News

Alligator Records has set a November 3rd street date for the vinyl-only release of The Choice Cuts, the first-ever LP from JJ Grey & Mofro. The album features two songs from each of the group’s four CDs (hand-picked by Grey) and a newly recorded version of Van Morrison’s Tupelo Honey, with Grey playing all of the instruments. The 180-gram LP is the first vinyl release on Alligator Records since 1991, when the label released Otis Rush’s Lost In The Blues.

Born and raised just outside of Jacksonville, Florida, JJ Grey comes from a long tradition of Southern musical storytellers. His multi-textured music overflows with dynamic rhythms and thought-provoking lyrics. From raw funk to deep soul, blues and rock, JJ and his band Mofro deliver devastating live and recorded performances. Billboard described their music as “a world-beating blend of Southern rock, blues and Florida swamp soul….killer tunes that hook the listener.”

Debuting in 2001 with Blackwater, following up in 2004 with Lochloosa (both albums reissued by Alligator in 2007), Grey has steadily built an intensely loyal following. In 2007, with his first Alligator release, Country Ghetto, Grey reached an even larger audience, doubling both his album sales and his concert attendance. In 2008 with Orange Blossoms, JJ Grey took another giant step forward expanding his legion of fans. The group is currently on tour with Shooter Jennings and Earl Greyhound.

Zydeco superstar Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural and his band, Buckwheat Zydeco, have been riding a wave of national popularity since the release of the group’s debut Alligator CD, Lay Your Burden Down. They performed on public radio’s World Café (who called the group “America’s Party Band”) on October 7, 2009. To hear the entire performance plus one bonus song, go to: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113569607

Buckwheat Zydeco performs on WHYY-TV’s On Canvas program, set to air in the Philadelphia area on October 14. The show will then be archived here: http://www.whyy.org/artsandculture/oncanvas.html.

Rick Estrin & The Nightcats, currently celebrating the release of their debut CD, Twisted, will appear as featured guests on the nationally syndicated House Of Blues Radio Hour. The show will air the weekend of October 23 – 24. For a full list of broadcast times and stations, go to http://www.thebluesmobile.com/briefcase/affiliate.shtml.

Since the CD's June 2 release, Twisted has received glowing reviews from Billboard, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Blues Revue, Living Blues and many more national and regional publications. For more than 30 years and nine albums, Rick fronted the jumping, swinging Little Charlie & The Nightcats, featuring guitarist Little Charlie Baty. With Baty’s recent retirement from touring, Estrin — along with the Nightcats’ longtime rhythm section of J. Hansen and Lorenzo Farrell and a new member, fiery guitarist Kid Andersen — takes the lead on his own.

 
Alligator Records is digitally distributing its catalog free to radio stations globally through AirPlay Direct. This will allow Alligator to service radio stations worldwide instantly upon release of a new album. Radio programmers can download these broadcast quality songs 24 hours a day, seven days a week at their convenience and play them for their listeners immediately.
 
AirPlay Direct is an easy to use digital file transfer system that was developed to streamline radio / artist promotion activities for today's music industry. AirPlay Direct's free services replace the unnecessary time and expense of putting together and sending out costly traditional artist packages and press kits via snail mail. Utilizing the AirPlay Direct system also allows an artist to positively impact the environment by eliminating needless packaging.
 
For more information on AirPlay Direct please visit www.AirPlayDirect.com

Living Blues magazine honored four Alligator artists with coveted Living Blues Awards. Late Queen Of The Blues Koko Taylor, Texas boogie-woogie pianist vocalist Marcia Ball, slide guitar wizard Lil’ Ed Williams and his band The Blues Imperials, and American musical icon and accordion master Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural (of Buckwheat Zydeco) each received the recognition. The awards and categories are as follows:

Critics Awards:
Koko Taylor – Blues Artist Of The Year (Female)
Lil’ Ed And The Blues Imperials – Best Live Performer
Buckwheat Zydeco – Most Outstanding Musician (Other – accordion)

Readers Awards:
Marcia Ball – Blues Artist Of The Year (Female)
Marcia Ball – Most Outstanding Musician (Keyboards)

