Blues & Jazz Festival

The Barnstormers featuring the Rock Candy Cloggers

Saturday, August 1 at 12 p.m.
***** Family Show *******

Hailing from the Gettysburg area, Slim Harrison and Tom Jolin teamed up as The Barnstormers over 28 years ago to perform traditional, old timey, American folk music. They are in residence at the Museum and Early Connections the week preceding the Festival, working with children who will take part in the performance. Slim plays the fiddle, banjo, guitar, mountain dulcimer, harmonica, jaws harp and sings. He is also a sought after traditional dance caller. Tom plays the hammer dulcimer, banjo, button accordion, guitar, harmonica, and sings. The Barnstormers are joined on stage by the Rock Candy Cloggers, with whom they have been collaborating since 2005. Candy Ranlet and Rock Howland are instrumentalists and award-winning cloggers who dazzle audiences with their amazing footwork.

The Barnstormers’ performance is partially supported by Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour, a program developed and funded by the Heinz Endowments; The William Penn Foundation; the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; The Pew Charitable Trusts; and administered by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.

This project was made possible in part through funds provided by ArtsErie's Arts in Education Partnership, a division of the PA Council on the Arts, a state agency, which is funded by the citizens of Pennsylvania through annual legislative appropriation and supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Dollar Bill & the Spare Change

Saturday, August 1 at 2 p.m.

For a straight-ahead blues band, a guitar, a set of drums, and a bass are essential tools of the trade. In the right hands, however, they can evoke emotions that range from raw desperation to charmingly sweet. Three players have done this, and the result is "Dollar" Bill and the Spare Change. This blues band originally started in the 90’s when "Dollar" Bill Crissman was living in Nashville, TN. Moving back to Erie in '99, he became the guitarist for local blues band Stiffy Harris and the Throbbers. Five years later, he joined the blues rock band Bad Habits. After many sideman gigs and guest appearances, he recreated "Dollar" Bill and the Spare Change here in Erie. On drums, with his signature drive and determination, is John Dreyer who also played in Bad Habits. John is a veteran of the music scene in Erie, going back to the late 70's with bands like Firefox and Glycerin. Bringing his love for the blues, stellar technique and years of experience is Larry Barr on bass. Larry is also known as The Earthshaker when playing in the local rock band Shadows Force. On the Hammond B3 organ is Tim Roche. Tim is well versed in all styles of music, but has found his home in the blues. Tim's experience and education with the instrument makes it easy to understand why the B3 is almost always heard in blues music.

Sturgis and The Electric Assassins

Saturday, August 1 at 4 p.m.

New York City recording artist Sturgis Nikides is an amazing blues guitarist with a unique lyrical vision. His hybrid mix of American blues, alt country, and jam rock shatters the genre barrier. Sturgis began his career in the late 1960’s as a vital part of New York City’s underground scene. He played guitar with former Velvet Underground member John Cale for six years. He’s also backed Chris Spedding, the Soft Machine’s Kevin Ayers, and singer Nico, another Velvet alumnus. A prolific songwriter, Sturgis has always preferred to leave the vocal honors to his various bandmates. This yielded his debut solo disc Man of Steel in 2004. The recording features Sturgis playing his unique style of bottleneck slide on a National Steel guitar on every track. His Festival performance includes longtime musical partner Rowdy Bodine on bass and Erie’s favorite literary drummer, Rick Lopez.


Nick Moss & The Flip Tops with
special guest Lurrie Bell

Saturday, August 1 at 6 p.m.

Chicago blues. Those two words conjure up some of the most powerful and evocative images in the history of American music. Chicago blues is also synonymous with hard-driving guitar, and two of today’s best examples are Nick Moss and Lurrie Bell. Both have come up through the ranks of Chicago blues bands since youth: Lurrie, the son of blues harp master Carey Bell, has carved his own niche in the blues, appearing on morethan 50 albums, including numerous solo efforts, duets with his father, and an extensive list of guest appearances. Nick began his professional career in the Legendary Blues Band with Willie Smith, and continued his education with the venerable Jimmy Rogers. Nick has absorbed the best of the classic Chicago guitar styles and molded it into his own original sound. Both Nick Moss and Lurrie Bell have been nominated for various Blues Music Awards, and Lurrie was voted Most Outstanding Guitar Player in the 2007 Living Blues critics poll. This year, Nick & The Flip Tops were nominated for Band of the Year and Lurrie is up for Best Traditional Blues Male Artist

Ronnie Baker Brooks

Saturday, August 1 at 8 p.m.

Dubbed the Crown Prince of Chicago Blues, Ronnie Baker Brooks rocks the foundations of the genre every time he hits the stage. Much of the blues world is familiar with Ronnie via his long apprenticeship as bandleader for his father, living legend and blues patriarch, Lonnie Brooks (a previous Festival headliner). "I grew up among the best of the best," Brooks says. "Every time I play, I feel like I've got to do it with the authenticity and passion that I saw in guys like Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, B.B. King and my father. But I also have to put my twist on it. None of those guys repeated what came before them." His rock-solid four-piece ensemble, comprised of musicians Steve Nixon on keyboards, C.J. Tucker on drums, and Carlton Armstrong on bass, dazzles audiences across the country. Their 3rd album release, The Torch, is aptly named. Not only does Ronnie sing with soulful fire and play with a white-hot intensity, he's also carrying the torch from the previous generation of soul and blues greats while moving the music into the future. The Torch also features previous Festival headliners Jimmy Johnson, Lonnie Brooks, and Grammy-winner Eddie “The Chief” Clearwater.

Carl Hultman & Jazz Friends
with Barb Schwartz

Sunday, August 2 at 12 p.m.

