Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Nate Najar - March Gulfport Concert SOLD OUT and July Palladium Concert Date Announced


NATE NAJAR
“There is no doubt that there is a piece of Charlie’s 
soul in Nate’s mind, heart and fingers.” 
Becky Byrd, wife of the late guitarist Charlie Byrd

Friday, March 31, 2023 | 7-9pm
DRV FINE ART & STUDIO GALLERY
5401 Gulfport Boulevard South
Gulfport, FL 33707
WEBSITE  (727)382-7004
Doors open at 6pm. Music at 7pm.
Only 50 Seats. $20/person
SOLD OUT!

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Jazz & Blues Florida Monthly Report on Activity, Traffic and Distribution - March 2023 Quick Report




Yes, Jazz & Blues Florida has an international audience!!
 

Website view locations by country:
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, 
Cayman Islands, China, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, 
Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, 
Nicaragua, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Republic of Korea, Romania, 
Russia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Switzerland, U.S. Virgin Islands, 
United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States.

Facebook top ten view location by country:
United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Brazil, Australia, France, 
Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain.

Traffic / Activity / Distribution -
Quick report as of 3/28/23:
Current active Email subscribers: 4,471
*Current total social media contacts: 22,774
Past month news blog views: 10,782
Life Time News Blog views: 2,224,571
Past month main website views: 2,452
Past month magazine impressions: 2,109 
Past month Instagram accounts reached: 3,045
Past month YouTube views: 2,764
Past month Twitter impressions: 1,769
Past month Facebook Business page reach: 17,141

(Original source reports on ALL numbers
available on request. No fluff. No 'multipliers.' No B.S.)

The order placement deadline for the April 2023 issue is TODAY,
Tuesday, 3/28/23. The Cover Feature is available for May.
Email Charlie@JazzBluesFlorida.com with order inquiries.

Daniela Soledade - March Concert SOLD OUT, April and May Shows Announced

When the Music 
Matches the Mood

"Singing in both Portuguese and English, Daniela Soledade's debut album displays her mastery of classic samba and bossa nova standards, with some pleasing surprises, including "Ninho." The entire album builds toward that original composition by demonstrating Soledade's mastery of the form and highlighting the pristine clarity of her vocals. That sort of skill makes sense, though, given her familial past..."

- By Michele L. Simms-Burton
DOWNBEAT MAGAZINE

Monday, March 27, 2023

April 4th Jazz Informance Livestream feat. Terell Stafford and Peer-to-Peer Jazz Quintet at the U.S. Dept. of Education

 

 

 

Herbie Hancock Institute in Conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education Present National Peer-to-Peer Jazz Informance,

April 4, 2023 @ 1 pm EDT

 

Hosted by the U.S. Department of Education

 

Featuring Internationally Renowned Jazz Trumpet Recording Artist Terrell Stafford

 

In Concert with the Peer-to-Peer Jazz Quintet

 

Washington, DC – The Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education will present a peer-to-peer jazz informance on April 4, featuring the Institute’s Peer-to-Peer Jazz Quintet. Hosted by the U.S. Department of Education, the “informance” – a combination of performance and educational information – will be presented by a group comprising gifted music students from Baltimore, New York, and Washington, DC public high schools along with internationally acclaimed jazz trumpet recording artist Terell Stafford and renowned jazz educator Dr. JB Dyas.

 

The informance will be held at the U.S. Department of Education (ED) headquarters building in Washington, D.C., beginning at 1 pm ET, and livestreamed on the Institute’s website, hancockinstitute.org, and at the U.S. Department of Education’s media link here to hundreds of school districts in the United States and around the world.

The focus will be on raising the bar of music education in our public schools nationwide. Raising the bar in all areas of public school education, arts and academics alike, is the primary mission of U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and the Department.

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Bradfordville Blues Club Closing April 1, 2023: The last night at the last juke joint in Florida. All Upcoming Shows are SOLD OUT.

Calendar, videos, links and more at bottom of post. Please leave a comment for posterity. 


3/23/23

TV News from WCTV Tallahassee
By Madison Glaser
Published: Mar. 23, 2023 at 8:19 PM CDT

‘There’s nothing like it’: Bradfordville Blues Club to close after two decades under current owners

https://www.wctv.tv/2023/03/24/theres-nothing-like-it-bradfordville-blues-club-close-after-two-decades-under-current-owners/


3/21/23 - Newspaper Article (Subscription only) TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT

(Thanks to Bob Wallerius for pics of article)






3/21/23

Board of County Commissioners
Leon County, Florida
Agenda
Regular Public Meeting
Tuesday, March 21, 2023, 3:00 p.m.
Proclamation Recognizing Gary and Kim Anton, the owners Bradfordville Blues Club. (Commissioner Welch)  



2/8/23

Gary's FB Post:

It's time, folks. After 21 fantastic years of running the most magical club on the planet, it's time to fully retire, visit family and friends, take in romantic sunsets and explore parts unknown.  Sadly, we announce the closing of the Bradfordville Blues Club as of April 1, 2023 (no, not an April Fool's joke).  Kim and I have had the privilege of Keeping the Blues Alive at this historic and truly unique juke joint. We have been rewarded with friendships and love from the folks we've met from customers, our "irregulars", musicians, bands and the community at large.  Its taken a villiage to keep the club open.  The Tallahassee and music communities responded with support, loyalty and financial aid when needed.  We coud not have done it without you! 