“Blistering, inspired roadhouse blues and passionate Southern rock… supercharged guitar and gritty, soulful vocals.”                 –Relix

Alligator Records has set an October 6 street date for SPEAK NO EVIL, the blistering new CD from Atlanta-based blues-rock guitarist and vocalist Tinsley Ellis. Over the course of 11 albums and literally thousands of live performances, Ellis has become one of today’s most electrifying guitarists and vocalists. He attacks his music with rock power and blues feeling, in the same tradition as his Deep South musical heroes Duane Allman and Freddie King and his old friends Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes. Rolling Stone says he plays “feral blues guitar...non-stop gigging has sharpened his six-string to a razor’s edge...his eloquence dazzles...he achieves pyrotechnics that rival early Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.”

SPEAK NO EVIL is the most guitar-driven album of Ellis’ storied career. It features his fiercest, most brutally honest and hardest-hitting original songs to date. The soulfulness and expressiveness of his guitar playing are ferocious, but when the mood calls for it, can be gentle and melodic. Ellis pours his soul into each and every performance with unguarded, raw emotion. With rip-roaring songs that are both poignant and humorous, SPEAK NO EVIL is as wide-ranging and inspired a recording as Ellis has ever made, and one of the most satisfying Southern blues-rock albums in ages.

Tinsley Ellis wears his Southern roots proudly. Born in Atlanta in 1957, he grew up in southern Florida and first played guitar at age eight. He found the blues through the back door of British Invasion bands like The Yardbirds, The Animals, Cream, and The Rolling Stones. He especially loved the Kings — Freddie, B.B. and Albert — and spent hours immersing himself in their music. His love for the blues solidified when he was 14. At a B.B. King performance, Tinsley sat mesmerized in the front row. When B.B. broke a string on Lucille, he changed it without missing a beat, and handed the broken string to Ellis. After the show, B.B. came out and talked with fans, further impressing Tinsley with his warmth and down-to-earth attitude. By now Tinsley’s fate was sealed; he had to become a blues guitarist. And yes, he still has that string.

Already an accomplished teenaged musician, Ellis left Florida and returned to Atlanta in 1975. He soon joined the Alley Cats, a gritty blues band that included Preston Hubbard (of Fabulous Thunderbirds fame). In 1981, along with veteran blues singer and harpist Chicago Bob Nelson, Tinsley formed The Heartfixers, a group that would become Atlanta’s top-drawing blues band. Upon hearing Live At The Moonshadow (Landslide), the band’s second release, The Washington Post declared, “Tinsley Ellis is a legitimate guitar hero.” After cutting two more Heartfixers albums for Landslide, Cool On It (featuring Tinsley’s vocal debut) and Tore Up (with vocals by blues shouter Nappy Brown), Ellis was ready to head out on his own.

GEORGIA BLUE, Tinsley’s first Alligator release, hit an unprepared public by surprise in 1988. Critics and fans quickly agreed that a new and original guitar hero had emerged. “It’s hard to overstate the raw power of his music,” raved The Chicago Sun-Times. Before long, Alligator arranged to reissue COOL ON IT and TORE UP, thus exposing Tinsley’s blistering earlier music to a growing fan base.

Tinsley’s subsequent releases — 1989’s FANNING THE FLAMES, 1992’s TROUBLE TIME, 1994’s STORM WARNING, and 1997’s FIRE IT UP — further expanded the guitarist’s hero status. By now his talents as a songwriter equaled his guitar prowess, and critics, writers, radio programmers and fans around the country were taking notice. Features and reviews ran in Rolling Stone, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and in many other national and regional publications. His largest audience by far came when NBC Sports ran a feature on Atlanta’s best blues guitarist during their 1996 Summer Olympic coverage, viewed by millions of people all over the world.

After one album for Capricorn and two for Telarc, Ellis returned to Alligator in 2005 with the searing guitar-fueled LIVE-HIGHWAYMAN. It was the live recording his fans had been demanding for years. Recorded at a packed club just outside Chicago, the CD took Ellis’ extended soloing and heartfelt vocals to staggering heights. His return to the studio in 2007 produced MOMENT OF TRUTH, an album The Chicago Tribune called “incendiary and inspired.”

