Shirley Lewis

Born Shirley Lewis February 25, 1937 to James and
Alma Lewis in Sicklerville N Jersey a southern New Jersey girl 3 from the youngest of 13 children has been singing since the age of 4 under the guidance of her Hopi Indian father who wrote down words to songs for the children to sing, they sang in fairs, schools, churches, atheletic events, and at family gatherings all the while she was being groomed to become a world class entertainer not just a singer but a singer who could and would wow audiences no matter where she performed her dad once told her she was born to sing and Shirley chose the profession of singing after finishing high school and business school to take a stab and chance at singing with a group who opened for BB King in the early 60’s she was sought out by the scouts looking for someone who had the potential and the capability to open for someone like BB King it was a lot different back then, then it is now you got paid as an opener not just for exposure it covered both ends now a days the clubs want you to open just for exposure this is what they offer young blues acts today so sad/ Shirley quips.
For Shirley singing is like poetry and dance all in one and making people have fun while she is on stage doing the same thing having fun.
Ms Lewis has not always sang under the name of Lewis she sang under her former name Granger she went back to Lewis after divorcing her husband #2. Ms Lewis had been through 3 marriages ending because of some form of abuse, Shirley has raised to beautiful daughters singing and traveling throughout the U.S, Canada,& Mexico.

Alizon

Alizon was born and raised in New York City, a mid-to-late baby boomer who is shamelessly proud of the fact that she was unwittingly part of the movement that dragged the 1960’s kicking and screaming into the 70’s…(too young to go to Woodstock, but not too young to make up for it later).

NYC was home sweet home until she moved to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music. After doing a 2 year stint as a liberal arts student at Hunter College.. (the second year of her college career she took evening classes and tried the Monday to Friday 9 to 5 life at a small company in midtown Manhattan…Alizon realized that she would not be happy nor was cut out for life on any rung of the corporate ladder.

Playing music has been an integral part of Alizon’s life since she was too young to read. Early fantasies of playing the harp in a flowing white satin gown were transformed into reality via an old upright piano in the den accompanied by classical lessons complete with stressful recitals and juries all the way through early adolescence. Her father was a classical music buff who took her to the opera on a regular basis, an activity she eagerly looked forward to and dreaded at the same time…The Magic Flute at age 7 was particularly challenging to Alizon, who has never been blessed with the ability to sit still for long periods of time…

Alizon also felt a connection with portable stringed instruments and quickly graduated from ukelele to guitar. She found her own way around folk guitar with a little help from a series of lessons from a woman named Laura Weber through Channel 13, (public TV in NYC). You sent away for a book whose lessons coordinated with the broadcast, an early multimedia approach to learning that we are very familiar with nowadays.

Her high school experience at NYC’s Music & Art was focused on visual art, something that she has always been attracted to, yet the peaceful solitude of the artist’s life had nowhere near the appeal that music’s interactive opportunites presented.
Alizon’s precocious nature as well as her enthusiastic energy may have been a significant component of her attraction to the pursuit of a life in the music world ..

..Through the years musical performance has taken center stage in Alizon’s life, often as a supporting player and sometimes as a creative initiator..

As well as playing music, teaching others has always been a calling for Alizon… it constantly reminds her of how much we have to learn while simultaneously providing us with endless opportunities for creative growth and expression..
Alizon teach harmony classes at Berklee College of Music as well as private piano students.

Big Jack Ward

Jack was born into a musical family in Cambridge Massachusetts in 1956. The son of blues singer June Ward and boogie woogie piano player Johnny Ward, he started playing drums when he was three. By the age of seven, he had played behind some of the finest musicians in the world at the almost weekly house parties at our Cambridge home. Often after a gig, his parents would bring half of the nightclub home with them for these legendary parties. Many A list musicians would stop by knowing something would be going on. It was there that his love for music was born.

By the age of eleven his father bought him his first guitar. At age fifteen he was at home blasting his favorite album on the stereo (Layla-Derick and the Domino’s) Duane Allman and Eric Clapton playing Bell Bottom Blues and him playing along with my guitar on TEN. When his father walked in and gave him a dose of his wisdom “Son, It’s not what you play…it’s what you leave out!” A piece of advice that would shape his guitar style for the rest of my life.

For many years Jack would play clubs around New England with such notable performers as Silas Hubbard Jr, Weepin’ Willie Robinson, Sweet Roy Jones and K D Bell just to name a few. In the late eighties, he and long time friend Bill Walsh formed the popular New England band “Five Guys Named Moe”.

For the last ten years he has been extremely fortunate. As a member of the legendary West Side Chicago Bluesman Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson’s band “The Magic Rockers” he has toured the world and played behind most of the major blues artists in the world. What stuck in his mind the most is the very first thing Luther said to me as a Magic Rocker. “Don’t ever play anything like someone else plays it…EVER!!!”

