blue Innovators Blues Festival on October 29th. This year we’re hosting not one but two music workshops!
Starting at 10am at the Buchanan Center for the Arts (less than a block from the Rivoli), the festival will host two guitar masters for workshops on style, history and how to play the blues.
First, Blue Mother Tupelo will introduce you to their music and playing techniques. Next, Paul Rishell and Annie Raines will showcase their unique approach to deep authentic blues.
The workshops are free and open to the public, but seating is limited, so please RSVP to paul@monmouthblues.com to reserve your seat.
All levels of players and blues fans are welcome.
This is an amazing opportunity and a great way to get you in the mood for a day of great live music. We’ll see you there!
“… Rory Block is currently stretching the limits… hugely talented… She is one of our national treasures.”-The New York Blues & Jazz Society
Heralded as “a living landmark” (Berkeley Express), “a national treasure” (Guitar Extra), and “one of the greatest living acoustic blues artists” (Blues Revue), Rory Block has committed her life and her career to preserving the Delta blues tradition and bringing it to life for 21st century audiences around the world. A traditionalist and an innovator at the same time, she wields a fiery and haunting guitar and vocal style that redefines the boundaries of acoustic blues and folk. The New York Times declared: “Her playing is perfect, her singing otherworldly as she wrestles with ghosts, shadows and legends.”
Aurora “Rory” Block grew up in Manhattan a family with Bohemian leanings. Her father owned a Greenwich Village sandal shop, where musicians like Bob Dylan, Maria Muldaur and John Sebastian all made occasional appearances. The rich and diverse Village scene was a constant influence on her cultural sensibilities. She was playing guitar by age ten, and by her early teens she was sitting in on the Sunday jam sessions in Washington Square Park.
During these years, her life was touched – and profoundly changed – by personal encounters with some of the earliest and most influential Delta blues masters of the 20th century. She made frequent visits to the Bronx, where she learned her first lessons in blues and gospel music from the Reverend Gary Davis. She swapped stories and guitar licks with seminal bluesman Son House, Robert Johnson’s mentor (“He kept asking, ‘Where did she learn to play like this?’”). She visited Skip James in the hospital after his cancer surgery. She traveled to Washington, DC, to visit with Mississippi John Hurt and absorb first-hand his technique and his creativity.
“This period seemed to last forever,” Block recalls nearly forty years later.” I now realize how lucky I was to be there, in the right place at the right time. I thought everyone knew these incredible men, these blues geniuses who wrote the book. I later realized how fleeting it was, and how even more precious.”
“Rory Block has been an inspiration to me since we started out years ago. Her guitar playing, singing and songwriting are some of the most soulful in traditional and modern blues.”-Bonnie Raitt
Even though she had been playing and touring for two decades, the world finally started taking notice of Rory the early 1990s, and Block scored numerous awards throughout the decade. Her visibility overseas increased dramatically when Best Blues and Originals, fueled by the single “Lovin’ Whiskey,” went gold in parts of Europe. She brought home Blues Music Awards four years in a row – two for Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year, and two for Best Acoustic Blues Album of the Year. Then in 1997, she won the Blues Music Award for The Lady and Mr. Johnson, a tribute to Robert Johnson, taking home Acoustic Album of the Year.
Today, after more than twenty highly acclaimed releases and five Blues Music Awards, Block is at the absolute height of her creative powers, bringing a world full of life lessons to bear on what she calls “a total celebration of my beloved instrument and best friend, the guitar.”
“When I hear Rory Block’s music, it’s as if my grandfather is here all over again.”-Greg Johnson, grandson of Robert Johnson
For more information on Rory Block, please visit her website: http://www.roryblock.com/
”A proper American cocktail best drunk straight up.”
-Billboard
Armed with a bottleneck slide, harmonica, and her signature soul-filled vocals, Michelle Malone was born in the Deep South and grew up listening to her mother sing in the church choir every Sunday. When it came time to craft her own sound, she took those religious roots, and blended in enough rock, folk, and country-blues to satisfy.
Debris, Michelle’s 10th release, is easily her most revealing and emotional recordings to date. Malone found herself tackling some serious subject matter while at the same time making that spirited soul-shaking music that she loves. She says, “I have to play these songs every night, so I need them to be fun – I want to have a good time, too.” If one line could capture the sentiment of Debris it would be, “Don’t you think it’s time to let your childhood go?” Michelle expounds, “Debris is basically a breakup record about a relationship that had me in a state of arrested development for over a decade. I wrote about the anger, the heartbreak, the humor, and the relief I finally found in the end.”
“On this loose and blues-stoked new album, Malone churns up those Southern roots with the vigor of Lucinda Williams while embracing her inner Keith Richards.”-Playboy
Over the course of her 20 year career, Malone has appeared on countless “best of” lists and has been the recipient of such awards as Best Female Vocalist (five times) and Best Acoustic Guitarist (three times) Creative Loafing, Studio Album of the Year (Atlanta Magazine), and Live Album of the year. Her albums Sugar Foot and Debris, released on SBS Records, were both on the Grammy Award ballot for best Contemporary Blues and Best Americana Albums respectively. Her songs have appeared in the films Bam Bam and Celeste, All Over Me, Shotgun Jesus and television programs True Blood, Dawson’s Creek, Felicity, Brooklyn South, have been recorded by Indigo Girls (for which Malone received both gold and platinum records), Antigone Rising, Hannah Thomas, and Vistoso Bosses. Here are a few little known facts about Michelle Malone: Malone has also been featured in a Georgia Tourism TV commercial with Elton John. The Collectible card game Magic: The Gathering was named in part after her song The Gathering (copyright 1988, Sony Music/Famous Music/Cold Cocked Music).
Michelle has never done anything nice and easy. She bit the major label lure (signed by both Clive Davis and Walter Yetnikoff) and despite promises broken, indulgences and expected excess, Michelle has continued her musical journey into forays of introspective, energetic and award-winning Americana, country blues and rock. This wealth of material has enabled Malone to tour and record for over 20 years, averaging over 150 days a year on the road and making fans all over the world.
The Michelle Malone Banned (Phil Skipper on Bass, Jon Radford on drums, Tim Tucker on Keys and vocals, Trish Land on vocals and Tamborine) is currently touring the USA and abroad in search of the perfect cup of coffee. On October 29th, they’ll stop here in Monmouth – let’s get the Innkeepers beans roasted and the coffee press ready!
“Why Michelle Malone hasn’t knocked the likes of Sheryl Crow and Bonnie Raitt off of their roots-rock and blues pedestals blows the mind. Maloneʼs authentic interpretation of good old Southern rock and hard-edge blues should have her rubbing shoulders with the Allman Brothers and Buddy Guys of the world. Sugarfoot and Stompinʼ Ground, are rousing and relentless toe-tapping beauties deserving of a boatload of attention.”
-The Village Voice
Michelle’s live show is not to be missed—she can make the biggest venues seem as cozy as a campfire, and an intimate venue feel like the center of the universe. Michelle Malone has collaborated on stage and/or in the studio with such artists as with blues legends Albert King, Charlie Musselwhite, Johnny Winter, Little Feat, Robert Cray, Keb Mo, Sonny Landreth, Marsha Ball, Lonnie Brooks and Chris Whitley, as well as Indigo Girls, John Mayer, SugarLand, Shawn Mullins, Steve Earle, K.T. Tunstall, Shawn Colvin, Jackson Browne and Joan Osborne, to name a few.
For more information on Michelle Malone, please visit her website: http://www.michellemalone.com/