Mem's Mystery Box

Today's mystery box is full of taxi driver's blues from Mem Shannon. I met Mem when he played our festival in 1997. This was my first introduction to Mem's style of music honed while driving a taxi down in New Orleans to pay the family's bills... needless to say, Mem doesn't depend on the taxi income any more. Here's what's in Mem Shannon's mystery box:

Why I Sing The Blues

Play the Guitar Son

Wrong People in Charge

 Taxicab Driver

Do You 'Yuh' What I Say

If This Ain't the Blues

Here's the Memo I sent out!

return of the Friday Mystery Box

Texas blues lost a real friend this last week with the unexpected death of Joe Kubek, aka Smokin' Joe. He grew up in Dallas, Texas and in the 1980s began performing with Louisiana musician and vocalist, Bnois King.  Joe passed away on October 11, 2015 while waiting to do what he did best, playing the blues. Joe will always be remembered as a great Texas bluesman. This week's Friday Mystery Box is:
01 Runnin' Blind
02 Freezer Burn
03 Spanish Trace
04 Drowning in Red Ink
05 Texas Cadillac
06 Lone Star Lap Dance
07 Smokin' Joe's Cafe

The Friday Mystery Box

"June Is Covers Month" continues and these are the best cover tunes you've never heard. Chris Gaffney was a self described "Army brat" living in Europe and New York as a child, but his adopted home was the Southwestern states of Arizona and California.  He learned to play the accordion and listened to norteno, country, and rock & roll and  played in various bands and eventually released his first album in 1986. Before his untimely death in 2008, Chris Gaffney had worked with a wide range of musicians including Dave Alvin, James Cotton, Sonny Burgess, The Iguanas, , Candye Kane, and Billy Bacon and the Forbidden Pigs. This mystery box is a sample of the heart of Chris Gaffney.
The Chris Gaffney Box* is:
The Iguanas - Get Off My Back Lucy
Alejandro Escovedo - 1968
Boz Scaggs - Midnight Dream
Joe Ely - Lift Your Leg
Calexico - Frank's Tavern 
Robbie Fulks - King Of The Blues 
James McMurtry - Fight (Tonight's The Night) 
The Texas Tornadoes - The Gardens

*All selections from the 2009 tribute album:
MAN OF SOMEBODY'S DREAMS

We just barely squeezed all of these into the box!

The T Bone Mystery Box

"June Is Cover Month" continues with this Friday Mystery Box. After spending the weekend at the T-Bone Walker Blues Festival, even meeting T-Bone's Daughter and grand daughter, we had to keep the blues going a few more days. So, here come's a package of T-Bone signature tunes covered by the some of my favorite artists with a Texas connection to Aaron Thibedeaux  Walker, better know simply as T-Bone:
T Bone Shuffle - Doug Sahm (from San Antonio, Texas)
Stormy Monday - Alexis Korner (heard there was a Texas)
Street Walking Woman - Lonnie Brooks, Long John Hunter, Phillip Walker(Lone Star Shootout)
Mean Old World - Aynsley Dunbar (actually played Longview, Texas with Eric Burdon)
Play On Little Girl/T-Bone Shuffle - Paul Jones (from Manfred Mann...loves Texas blues)
Cold, Cold Feeling - Floyd Dixon (Born in Marshall, Texas)

And it all begins at Trick's !

What's In This Week's Friday Mystery Box?

You might think this just might be a body part left over from the latest Rolling Stone's tour, but you'd wrong.  While this week's box does contain a sample of bassist Bill Wyman's best cover tunes, Mr. Bill hasn't been a Rolling Stone for years.  And he's not interested in going back.  In fact he's charted his own career in a more jazzy vein with his own evolving band, The Rhythm Kings...open the box and enjoy the mojo that is Bill Wyman.

Midnight special (Leadbelly)
Walking One and Only (Dan Hicks)
Tobacco Road (Nashville Teens)
Green River (CCR)
These Arms of Mine (Otis Redding)
I Don't Need No Doctore (Ray Charles)
Luoisiana1927 (Randy Newman)
Taxman (Beatles)

Bill Then

and now, he's out of the box !.

Friday Mystery Box goes soft...

Singer, songwriter, and guitarist John Parker Compton co-founded the band Appaloosa with violinist Robin Batteau in the late '60s. Both were heavily influenced by the folk scene in Cambridge, Mass. John got his start singing in a Cambridge church choir before he and Robin began playing the coffeehouse circuit.  While teenagers they went to Al Kooper's office at Columbia Records, to show Kooper his songs. Kooper told the kid to come back some other time.  Rather than leaving the gutsy duo began playing for the office secretaries.  Hearing their unique style, Kooper recorded them and within a year the musicians had an album out called, Appaloosa. While it would be over 40 years before Compton issued a second Appaloosa album with a new set of musicians, he never left the music field and continued making music in his soft, folk style. Here is Compton's Mystery Box:
 
Yesterday's Roads - Appaloosa 1969
Silk On Steel - Compton Batteau 1970
Marker - To Luna 1971
Laughter Turns To Blue - Live at WMPG 2006
Walker Street - Unplugged 2005
Rosalie - Live At Turk's Head Coffeehouse 1968
Tim Hardin Song - Appaloosa Never Gone 2013

Enjoy John Parker Compton's Mystery Box 
and if you like the music drop him a line.