Averaging over 150 live shows a year, Ellis has played in all 50 states, as well as Canada, Europe, Australia and South America. He has shared stages with almost every major blues star, including Stevie Ray Vaughan, Otis Rush, Willie Dixon, Son Seals, Koko Taylor, Albert Collins and many others. Whether he’s out with his own band or sharing stages with major artists like Buddy Guy, The Allman Brothers, Gov’t Mule or Widespread Panic, he always digs deep and plays, as Guitar Player says, “…as if his life depended on it.” With SPEAK NO EVIL and continued non-stop touring, Ellis will bring his monumental guitar work and intensely powerful vocals to rock and blues fans all over the world, letting his songs and his guitar do the talking.

 

 

JJ Grey & Mofro, the Jacksonville, Florida-based swamp, blues, rock, funk, and soul band, have announced a major North American fall tour. In addition to headlining theatre and festival dates, the band will share four dates with blues guitarist/vocalist Susan Tedeschi and three dates with guitarist Derek Trucks. Then, in late September and running through November, JJ Grey & Mofro will embark on a co-headlining tour with country rock outlaw Shooter Jennings and special guest Earl Greyhound.

Grey's most recent CD, ORANGE BLOSSOMS, has been hailed by USA Today as “intoxicating North Florida blues-rock, with hints of Memphis, Muscle Shoals and garage-band music.” In every song he writes and sings, Grey exudes rocking, funky, melodic front-porch realism. He comes from a long tradition of Southern musical storytellers. His multi-textured music is filled with dynamic rhythms and thought-provoking lyrics. From raw funk to deep soul, blues and rock, JJ and his band, both on CD and live, are simply devastating. Debuting in 2001 with BLACKWATER, following up in 2004 with LOCHLOOSA (both albums reissued by Alligator in 2007), Grey steadily found more and more success. With his two Alligator releases (2007’s COUNTRY GHETTO and 2008’s ORANGE BLOSSOMS), and non-stop touring, JJ Grey is taking his ever-growing fan base along for the ride of their lives.

Tour dates are as follows:
8/14 - Denver, CO - Denver Botanical Gardens (with Susan Tedeschi)
8/15  - Lyons, CO - Folks Festival        
8/16 - Snowbird, UT - Snowbird Tent Revival        
8/19 - Seattle, WA - Woodland Park Zoo Amphitheater (with Susan Tedeschi)
8/21 - Portland, OR - Oregon Zoo Amphitheater (with Susan Tedeschi)
8/22 - Healdsburg, CA - Rodney Strong Winery (with Susan Tedeschi)   
8/24 - Chico, CA - Sierra Nevada Brewing Company   
8/27 - Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up Tavern   
8/28 - Los Angeles, CA - El Rey Theatre        
8/29 - San Francisco, CA - Outside Lands Music Festival   
9/11 - Statesboro, GA - The French Quarter Cafe        
9/13 - Charlotte, NC - Belk Theatre (with Derek Trucks)
9/15 - Oxford, MS - The Lyric Oxford (with Derek Trucks)   
9/16 - Athens, GA - The Classic Center (with Derek Trucks)   
9/17 & 9/18 - Fredericton, New Brunswick, CANADA - Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival

Co-Headlining With Shooter Jennings:
9/24 – Tampa, FL - Ritz Ybor City
9/25 – Orlando, FL -  House Of Blues
9/26 – Jacksonville, FL - Maverick's
9/30 – Birmingham, AL - Workplay
10/1 - Lexington, KY – Buster's Billiards & Backroom
10/2 - Indianapolis, IN – The Vogue
10/3 – Detroit, MI - St Andrews Hall
10/6 – Cleveland, OH - Beachland Ballroom
10/7 - Louisville, KY - Headliners
10/8 – Covington, OH - Madison Theater
10/9 – Greenville, SC – Fall For Greenville Fest
10/10 - Charleston, SC – Music Farm
10/22 – New York, NY - Irving Plaza
10/24 - Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
10/29 - Asheville, NC - Orange Peel
10/30 – Knoxville, TN – The Valarium
10/31 – Memphis, TN - Minglewood Hall

