1

2013 Hall of Fame

Inductees

Events!

Local Festivals

reviewed

Elections are

Coming

A u g u s t - S e p t 2 0 1 3

V o l u m e 3 4 ; I s s u e 4

2

Sacramento Blues

Society is a

Proud Member

of

The Sacramento Blues Society (SBS) is one of the oldest blues societies in California, founded in1979, and is a 501 ( c ) 3 nonprofit corporation formed to preserve and promote blues music as an art form. SBS has kept the blues tradition alive in the Sacramento area by promoting the local blues music scene and bringing internationally renowned artists to the region and produces and mails a newsletter, “Blue Notes” six times a year

for our membership. SBS is an affiliate member of The Blues Foundation, and provides educational opportunities for young people with The Blues

Foundation’s “Blues In The Schools” Program.

2013 Committee Chairs

Blues in the Schools —Cynthia Jaynes/Liz Walker CD Reviews—Mindy Giles

Editor—Val Anderson Events/IBC Competition —Mari Lu Onweller

Finance—Val Anderson Sacramento Blues Hall of Fame—Sally Katen

Membership/Volunteers —Sharon Allen Merchandise/Concessions—Tammie Madill SacBlues e-News/Calendar—Willie Brown

2013 Board Officers

Jan Kelley—President Mari Lu Onweller—Vice President

Cynthia Jaynes–Secretary Liz Walker—Treasurer

Cynthia Juarez-Parliamentarian

Board Members at Large

Sharon Allen Guitar Mac McKnally

Kim Duvall Tammie Madill

Sally Katen

Board of Directors Meetings

2nd Tuesday Each month 7:00 PM

at the SMUD Building, 6301 S Street, Sacramento

All SBS members in good standing are invited to attend.

Blues in the Schools—By Cynthia Jaynes

V o l u m e 3 4 ; I s s u e 4

Blues In The Schools (BITS) has wrapped up another successful school year of providing the blues experi-ence to students in the Sacramento region. We enter-tained and informed over 1500 students through school assemblies, after school lessons, mini con-certs, and a wonderful end of the year celebration at Norwood Middle School. We are particularly proud of the two sessions held at the Sacramento Children’s Receiving Home. These are kids who have been placed at the Home temporar-ily because their families are unable to care for them at the moment. These displaced students range from 5-17 years of age and have been pulled away from their homes, families and friends through no fault of their own. Their Valley Oaks School is often over-looked and rarely receives any type of special enrich-ment services. BITS brought a much needed program of music, joy, and soul to the institution and was warmly received by students and staff alike. Much respect and thanks to Lisa Phenix, accompanied by Steve Wall, and Steve Boutte for two wonderfully inti-mate, interactive and touching experiences. This pro-gram was funded through a grant from the Sacra-mento Metropolitan Arts Commission. We hope to continue this throughout the coming year, as funding allows. Letters! We received thank you letters from students at Rosemont High School who participated in the after school lessons and performed at the annual BITS Showcase. Here are a few excerpts:

"...thanks for helping me bring out my inner Elvis." - AL

"...now I have and will always have the blues in my

A u g u s t - S e p t 2 0 1 3

heart." - GN

"...I was not going to join because I was too afraid. But luckily I did. Blues Soci-ety has been one of the best experiences of my life and I am very thankful of it."- MW

"...the past two years have been memorable. Thank you!" -

"This is the first extracurricular activity I have ever done in school, and it was amazing." - TW

HELP WANTED!! BITS is looking for that certain indi-vidual to be our student liaison. We want to use social media and other ways to stay in touch with our alumni, inform blues loving students of activities and opportunities for them to play and appreciate the blues, and to keep them connected to each other. This is the next generation of blues lovers and we want to help build that community. It is a great oppor-tunity to preserve the Blues, connect to an energetic and creative group, and experience the new blues they will develop. If you’re interested please contact Cynthia Jaynes, 916 202 5075 or Liz Walker 916 712 7277. A few individuals and organizations have supported BITS through their generous contributions to the pro-gram. We wish to thank Mary Carrera and Carrera Productions, the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Com-mission, the Rex Foundation, Any Given Child, Wal-Mart, Kathie Lambert, Tammie Madill, Yolo County Arts Council, Jim Beilgard, and over 25 individuals who made donations during the Day of Giving.

For advertising rates contact editor@sacblues.com

Please note changes in the Board of Directors. These changes reflect action taken by the Board (per the by-laws) to fill vacancies due to multiple resignations.

