Search results for

Pianist Tom McDermott is a native of St. Louis and a lifetime explorer of the music downriver here in New Orleans, across the Caribbean and to Brazil. Singer Meschiya Lake started out in Rapid City, South Dakota and landed hereabouts as a circus performer. Meschiya and Tom came together for us in the sonic wooden glory of an old Presbyterian church, now called Esplanade Studios.

Houston Texan Annika Chambers is a rare old school blues and soul singer in her early 30s. During two tours of duty in the U.S. Army, including Iraq, Chambers started to reach a wider public when a colonel heard her singing gospel and asked her to do the National Anthem. She then brought her big voice to the blues playing Army base shows and finally debuting in 2015 with the CD Making My Mark. We caught up with Annika the morning after a triumphant late night show in Butte, Montana 2018. Annika told us that her parents were young teens and took us back to her own youth raised by grandma.

This is American Routes Live with New Orleans trombonist Corey Henry and his Treme Funktet at Marigny Studios, at the edge of the French Quarter. As the name of the band suggests, the Faubourg Tremé is an important part of Corey’s family history and his development as a musician. I asked him about the origins of the group.

James Chambers took the name Jimmy Cliff to reference the heights he would climb as a musician, singer, and actor. Since Cliff’s birth during a hurricane in rural Jamaica, people believed he was special. Cliff’s dissatisfaction with country life led him to Kingston where he met Chinese-Jamaican record producer Leslie Kong, who helped launch his career with a 1962 hit, “Hurricane Hattie.” Cliff helped Jamaican music go global performing in the film The Harder They Come. Jimmy Cliff told me how his voice carried him out into the world.

It's that time of year for gathering with family and friends in thanksgiving, but also for us at American Routes, it's time to celebrate the National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellows. Each year the NEA recognizes traditional artists for their excellence and contributions to our nation’s heritage. It's the highest award in the traditional arts. The Winnsboro Easter Rock ensemble carries on a women's African American spiritual ritual. Originally performed by enslaved Africans in the northeast Louisiana Delta region. It combines Christian worship and the West African ring shout tradition. The Easter Rock is held the day before Easter with call and response vocals, foot stomping, food, and symbols to commemorate the death and resurrection of Christ. The Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble are the last known practitioners of the ritual, and they've taken the tradition outside of the church to the Louisiana Folklife Festival and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Lonnie Holley from Birmingham, Alabama is a self-taught artist and musician who uses everyday objects as sculpture that tells stories. Lonnie had a rough childhood, living with an abusive foster family who ran honky-tonk, where he was nicknamed “Tonky” McElroy. Lonnie tried to escape, hopping a train to New Orleans at nine. He was arrested at eleven and taken to the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, where Lonnie was made to pick one hundred pounds of cotton. His grandmother rescued him from the school and told him his name wasn’t Tonky McElroy but Lonnie Bradley Holley. For the last forty years, Holley has constructed artworks that have been seen at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, New York’s American Folk Art Museum, the High Museum in Atlanta, and the White House. After making home recordings for more than two decades on a keyboard Lonnie bought at a pawnshop, he released his first album at age sixty-two. His sound is experimental with lyrics improvised on the spot. Lonnie Holley explained how his artistic appreciation and ability stemmed from life at home with a large family.

Singer Allison Russell is a native of Montreal with what she calls “Grenadian Canadian” roots of Afro-Caribbean and Scottish ancestry. You may know her recent recordings with Our Native Daughters and the Birds of Chicago. Or back when with Po’ Girl. Now, in a first solo recording, Outside Child, Russell addresses family abuse in her youth, her ways of coping, followed by escape to the road: Vancouver, San Francisco, Chicago. Those early life experiences led Allison years later to make new, compelling songs, expressing freedom from trauma, to love and hope for better times. She lives now with fellow musician JT Nero and their young daughter in Nashville, but Allison Russell began the journey’s narrative in her beloved Montreal.

Belen Escobedo grew up in a family of Spanish and Indigenous descent. She began playing violin in fourth grade. Though Belen was trained classically, she was hired by a mariachi who heard her play at Sunday mass as a teenager. Mariachi music got her through college and graduate school. Belen taught music in San Antonio schools for thirty years and now works to preserve the music of the Texas-Mexican borderlands with her trio: Panfilo's Güera, named for her grandfather's inspiration.

John Mayall and his band the Bluesbreakers pioneered British blues-rock, introducing it to a large audience. They included musicians who went on to join legendary bands like Cream, Fleetwood Mac, and the Rolling Stones. Mayall moved to the States in 1968, and today has a discography of 70 studio and live albums. Now 88 and retired from touring, John calls Los Angeles home and his favorite climate for living, but it was in Macclesfield, Cheshire where he first heard the blues.

Shemekia Copeland's dad, Texas guitarist Johnny Copeland, moved his family to Harlem, where Shemekia was born and grew up surrounded by hip-hop, but dedicated to the blues. She's been in the blues scene since she was a little girl singing at her dad's shows. All grown up she's recorded nine albums and won numerous awards for her music. We began back in those early days, on stage, with her father.