Jimmy Carpenter
Jimmy Carpenter is on a roll. For over 40 years Carpenter has plied his trade as Saxophonist, singer-songwriter, and arranger. Having won the 2021 and 2022 Blues Music Award for Best Instrumentalist/Horn, he is nominated again in ’23, his 8th nomination overall. He is also a Grammy-Winning Composer, for a composition he contributed to the New Orleans Nightcrawlers’ winning album, Atmosphere. After many years living and working in New Orleans, Jimmy now resides in Las Vegas, where he serves as Musical Director of The Big Blues Bender.
Praise for The Louisiana Record, Released September 2022 on Gulf Coast Records:
The Louisiana Record is the kind of set that will get your whole neighborhood dancing if played loud enough. Get it and get going! Mike O’Cull, Rock and Blues Muse
“I enjoyed this album from start to finish. Carpenter does a great job on vocals and tenor saxophone throughout and the bands does an exceptional job, too!” Steve Jones, Blues Blast Magazine
“Carpenter’s singing seems to get more soulful with every outing..” Grant Britt, No Depression
“This has really become an album that can really get a party started.” Bluestown, The Netherlands
“Tenor sax man Jimmy Carpenter reminds me of 50s and 60s R&Ber King Curtis, with his big sound grooving through vintage juke box tunes of that period.” George W Harris, JazzWeekly.com
“I have been a Jimmy Carpenter fan for 20 years, from the first time I heard him play with Jimmy Thackery. He’s always been one of the premier sax players around. But Jimmy is also a stellar songwriter and singer. His voice is at its best on ‘Soul Doctor’, Jimmy’s best record to date. This album oozes cool and rocks hard with a classic sound that only Jimmy Carpenter can bring to the table.” — Mike Zito
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Brandi Carlile
Brandi Carlile
Brandi M. Carlile is an American singer-songwriter and producer whose music spans multiple genres. As of 2018, Carlile has released six studio albums and earned seven Grammy Award nominations, including one for The Firewatcher’s Daughter and six for By the Way, I Forgive You. Wikipedia
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Willie Porter
Willy Porter is a contemporary American rock musician and singer-songwriter from Mequon, Wisconsin. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. In April
Willy Porter Biography
by Richard Skelly – from Allmusic.com
Like Greg Brown, John Hammond, Leo Kottke, Stephen Fearing, Richard Shindell, Kelly Joe Phelps, and so many others, Willy Porter is often at his strongest as a solo act. He does work with a band periodically, but given the economics of touring in recent years, he seems to perform more frequently accompanying himself with guitar and mandolin. Porter honed his chops the natural way, busking across Europe and playing every little coffee house and dive bar on both sides of the Mississippi. He’s a veteran performer who takes his audiences with him on the journey. He elicits a rare kind of communication between artist and audience, mostly because he’s able to read his audiences so well.
Porter was raised near Milwaukee, and his first big breaks were playing theater-sized shows there and in Madison. As could be expected from someone from this part of the country, there’s an element of blues in Porter’s singing and songwriting and in most of his live shows, although he’s best thought of as a contemporary singer/songwriter, straight out of the world of folk music. He began playing viola, a notoriously difficult instrument to master, in his youth, but found he lacked the discipline for classical music as a career path. He had a revelation in his teens when he found Leo Kottke’s album, “6 & 12 String Guitar.” Kottke‘s playing opened up new vistas for Porter, who began playing guitar after dropping his viola studies.
As the occasion or tour dictates, you can catch Porter solo or with a backing band of veterans from Wisconsin.
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Danny O’Keefe
Danny O’Keefe
In the 1970’s, Danny O’Keefe put out a string of albums that cemented his reputation as being among the best songwriters of his generation. These days, casual fans know him best for his Top Ten hit “Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues” or Jackson Browne’s version of “The Road” from the classic Running On Empty album. But the story didn’t end in the 70’s. He recorded “The Day To Day” in 1985 with the two Top Twenty Adult Contemporary songs “Along For The Ride” and “Someday”. Working with Bob Dylan’s company, Special Rider Music, he co-wrote “Well, Well, Well” with Bob and other songs successfully recorded by artists like Nickel Creek, Alison Krauss, and Alan Jackson.