The Friday Mystery Box

We conclude our Friday Mystery preview of the year's T Bone Walker Blues Festival with Eric Gales.  Eric grew up in a musically talented family. Gales picked up the guitar at age four. His older siblings, Eugene and Manuel, taught him many songs and licks at a young age, in the styles of  Hendrix and classic bluesmen. In 1985, the Eric began playing at blues competitions with his brother Eugene backing him. Although Gales plays a right-handed guitar "upside-down" (with the E-bass string on the bottom), he is not naturally left-handed; he was taught by his brother who is left-handed...

Family Days: Left Hand Band,

The Gales Bros.:

House Of Blues

Somethin's Got A Hold On Me

Eric Covers The Covers:

Sleepy Time (Cream) with L A Blues Authority

Custard Pie (Led Zeppelin) with Derek Trucks and Matt Tudor

Miss You ( Rolling Stones)

Power Of Soul (Jimi Hendrix) with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles

Eric and Friends:

Chills and Thrills with Bernard Allison

Like You Used To Do with dUg Pinnick and Thomas Pridgen

Amazing Grace - The Eric Gales Trio  

Join Eric here now or here in June!

On This Week's Friday Mystery Box...Trick's Is A Gunslinger

This week's Friday Mystery Box features Ricky Dean Zehringer, who started playing professionally as a teenager with The McCoy's with their hit tune, Hang On Sloopy, and has never stopped.  Along with a full solo career he's played with both Johnny and Edgar Winter, Todd Rundgren,  Alice Cooper, Cyndi Lauper, Kiss,  "Weird Al" Yankovic, and  Steely Dan.   He also knows a good cover tune when he hears one and so Trick's Mystery Box presents our favorite Rick Derringer covers plus a bonus original with old friends Edgar and Leon Russell.

Rick's Covers:
Stormy Monday (T Bone Walker) w/ The McCoys
Stray Cat Blues ( R. Stones) w/ Johnny Winter
Ramble On (Led Zeppelin)  Rick Derringer
Rick Speaks!
Rick's Tribute to the Kings:
Born Under A Bad Sign - Albert King
Key To The Highway - Freddie King
Let The Good Times Roll - B B King
Rick with Edgar Winter and Leon Russell:
Good Ol' Shoe - Edgar Winter

You can see and hear Rick at the 2015 T Bone Walker Blues Festival.  
At Trick's we always got you covered.

Los Lonely Box

This Friday Mystery Box features a band from San Angelo, Texas who are making big waves in the music scene today.  Their music is a mix of Texas blues, Tejano, country, and rock, aptly labeled "Texican Rock 'n' Roll."   Welcome to the Friday mystery box: Henry Garza, Jojo Garza, and Ringo Garza...collectively known as :

Change The World
Pride And Joy (SRV)
Blame It On Love
Familia
I'm The Man To Beat
American Idle
Heaven
Scuttle Buttin' (SRV)

You can tune in now to hear the  band or hear the band live on June 6th as they play the

This Friday Mystery Box...

...has more Tabs than normal. 

In fact in this box features six Tabs labeled  Tab A) Night Train,  Tab B) Mother Earth,  Tab C) I Put a Spell on You with Kenny Neal and Debbie Davis, Tab D) Voodoo On The Bayou, Tab E) Monk's Blues, Tab F) Long Lonely Bayou,  and Tab G) Nothing Takes The Place Of You . . . which all fold into a great Mystery box of Tab Benoit tunes some of which you just might hear in June if you ship yourself to the T Bone Walker Blues Festival.

 Now, it's perfectly clear.

Friday's Mystery Box is full of AYH!

 Alvin "Youngblood" Hart is a self described cosmic American love child of Howlin Wolf and Link Wray!  He was born in Oakland, California, on March 2, 1963,and spent some time in Mississippi, where he was influenced by the Mississippi country blues performed by his relatives.  Hart is known as one of the world's foremost practitioners of country styled blues, as well as 1960s and 1970s guitar rock, Western Swing, and vintage country. Is there any question why the Friday Mystery Box is full of "The Many Moods of Alvin Youngblood Hart"?

"Fightin' Hard"
"The Worm" 
"Meanest Jukebox In Town"
"Bootlegger's Blues" 
"Electric Eel"
"Manos Arriba"
"Lawd I'm Just A Country Boy 

In The Great Big Freaky City"

Hey, Al...Thanks!