There are too many people to thank but there are two people, Walter Potter and Ree Case, without whom the club woud not have survived. They have been behind us since day one and to whom we are forever grateful! 

We don't know yet what the future holds for the club.  It's in the hands of members of the the Henry Family who purchased the property in the 1880's. We all owe a debt of gratitude to the Henry Family who supported us and kept the blues alive!

We are talking with folks who have expressed an interest in preserving the club. We truly hope that the right people come along who will have the same passion for the club, the music and the rich heritage of the Henry grounds.  We'll keep you posted.

To all of our supporters:  We love you and thank you for allowing Kim and me to have the time of our lives. We hope to see you in February and March as we bring in some of the bands that have meant so much to us over the last two decades.

Peace and love, y'all!

Kim and Gary Anton


2/7/23

Tallahassee music venue known for its history, blues music and fried catfish set to close

Marina Brown

Special to the TallahasseeDemocrat

After 21 years of “jammin’ and jukin’ and lightin’ up the night” with music carried by troubadours whose songs burst out of hardship and pain, but spill out as pure joy — the Bradfordville Blues Club is closing its doors for the last time on April 1, according to the owners of the beloved establishment.

Renowned as the only Florida venue to be placed on the famous Mississippi Blues Trail with a marker designating its historic contribution, the Bradfordville Blues Club, much like the blues itself, could write a few lyrics about hardship over the years.

More recent troubles, and ones that have brought owners Gary and Kim Anton to their final decision, included Gary’s liver transplant and other serious complications, the massive fallen oak branch that devastated the simple concrete structure that had housed the Club since its beginning, and as a final coup, the deep destruction that COVID wrecked across performing arts in general.

Ironically, as a parting “finger poke,” Anton, 72, is just getting over a prolonged two weeks of COVID now.

And yet, Gary Anton and his wife know when at last it is time to say goodbye. He is filled with gratitude for the friends and followers who have time and again come to the club’s assistance.

He is bursting with stories and memories of musicians who traveled through the night just to play the authenticity of a venue that will have no replacement — and the listeners who danced and jived and introduced their neighbors and friends to a place where color barriers were easily crossed. The venue hosted performers from Bobby Rush to Guitar Shorty to Bob Margolin on the corner stage.

Gary Anton, owner of the Bradfordville Blues Club, poses for a portrait Friday, Feb. 12, 2021.

Gary Anton took an hour on Monday to look back with the Democrat at what drew him to the blues and the Blues Club, and how for so many years he and Kim cared for their “unintended nonprofit” as if it were a child.

In the beginning, it was Dave's CC Club

Gary Anton was raised in Miami by a lawyer father and his wife. “My dad put a little guitar in my hands when I was 5 or 6, I think.” Like many in the '60s, the young guitarist and his bandmate peers were enamored of the British bands playing what would later be "exposed" as blues-inspired music.

It seemed to settle into Anton’s pores. He even tried a semester at the Berklee School of Music thinking he might make a career with the guitar, but instead, by then married to Kim who was from Tallahassee, he opted, like his father, for the law. Anton attended Florida State University as an undergraduate, and later graduated first in his class of over 5,000 from FSU School of Law.

The Bradfordville Blues Club is on the Blues Trail, stretching from Mississippi to Florida.

Setting up his own one-man office in 1981, he practiced in civil litigation and seemed, like many a bright young attorney set for a predictably settled life. And then one night, along the deeply rutted trail called Moses Lane, that life would be changed.

“There was a place… it seemed way out in the country… called Dave’s CC Club. I’d heard about it as having good music," Anton said. "But I got lost getting there on this 'goat trail' that led up to it. But as soon as I came upon what was just a concrete “bunker,” and heard what was happening inside…it was like Nirvana for me. Inside, there were only three people — Dave and Elizabeth Claytor, the owners of the Club, and a guitar player.”

They were Black and apparently waiting for what would normally be an all-white audience to arrive. During those early days and even afterward, Anton says it was always a white audience that came to see Black musicians.

“Muddy Waters said that 'Blues is like being Black twice'…Black people don’t need to go hear about their troubles all over,” Gary Anton said.

Owner Gary Anton stands inside the newly refinished Bradfordville Blues Club two months after an oak tree crashed through the roof of the juke joint. The historic club is set to re-open their doors on Friday, July 20, 2018.

Property part of Black family heritage

The property where the club sits off Bradfordville Road was part of a 200-plus acre tract bought by the African American Henry family in the 1880s. It is still in the hands of many of the family to this day. In the 1930s, Alan Henry and his sister, Inez Haynes, had put up a small store on a part of the land which was also used as community center for a recreational baseball team where the CC Saints played every week.

