Tab Benoit
Tab Benoit
One of the most impressive guitarists to emerge from the rich Bayous of Southern Louisiana in recent years, Tab Benoit’s guitar tone can be recognized before his Otis-Redding-ish voice resonates from the speakers. He doesn’t rely on any effects and his set up is simple. It consists of a guitar, cord, and Category 5 Amplifier. The effects that you hear come from his fingers.
Hank Phillippi Ryan
Location-Boston
Hank Phillippi Ryan
A nationally bestselling author of 11 mystery novels, Ryan has won multiple prestigious awards for her crime fiction: five Agathas, three Anthonys, the Daphne, two Macavitys, and for The Other Woman, the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. National reviews have called her a “master at crafting suspenseful mysteries” and “a superb and gifted storyteller.”
Carl Hiaasen
Locations around Florida
Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in a bizarre place called Florida, where he still lives. His books have been described as savagely funny, riotous, and cathartic. Oddly, they are beloved even by readers who’ve never set foot in the Sunshine State.
A graduate of the University of Florida, at age 23 Hiaasen joined The Miami Herald as a city-desk reporter and went on to work for the newspaper’s weekly magazine and prize-winning investigations team.
From 1985 to 2021 he wrote an opinion column, which at one time or another thrashed just about every major politician in the state – and occasionally his own bosses. One of Hiaasen’s proudest moments came when a Miami City Commissioner who was enraged by the columns introduced a resolution officially denouncing him.
Hiaasen began writing novels in the early 1980s with his good friend and fellow journalist, the late William D. Montalbano. They collaborated on three mystery thrillers – POWDER BURN, TRAP LINE and A DEATH IN CHINA – which borrowed heavily from their reporting experiences. (From his website)
Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal
In September 2014, some 50 years after moving to Los Angeles to form the band Rising Sons with fellow blues musician Ry Cooder and Jessie Lee Kincaid, Taj Mahal hightailed it to Nashville to receive an honor he called “one of the most powerful and wonderful things that could ever happen in my life.” Celebrating decades of recording and touring that have nearly singlehandedly reshaped the definition and scope of the blues via the infusion of exotic sounds from the Caribbean, Africa and South Pacific, the two-time Grammy winning singer, songwriter, film composer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist was feted with the Lifetime Achievement for Performance Award at the 13th Annual Americana Honors and Awards.
Ryan Montbleau
Ryan Montbleau
Montbleau’s been pouring his heart out in song since the early 2000’s, when he first began performing around his native Massachusetts. He’d go on to collaborate with Martin Sexton, Trombone Shorty, and Galactic among others, and share bills and stages with artists as diverse as Tedeschi Trucks Band, Ani DiFranco, The Wood Brothers, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Mavis Staples, but it was Montbleau’s ecstatic headline shows—often more than 200 of them a year—that solidified his reputation as a live powerhouse and an inexorable road warrior. NPR’s Mountain Stage compared his “eloquent, soulful songwriting” to Bill Withers and James Taylor, while Relix hailed his “poetic Americana,” and The Boston Herald raved that “he’s made a career of confident, danceable positivity. (from Ryan Montbleau.com)
See more great videos from latest recording “Woodstock Sessions” on Ryan’s website.
For a relationship smile check out YES DARLING
Laurence Shames
Location – Key West FL
Laurence Shames
Laurence Shames is the author of more than twenty books. Four of them have been New York Times bestsellers; seven have been optioned for feature film. His comic crime fiction has earned him Great Britain’s prestigious Last Laugh Dagger and has been called “as enjoyable as a day at the beach” by USA Today.
Shames was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1951, and graduated from NYU in 1972. Before turning to writing full-time in 1976, he briefly and unhappily held jobs as a taxi driver, lounge singer, furniture mover, lifeguard, dishwasher, gym teacher, and shoe salesman.