Carl Hultman & Jazz Friends is a five-piece band that plays cool and bebop jazz in the Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderly tradition. With their original take on familiar jazz standards, the band features tight instrumental arrangements accompanied by two and three part vocal harmonies centered on the extraordinary singing of Barb Schwartz. With influences such as Stan Kenton, The Hi-Lo’s, and Manhattan Transfer, their program mixes up the groove so everyone in the audience gets a chance to hear their favorite jazz style. Leader Carl Hultman provides guitar and vocals, Barb Schwartz sings, Dave Callagan plays tenor/baritone sax, Dick Thompson is on bass and Jerry Dedad is the drummer.

Valerie Horton Brown Project

Sunday, August 2 at 2 p.m.

Valerie began singing at the age of seven with
her siblings, dubbed The Horton Sisters. They performed throughout her hometown of Erie at various clubs, colleges and churches. The Horton Sisters eventually earned the honor of opening for the late Wilson Pickett, and sang back up vocals for the great Blues Father of them all,
B.B. King. Valerie’s solo career then took her to Hollywood and Europe where she would meet, rehearse, audition and tour with well known entertainers such as Freda Payne, The Temptations, and the legendary Tina Turner. Returning to Erie to raise her family, Valerie began to perform again in February of 2007 when she met Ron “Preach” Williams, a well-known local musician now touring with Rusted Root. At Valerie’s insistence, Preach introduced her to guitarist/keyboardist/composer Frank Singer, and the Valerie Horton-Brown Project was born. Valerie, Frank and Preach recruited saxophonist Phil Papotnik, bassist David Blaetz, keyboardist Duane “Rusty” Jackson and drummer Norby Gavin to complete the lineup.


Katie Chriest and theHeliotropes

Sunday, August 2 at 4 p.m.

theHeliotropes are lovers of found sound, sonic surprise, and practiced playfulness. The band members have been playing together in a variety of ensembles for years, but for the past year, they have been performing almost weekly as theHeliotropes. During that time their individual aesthetic histories have combined in a genre-free coalescence of tradition, progression, and passion, with roots firmly planted in the fertile garden of jazz. The band is a collaborative, with each player contributing to the sound, but vocalist Katie Chriest pens the originals that make up about a third of their playlist. She and Sheldon Peterson create their “rearrangements” of standards, particularly favoring artists like Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone and “anybody who puts the song first”. Chriest describes theHeliotropes’ repertoire as “original music and re-imagined classics holding wide-open spaces, earthy wanderlust, and gleeful freedom in a loosely-tight embrace”. theHeliotropes are Katie Chriest, vocals, guitar; Sheldon Peterson, guitar, vocals; David Blaetz, bass; Joel Polacci, congas; and Alan Chaffee, percussion.

Tessa Souter Quartet

Sunday, August 2 at 6 p.m.

New York based vocalist, composer, and lyricist Tessa Souter infuses jazz with the soul and passion of flamenco, Indian and Middle Eastern music. Daughter of an English mother and Trinidadian father, Tessa has been performing professionally for less than ten years. Even so, she regularly sells out venues in her home cities of London and New York. She's also a gifted composer, and her song arrangements, from Caravan to Cream's White Room to The Creator Has a Master Plan, reveal an inner-directed artist destined to put her personal stamp on jazz. Her first CD, Listen Love, won critical raves for her “crystal clear voice and diamond cut phrasing…” (Philadelphia Inquirer) and “direct, soulful sound…” (Village Voice). Her second release, Nights of Key Largo, with Kenny Werner, Billy Drummond, Jay Leonhart, Joel Frahm, and Romero Lubambo, won the coveted Gold Disc review in January 2009’s Swing Journal, which said, “… there are traces of Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae in her phrasing and Julie London and Peggie Lee in her delicate breathing, which harbors a touch of sorrow.” The Rochester City Paper wrote of her debut at the Rochester International Jazz Festival in 2007, "It's one thing to hear a superb set from a known giant like Randy Brecker; it's a different, particularly exhilarating feeling to witness a great performance by a relatively unknown singer like Tessa Souter. Judging from the ovations she received Saturday night, the entire audience felt the same way." Jazz diva Sheila Jordan raves about Souter, "She's at the top of my list of great talent. I love her voice. She really moves me."

Elaine & Susan Hoffman Watts
and the Fabulous Shpielkehs

Sunday, August 2 at 8 p.m.

****Workshop at 5:30****

At 5:30 the Shpielkehs will present a Meet the Artist Workshop in the gazebo. They'll play a little and talk about klezmer music and why it is so enduring. Expect to laugh some, too. Susan Hoffman Watts and her mother are great storytellers and incredibly funny. The gazebo is located just past where the aquaduct meets the creek on the south side of the park.



The Fabulous Shpielkehs perform classic klezmer— Eastern Europe Jewish dance music traditionally performed by itinerant bands for weddings and other social gatherings. The Fabulous Shpeilkehs include third and fourth generation klezmer musicians: a mother/daughter duo from the illustrious Hoffman family, the klezmer family of Philadelphia during the first half of the 20th century. The Hoffman family came to the United States from a town near Odessa in the former Soviet Union. Jacob Hoffman was a prominent member of a klezmer band that was recorded in the 1920s. His daughter Elaine received training from her father and uncles in the family's repertoire of polkas, freilachs, mazurkas, shers, and other Eastern European tunes. Drummer Elaine Hoffman Watts, the first woman ever to graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music in percussion, was not allowed to play in klezmer bands for decades because she was a woman. She not only overcame this obstacle, she became one of the most important klezmer musicians of her generation, recognized as a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2007. Her daughter, Susan Watts, an amazing trumpet player, has been playing for more than twenty years, having grown up listening and playing klezmer in her home.