3

V o l u m e 3 4 ; I s s u e 4

California born and raised, James Monroe learned to play piano by listening to such stalwarts as Johnnie Johnson (Chuck Berry’s piano player), the great Otis Spann, Floyd Dixon, Professor Longhair and others who would influence his playing. Although Jim has taken some music lessons over the years, he is primarily self-taught.

The Nate Shiner Blues Band was one of the leading blues groups in town in the late 60’s, early 70’s and Jim would play with Nate's band for many years. He also learned quite a bit about playing the blues from Steve Samuels (HOF Inductee), performing in Steve’s band during the late seventies. Jim was an original mem-ber of Little Charlie and the Nightcats in the mid-seventies; during the early eighties Jim started his own group, the Bluescasters.

Throughout Jim's musical career he has backed some big name blues artists: Big Mama Thornton, Charlie Musselwhite, Lu-ther Tucker, Lowell Fulson, Norton Buffalo and others at festivals and clubs. He also toured with the great blues pianist Floyd Dixon in the late seventies, as his bass player. Jim was also on tracks for the two blues CDs that recorded local performers in the Sacramento area. In 1991, he per-formed for a couple of years with Mark Hummel, then joined the Craig Horton band around 2003, playing in his band for

years, followed by a tour with Joe Louis Walker in 2007.

Jim continues to play with Craig Horton at festivals as well as with local bands, such as Ray ‘Catfish’ Cope-land (HOF inductee) and his band The Crawdaddies.

A u g u s t - S e p t 2 0 1 3

2013 Blues Hall of Fame Inductee Nate ‘Snakeboy’ Shiner

Born in Shiner, Texas, his family moved when he was young from Texas to Sacra-mento and he began playing alto sax and singing pop tunes.

Nate formed his own band, first becoming Good Time Lovin' and then Tombstone Pill-box, eventually evolving into the Nate Shiner Blues Band (NSBB). In 1968, the group was asked to open for a touring blues act. The act was the legendary Muddy Waters Blues Band. This event led Nate to a life-long love of the blues and the nickname “Snakeboy” after Muddy's guitarist Luther “Georgia Boy” “Snake” Johnson.

In the late 1970's, the NSBB became the Sunland Blues Band; many of these players became HOF in-ductees. For ten years, Nate worked for Phil Givant and the Sacramento Blues Festival performing with his own band or backing others. He also produced videos of the festival using the equipment of Sacra-mento Public Access television, among others.

Nate and a partner also opened The Grinding Stone (now Luna's) on 16th Street and featured Steve Samuels, Johnny Knox and Mike Andrews as some of

the acts who played there. The Grinding Stone featured some of the best artists in Sacramento at its monthly art shows and musicians from the Fifth String came in for Thursday night jam sessions. Nate also found time to do a blues radio show for KYDS public radio, started by the founders of KVMR in Nevada City. Rick Estrin, among others, played live at the station.

In 1984, Nate joined forces with vocalist/guitarist G.G. Amos and for the next ten years they toured as a duo and sometimes

with a full band. After ten years, the duo split and GG formed GG and the Magic Band, touring extensively in the U.S. Nate joined as vocalist and played harmon-ica, lap slide guitar and keyboards. Nate and GG also coproduced the CD “Gots Ta Go”. Nate has an im-pressive discography too numerous to mention here.

After five years, Nate returned to his blues roots with his group The Straight Ahead Blues Trio with drum-mer and long-time friend Tony Montanino and bassist Nick Doud, whose mother, Cathy “Detroit” Rae he soon fell in love with and married. Nate and Cathy currently reside in Texas and perform as the Snake-boy Shiners, with Cathy on drums and percussion.

2013 Blues Hall of Fame Inductee Jim Monroe

Win a package for two to the Sin City Soul and Blues Revival on Sept. 15-17. 2013

at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas!

The Sacramento Blues Society is holding a drawing for three nights in a suite at the Rio Hotel along with admission to the on-site performances. The drawing

will be held on August 3, 2013, at the celebration for International Blues Music Day at the Lions Gate Ho-tel. You do not have to be present to win. See any Board member for tickets, or contact the events organizer, Mari Lu Onweller, at 916-605-6969.

4

Hailing from St. Louis, Missouri, Jimmy played the Reno circuit between St. Louis and Reno before coming to Sacramento in 1989. His musical style is deeply rooted from Delta Blues, International Blues, and Rock and Roll, but as most blues musicians feel, Jimmy says blues is always incorpo-rated into all his music.

