The slate of performers for the 2016 Roots and Blues Festival continues to expand with a whole lotta soul coming to Salmon Arm.
The Sojourners
That three remarkable singers from the U.S. would align themselves under the banner of The Sojourners in Vancouver remains one of the most inspiring stories in the Canadian roots music community of the last couple of decades.
Marcus Mosely, who hails from Texas, Will Sanders, whose roots are deep in Louisiana and Khari McClelland, who was raised in Detroit, are a group that, strangely enough, Canada can call it’s own.
The Sojourners are without question one of the top vocal groups on the continent.
Brought together by Mosely after he received a call from bluesman Jim Byrnes a few years ago, requesting he round up a few talented friends for a recording session, The Sojourners took flight at that session and have been soaring at high altitudes ever since.
As the Sojourners bio proclaims: This is not music that strives to be polite. In The Sojourners’ universe, echoes of doo-wop, R&B, country and blues weave together to create a unique sound that has all but vanished from today’s world.
Roots and Blues fans can look forward to a strong gospel blues component this year and expect The Sojourners to be the foundation of what will be a marvelous and inspired set early Sunday afternoon, along with a stand-alone concert as well as workshops of varying themes at side stages.
Jerry Lawson
One of the great soul, gospel and blues singers of his generation, Jerry Lawson is best known as “the voice” of the critically acclaimed a cappella group The Persuasions, and understandably so as he spent the better part of four decades with the influential and ground-breaking vocal group.
When Lawson was the lead singer of the Persuasions, which he left in 2003, Greil Marcus, the dean of roots music journalists called the group “a perfect marriage of passion and intelligence.” Rolling Stone has rated their 1977 album Chirpin’ as one of the one hundred best works of the 1970s.
Since his departure from The Persuasions, Lawson has participated in a tribute recording to Bruce Springsteen (Born To Run), recorded an album with Talk of the Town and cut solo projects, his most recent outing being the album, Just A Mortal Man.
Armed with one of the most soulful and supercharged voices around, Lawson will be coming to Roots and Blues with his guitar player and over the course of the weekend he will be collaborating with The Sojourners for a concert that will be unique to Roots and Blues.
Eric Bibb
Without question one of the most important acoustic blues artists of his generation, Eric Bibb is also one of the most prolific recording artists in the roots music world.
A smooth, passionate and, at times, fiery singer, as well as a fluid, technically brilliant guitarist, superior tunesmith and ready collaborator, Bibb was nominated for a Grammy for his Shakin’ A Tailfeather disc and was nominated for numerous W.C. Handy Awards before they were re-branded as the Blues Awards.
Born with the blues and activism in his DNA, Bibb is the son of the late great actor/singer Leon Bibb, godson of actor-singer Paul Robeson and his uncle was John Lewis, the founder of the Modern Jazz Quartet.
As Bibb has stated on numerous occasions, “my parents’ house was a centre of artistic life where meeting Odetta, the Rev. Gary Davis and Judy Collins, had a profound effect on me.”
Bibb is another one of those master musicians who Roots and Blues staff and audiences will be appreciate not only for his talents, but because of his desire to be “all in” and wanting to participate on all levels at the 2016 edition of the festival.
Molly Tuttle Band
Molly Tuttle, a gifted American singer, songwriter and guitarist, who is barely out of her teens, has been praised by Bluegrass Today, Flatpicking Guitar Magazine and American Songwriter Magazine. She’s appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, won first place in the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at Merlefest and played at the renowned Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco, while finding time to attend and graduate from the Americana Music Program at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Such is her talent on all fronts that she had more than two million hits on Youtube while receiving raves from established bluegrass veterans around the continent, including mandolin ace John Reischman who will be collaborating with Tuttle and her band at the 2016 edition of Roots and Blues. The list of credits keeps growing as she’s also recently played the Newport Folk Festival on the east coast of the states and headlined at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley.
Find out what the growing buzz about Molly Tuttle is all about at Roots and Blues 2016.