These shows without Shooter Jennings:
10/23 – Troy, NY – Revolution Hall (with Soulive)
10/28 - Wilmington, NC - Greenfield Lake Amphitheater
11/1 - New Orleans, LA – Tipitina’s
11/1 – New Orleans, LA – Voodoo Music Festival

 

Alligator Records has set an August 11 street date for Hard Believer, the label debut from blues, rock and R&B singer, songwriter and guitarist Tommy Castro. Castro, winner of the 2008 Blues Music Award for Entertainer Of The Year, is famed not only for his hard-hitting, impassioned vocals, soaring guitar work and his blues-infused, rocking R&B sound, but also for his striking, original songwriting and exhilarating stage show. According to The San Francisco Chronicle, “Castro navigates seriously funky Southern soul, gritty big city blues and scorching rock…his silvery guitar licks simultaneously sound familiar and fresh.” Castro, booked by the famed Rosebud Agency, will be hitting the road hard -- kicking off his Hard Believer tour on August 9 in Duluth at the Bayfront Blues Festival -- playing festivals and clubs all across the U.S. and Canada.

Hard Believer was produced by John Porter (B.B. King, Elvis Costello, Buddy Guy, Keb Mo, The Smiths, Otis Rush, Billy Bragg, Roxy Music) and recorded in Castro’s hometown of San Rafael, CA. The album is anchored by Castro’s soul-baring songs, filled with profound emotion and fueled by Castro’s soulful vocals, powerful guitar, and propulsive rhythms. But what really drives the songs home is Castro’s telepathic interaction with his band. The group operates as a single engine, firing on all cylinders, sometimes pushing the pedal to the floor, other times slowing things down for a simmering ballad.

Born in San Jose, California in 1955, Castro first picked up a guitar at age 10. He came under the spell of Eric Clapton, Elvin Bishop, Mike Bloomfield and other blues rock players early on. As he got older, Castro moved forward by investigating the past, falling in love with the blues guitar work of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Freddie King, Buddy Guy, Elmore James and singers like Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett and James Brown. By his late 20s he was playing in a variety of San Francisco-area blues and soul bands.

Castro joined Warner Brothers artists The Dynatones in the late 1980s. The much-loved rocking soul band had a huge fan base and toured the U.S. constantly. He honed his chops with the band on the road for two years, performing live all across the country and backing major artists like Carla Thomas and Albert King. He formed The Tommy Castro Band in 1991 and won the Bay Area Music Award for Best Club Band in both 1993 and 1994. With his local fan base quickly expanding, he released his debut album, Exception To The Rule, in 1996 on Blind Pig. He began touring nationally with his band, picking up new fans everywhere he went. The album won the 1997 Bay Area Music Award for Outstanding Blues Album, and Castro also took the award for Outstanding Blues Musician that same year.

In the mid-1990s The Tommy Castro Band served as the house band for three seasons on NBC Television’s Comedy Showcase (airing right after Saturday Night Live), bringing him in front of millions of viewers every week. During the 1990s and into the 2000s, Castro released a series of critically acclaimed CDs for Blind Pig, Telarc and 33rd Street Records as well as one on his own Heart And Soul label. In 2001 and 2002 the legendary B.B. King asked Castro to open his summer concert tours. Castro received an open invitation to join the king of the blues on stage for the nightly finale. 

Publications across the country, from The Washington Post to The San Francisco Examiner, have sung Castro’s praises. Guitar Player called Castro “the hardest working bluesman on the scene today.” The Philadelphia Inquirer declared, “Castro plays infectious, roaring roadhouse romps with incendiary licks and a touch of New Orleans soul.” Carlos Santana, with whom Castro has performed, said, “Tommy Castro has the voice and the sound to touch everybody’s heart.” With Hard Believer and plenty of high-profile tour dates to follow, believing in the prodigious talent and unbridled energy of Tommy Castro is anything but hard.