Chris Stovall Brown

Chris Stovall Brown has been playing music since the age of six when his parents came home with a set of bongo drums, which he taught himself to play in a matter of days. At the age of eight, his elementary school offered him the opportunity to study drums and he grabbed it. Acquiring a drum a year for Christmas, Chris was soon playing with neighborhood bands and actually did his first gigging as a drummer at the tender age of 13. Playing in both jazz, rock and wedding bands helped him to gain a wealth of expertise in various styles of music.

In the early 90’s, Chris recorded on the Boston Blues Blast-Volume 1 and did Earring George’s Whup-It CD as well as CD’s with Ron Levy and Henry Lee Spencer. During this period he also worked with the following artists : Bo Diddley, James Cotton, A.C. Reed, Martha Reeves (of the Vandellas), Buddy Guy, Roy Buchanan, Howard Armstrong, Bobby Hebb and Big Al Downing. More recently he’s played behind re-discovered R and B great HOWARD TATE as well as jazz guitar legend JAMES BLOOD ULMER. FRONT PAGE BLUES, his first CD under his name was also recently released to good reviews. For 6 years Chris was involved as a performer/consultant for the Blues Schoolhouse Band 3 mornings a week at the late, lamented Cambridge House Of Blues. The new millennium has found him in a new role as a producer, producing 2 critically acclaimed cd’s for Oklahoma bluesman WATERMELON SLIM (see discography) as well as working on a new cd with Louisiana blues and soul man-Chicago Bob Nelson. Appearances on the just released Shorty Billups cd-”SHORTY’S GOT THE BLUES” and the new live cd by SAX GORDON BEADLE-”LIVE AT THE SAX BLAST” bring us up to the current time. You can find CSB still fronting his STOVALL BROWN BAND as well as working as music director for CHICAGO BOB NELSON among others.

JB Junior

You might guess that a singer with the stage name “J. B. Jr.” would be borrowing heavily from the James Brown songbook. You might be right. A native of Richfield, NC, JB grew up idolizing and emulating his musical hero. Making his home in Boston since the mid-60’s, he has spent a lifetime on and off the road, at various times bringing his act to the stage as an opener for such legends as The Blue Notes, Wilson Pickett, Millie Jackson, Maurice Starr, Sam & Dave, and yes, the “real” James Brown. His energy is infectious, whether doing the Camel Walk across the stage, or splits in the middle of the dance floor; the whole audience will just have to “git up, git on up”!

Geoff Bartley

Geoff Bartley is a blues-, folk- and jazz-influenced acoustic guitarist, singer, songwriter and harmonica player. The folk press has called him folk music at its best, a brilliant songwriter, a world-class guitarist, a local legend and the prophet and spiritual godfather of the Boston folk scene, all of which Geoff takes with a grain of salt. Some of his songs and co-writes have been recorded by other artists in the US, Canada and Ireland and some are also included in the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings of the Fast Folk Musical Magazine collection in Washington, D.C.

Geoff has released five CDs, most of which are available from the independent songwriter label Waterbug Records in Chicago. Several other of his recordings are no longer in print. Geoff hosts two nights of acoustic music each week at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge, Massachusetts and lives in a suburb of Boston.

Since his first professional gig in 1969, Geoff has played in thirty-two states and Canada and has opened for or shared venue or festival stages with Dave Van Ronk, Guy Van Duser, Leo Kottke, John Sebastian, Barry Crimmins, John Martyn, the Persuasions, Leon Redbone, Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry, Taj Mahal, Jorma Kaukonen, Al Kooper, Dr. John, Martin Mull, John Hammond, Livingston Taylor, Richie Havens, Suzanne Vega, Michael Manring, Richard Thompson, Tom Rush, Doc Watson, Tim O’Brien, Norman & Nancy Blake, David Bromberg, David Mallett, Jonathan Edwards, Gamble Rogers, John Jackson, Odetta and others.

In the 1980s, Geoff won four guitars at the National Fingerpicking Championships hosted by the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas. Geoff says, “Winning the guitars was a big thrill for me and it was wonderful to get that kind of recognition. The competition was fierce… there were some killer players out there. I still play the herringbone Martin they gave me in September 1984. I wanted to weld the trophies to the hood of my Datsun, but some friends talked me out of it.”

In addition to his own shows in southern New England, Geoff plays guitar and sings harmony for topical songwriter and folk icon Tom Paxton (www.tompaxton.com). Most of their shows together are at venues and festivals in the northeast, but Geoff has also accompanied Tom at the Bottom Line in New York, the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia and at a show for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio in July 2000. About that gig, Geoff says, “Nice folks out there. They gave both of us a Rock Hall tour jacket at the gig. Tom and I tell everybody they wanted our old ones for an exhibit.” Geoff was also instrumental in bringing the Tom Paxton Signature Model Martin guitar into production in 2004 (www.martinguitar.com).

Acoustic guitar instrumentals and songs Geoff has written have been used on the History Channel, Animal Planet, A&E, the Learning Channel, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Nature on PBS and in other commercial and non-commercial television programs on other stations, and in documentary films and in private and commercial advertising in the US and other countries.