Jimmy has played in a variety of local groups such as Funkengruven, and with Lew Fratis, Bruce Spencer, Stacey Eakes, Mick Martin, Arbess Williams, and many others. He went on to form his own group known as Jimmy Pailer and the Bad Boys, later forming The Prophets. Jimmy has had the opportunity to work with many musical greats such as Walter Trout,

Board meetings are held on the Second Tuesday of each month, 7 pm at the SMUD Building at 65th & S Street, Sacramento. We are in need of an experi-enced Treasurer, someone to oversee merchandise, and a good PR/social media person. If you are inter-ested in serving, please submit your name, contact info, and a brief (one paragraph) statement to intro-duce yourself to the membership. Send it to Jan Kelly at bobsled@winfirst.com.

It’s almost that time again. SBS holds elections each year for your Board of Directors. We’ll be taking nominations beginning in September for the elections to be held in December. Some important qualifica-tions to consider – a love of the Blues (duh!),current SBS member, ability to help bring funds into the or-ganization, experience with non-profit Boards, previ-ous attendance at SBS Board meetings, and able to commit to at least one full year of participation.

V o l u m e 3 4 ; I s s u e 4

Board Elections are Coming!!—Cynthia Jaynes

A u g u s t - S e p t 2 0 1 3

2013 Blues Hall of Fame Inductee Jimmy Pailer -3.5

Tommy Castro, Chuck Berry, Bobby Vega, Leon Russell, Rare Earth, and Richie Hay-ward.

In 2009, he and Lew Fratis were selected to represent the Sacramento Blues Society in Memphis at the International Blues Compe-tition. Jimmy has dedicated his time and talent as a clinician with the Sacramento Blues Society’s “Blues in the Schools Pro-gram” by volunteering at the inner city schools to perform, educate, and teach students about the Blues. Jimmy has also

served as emcee for charity shows at the Torch Club. He continues to perform every Thursday night at the San Juan Club and can also be seen most Friday nights at the Torch Club, along with Lew Fratis.

2013 Blues Hall of Fame Inductee Patrick Balcomb aka Rat a Tat Pat

Born and raised in Sacramento, California, Patrick started out with pots and pans but eventually got a snare drum and learned to read music from Mike Lawson. Pat’s fa-ther’s radio station job gave him access to the vinyl record vaults at KRAK and KCTC, so Pat began listening to every kind of mu-sic under the sun down at the radio sta-tions and would take home recordings to learn on the drums. This allowed him to play with any style band due to his reper-toire. In his teen years Pat wrote and played original music with The Azari Pro-ject (w/Leo Bootz), Blind Man’s Treat (w/Paul Relvas), Landfall and The Jinx.

Pat was in The Rhythm Method (w/Dave Garity) a 50's and 60's band in the late 1980's, which took him to Sam’s Hof Brau that had blues seven nights a week. This is where Pat saw for the first time Johnny Hearts-man, Arbess Williams, Johnny "Guitar" Knox, Gene Chambers, Lena Mosley, Big John Evans, Jimmy

Smith, Mark Hummel, Rick Estrin and Omar (Sharriff) The Magnificent. Many of these musicians are in the SBS’ Hall of Fame.

In 1991 Arbess started her own band with Pat as her drummer. She loved his drum-ming but couldn’t remember his name, so someone said it’s Pat, like Rat-a-tat, and that’s how he’s been known since. ‘Rat-a-tat’ Pat began working with and recording albums with his mentors Arbess Williams, Johnny Heartsman, Omar Sharriff and Johnny "Guitar" Knox.

‘Rat-a-tat’ is also well known in the Rock and Roll world; a life-long study of New Orleans roots music keeps this “Bluesman” playing Jazz, Cajun, Zydeco, Rock, Country and the Blues all around Northern Cali-fornia. Pat has played and recorded with a plethora of well-known blues musicians, always keeping the rhythm going. He can be seen in many blues bands in this area.

5

V o l u m e 3 4 ; I s s u e 4

Born in Sacramento and raised in West Sacramento, Lew started playing professionally at an early age and by age 22 was on his own. In the mid-seventies, he did some stints in Los Angeles and then returned to Sacramento. Around 1989, Pat Balcomb and Lew formed the Luminators and started playing at Sam’s Hof Brau and the Torch Club. Around the same time, they became Arbess Wil-liams’ (HOF Inductee) back-up band and recorded her first CD. They also recorded with Omar Sharriff (HOF inductee) and con-tributed to the Sacramento Blues CDs.

Lew and Pat soon became one of the most popular

2013 Blues Hall of Fame Inductee Lew Fratis –3

A u g u s t - S e p t 2 0 1 3

bands in town and were able to record CDs of their own material. The Sacramento News and Review nominated the CD “Bright Idea” for Best CD of 1993. That same year, Lew was nominated for a Sammie for Best Blues Guitarist and The Luminators won for Best Blues Band. In 2009, he and his good friend and fellow musician Jimmy Pailer were selected to represent the Sac-ramento Blues Society in Memphis at the International Blues Competition. For the past several years, they both have been instructor/lecturer for the SBS’ Blues In The Schools program. Lew has played

weekly at the Torch Club for 20 years and continues to entertain there.

