Bman's Blues Report

For over 30 years, The Fabulous Thunderbirds have been the quintessential American band. The group's distinctive and powerful sound, influenced by a diversity of musical styles, manifested itself into a unique musical hybrid via such barnburners as "Tuff Enuff" and "Wrap It Up". Co-founder Kim Wilson, the sole original member, still spearheads the group as it evolves into its newest incarnation. "We started as a straight blues band", vocalist and harmonica player Wilson says. "We now incorporate a mixture of a lot of different styles. We're an American music band and we're much higher energy than we were before." Fabulous Thunderbirds with Stand Up BassIn addition to Wilson, the current Thunderbirds line-up features Jay Moeller on drums, Johnny Moeller and Mike Keller on guitar, and Randy Bermudes on bass. "To be in the T-Birds, you need to understand the different styles of music and different ways of playing," Wilson comme...

Bernard Allison (born November 26, 1965, Chicago, Illinois) is a blues guitarist based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father, Luther Allison was a Chicago blues musician. Bernard Allison is the youngest of nine children, and had many different musical influences while growing up, including Albert King, Muddy Waters and Freddie King, and later, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Johnny Winter. “Like” Bman’s Facebook page (available in over 50 languages). I will not relay senseless nonsense. In this way I can get out the word on new talent, venues and blues happenings! - click Here

If you've never seen Stevie Ray play acoustic slide and you don't know Lonnie Mack this will be a double treat. I know I really enjoy it. Lonnie Mack (born Lonnie McIntosh, 18 July 1941, Dearborn County, Indiana) is an American rock and blues guitarist/vocalist. In 1963 and early 1964, he recorded a succession of full-length electric guitar instrumentals which combined blues stylism with fast-picking techniques and a rock 'n' roll beat. The best-known of these are "Memphis", "Wham!", "Chicken Pickin'" and "Suzie-Q". These instrumentals established the standard of virtuosity for a generation of rock guitarists and formed the leading edge of the "blues-rock" guitar genre. Reportedly, the tremolo arm commonly found on electric guitars became known as the "whammy bar", following Mack's singularly aggressive use of the device in 1963's "Wham!". In 1979, music historian Richard T. Pinnell, Ph. D...

Stevie Ray Vaughn has always been known as one of the best tone masters of all time. Oh yeah, we all know he was terrific guitar player and soulful singer. His chops were terrific... but how did he get that tone. Well, he started out with being a great player and having great fingers, but here are a few of his secrets. He was known to superglue skin from other parts of his body to replenish his fingertips from the tremendous abuse that he took using super heavy strings (like 15's). I wouldn't advise this unless you have developed great style and hand strength. Better to play with 10's and clean than with 12's and sloppy. He had a great guitar, a standard Fender strat pretty much totally unmolested (except that he had a left handed trem bar put on with the theory that it gave him a Jimi vibe to his sound)although not used in this video. He could pick up any strat at guitar center and make it sound right. It just wouldn't feel right to him. All players are like that...