Road Trip! A New Venue—By Sally Katen

I received a Facebook message from Daniel Castro stating that he would be playing in Newman, Califor-nia, at a venue called the West Side Theater. I have a personal connection to that area, as my Dad was raised in Gustine, which is only 4 miles away. So with my Cousin Barbara, (our Dad's were brothers) we did a road trip down Highway 5, we made a pit stop at the cemetery, and after putting flowers on our relatives graves, we drove into town and found a quaint little pub directly across the street from the theater to kill some time before the show started. Funny thing is my cousin has childhood memories of the West Side Theater as she spent some of her early childhood in Gustine. The theatre in Newman was basically a Saturday afternoon babysitter for her and brother where they would watch double features. The theater ultimately closed down and sat empty for years before a group of locals purchased, renovated and opened it up as a musical venue. The theater seats are gone, replaced by tables and chairs, and the candy concession is now a well stocked bar. The operator, Martin, and his staff (including the resident little pup greeting guests) were very friendly. There is no bad seat in the place, the acoustics are great and as expected we enjoyed the Daniel Castro Band. If you wanted to make a night of it, there are restau-rants and motels nearby. Martin and his crew have been bringing in blues musi-cians for the last couple of years and he is trying to make this a Blues Venue for all to enjoy! Other than the Blues musicians they bring to town, they also use the venue for local plays (and I noticed a few cover bands on the calendar also)! The Blues bands coming next are Janiva Magness on July 27th and Volker Stri-fler on October 5th. The West Side Theater is a non-

profit and recently joined the Sacramento Blues Soci-ety. There are openings on their calendar and they are always looking for new Blues musicians to come play the venue! Please check out their website at http://www.westsidetheatre.org/ Also, if interested in playing there, you can contact Martin via the information on the website, and you may just want to take that 90 minute drive down I-5 and have a wonderful time in a great, friendly area!

6

V o l u m e 3 4 ; I s s u e 4

ones. The Zydeco bands were the Creole Belles and the Magnolia Sis-ters but of course the

blues bands were my focus that day. The Saturday blues bands were: Sacra-mento Blues Revue; Catfish & the Crawdad-dies; Howell Devine; Kyle Rowland Blues Band, Terry Hanck, Karen Lovely and Elvin Bishop. Each act was delightful and well re-ceived by the crowd, especially so given it was a pretty warm day. Kyle performing with Karen topped my day and with Elvin closing it all out, it just made things all the better! If you’ve stayed away from Isleton on Father’s Day week-end because of negativity from past festivals, you can be assured this is the place to be now!

If you haven’t been to what was once known as The Isleton Crawdad Festival lately, it’s now called the Isleton Cajun and Blues Festival,

same location, different producers, currently Mindy Giles from Swell Productions. It’s also smaller and more fam-ily-friendly with less rowdy crowds than in days of yore, which makes for a more pleasant time. This year’s festival fea-tured some of our local

and In-

ternational blues musicians as well as some great Zydeco bands, lots of good Cajun and standard fare to eat, plus a nice kiddies' play area for the little

A u g u s t - S e p t 2 0 1 3

ISLETON CAJUN AND BLUES FESTIVAL—By Jan Kelley; photos by Bob Cosman

A lucky girl, I am. I've been able to carve out a life in music beginning the summer day I turned 16. Now, I am ap-

proaching 60. I've heard many of my musical heroes, much of the time from backstage. I’ve seen the transfor-mat iv e, urgent power of a lyric, felt my heartbeat commandeered by sheer wattage, hair blown back like that old Memorex commercial; I’ve cried like a newborn because of the beauty of the human voice.

And so, at the final late afternoon golden hour of the wonderful 2013 Cajun & Blues Festival in Isleton, California, achy and exhausted from working three festivals in three weeks, I didn't exactly plan to have

another BIG moment. But there it was, unfolding just in front of me. A white-haired, wiry, sun burnt-faced octogenarian, in a homemade corn-flower blue print calf-length dress and matching visor was on the dance floor right in front of Louisi-ana's Lost Bayou Ramblers, Cajun

two-stepping with her rolling walker. As couples swayed, Louie Michot's fiddle sawed, and the audi-ence sang back to him in French, she stretched her arms out, let go of her walker and twirled.

Cajun Blues—By Mindy Giles—Photo by Capt. Ron