“People would sell vegetables and other wares, and apparently come to play music too,” Gary Anton said.

A date outside the Bradfordville Blues Club is set to the fateful day a tree crashed through the building two months ago, which owner Gary Anton says will stay that way in memoriam. The juke joint plans to re-open their doors on Friday, July 20, 2018.

Eventually, Dave Claytor began to run the little concrete building as a music venue, and there are stories that the likes of B.B. King, Ray Charles, and Chuck Berry would come over to the CC Club after their gigs at the Red Bird and Two Step in Frenchtown and stay till the sun was on the rise at Dave’s CC Club.

The Claytors moved away in 2001 and by 2002 Gary Anton, at that time still a full-time attorney, and his wife decided that after having spent nearly every weekend at the CC Club, tending bar when needed, steeping themselves in the music that was now essential to their lives, they would take over the enterprise.

Warming up at the fire at the Bradfordville Blues Club.

'Personal relationships' and historic designation

They rechristened it the Bradfordville Blues Club and became the bookers, the business executives, the sound engineers, the sweepers, stockers, and repairmen for the aging venue. And it was sweet. Except for the never-ending efforts to pay the bills, the Antons were having the times of their lives.

“It’s those personal relationships made through the years that we’ll miss most,” says Anton. He recounts the storied artists who’ve come to be friends: Mac Arnold, Guitar Shorty, John Primer, Joey Gilmore, Bobby Rush… who, at 88 “sounds just like you’re sittin’ on the front porch with him telling you stories of the old days…”

Bobby Rush at the Bradfordville Blues Club in 2014.

You almost get the feeling that in his soul, Gary Anton has lived there as well.

One of the things he is most proud of is the BBC’s designation in 2010 as the only Florida venue to be placed on the famous Mississippi Blues Trail with a marker designating its historic contribution to the Blues. “People come from all over the country and abroad to hear us because of that award,” Anton said.

Fried catfish and acts of kindness

They might also come to have a bite of Miss Ernestine (Fryson’s) red velvet cake and fried catfish. As much a part of the nighttime magic as the music, the taste of 78-year-old Ernestine’s fried treats between sets, and the bonfire that has brightened the darkness beneath the oaks for over 15 years, will live in regulars’ hearts.

And so why now? Why not stay in service to the place that has held them for so long?

Gary and Kim Anton own the Bradfordville Blues Club.

“You know, over all these years, we have never taken a salary. We haven’t made a dime. The opposite. Any little time there was a profit, we poured it back into repairs or a great booking. We’ve made use of GoFundMe campaigns when huge repairs were needed. And most of all we’ve been the recipients of the tremendous kindnesses of people who love the club.

Anton says that when he was hospitalized, regulars took over the running of the BBC and when the oak limb destroyed the roof, contractor Wayne Tate volunteered all of the repairs without pay. And throughout the years one woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, has supported the Club with monthly gifts now totaling “nearly $100,000.” “There just aren’t any words for that kind of kindness,” he says.

The Johnnie Marshall Band, the first to play the Blues Club, will help close it down on April 1, 2023.

Aging out: Johnnie Marshall finale

But Anton is realistic too. Time moves on, and many of the changes time has wrought were not helpful to filling seats on a country lane in north Tallahassee. “Friday night football was a big drain,” says Anton. “The Downtown Get Downs, the recession some years ago, the tree in 2018, and the pandemic that shut us down for a full year all took their toll. And maybe too, it’s time passing by in general.”

He wonders if the demise of many of the Blues Chitlin’ Circuit stars and the aging of the audiences who appreciated them has something to do with the decline in audiences he’s seen in the last years.

 

But the doors of the Blues Club aren’t locked yet. In a kind of grand curtain call, for the next eight weekends through April 1, a parade of famed blues legends will make their final appearances on the tiny corner stage, including Bill "Sauce Boss" Wharton this weekend.

Some may take home their circular portraits that adorn the walls and act as cocktail tables, paintings made to honor a history that is slowly slipping from the scene. Others will take away memories never to be revived.

“It seems fitting,” Anton said, “the Johnnie Marshall Band who were the first to play the Blues Club, will now be the last.”

He smiles, weary from COVID, yet sounding hopeful in a way perhaps Anton hasn’t in many years.

“After all these years, Kim and I hope to travel… see our family… live a little differently than we have after all these years. We used to canoe and kayak… we once were ‘outdoor’ people. Now, maybe there will be time left to get some of that back,” Anton said.

But Gary and Kim and Miss Ernestine will still be at the Bradfordville Blues Club through April 1, waiting to welcome you at the door, seat you in a great spot, and nod along with you to some of the best music — bluesy or otherwise— this side of heaven.

And of course, if there is anyone out there who’d like a little project — an historical gem needing a little polishing, Gary Anton might just take a meeting.

Gary Anton, left, who runs the the Bradfordville Blues Club with his wife Kim, and Mike Lanigan work to clean up the damage to his establishment after a 250-year-old oak tree came crashing down through the roof on Tuesday.

Like going back in time

On a deeply rutted road in the North Florida woods, the moon shines through a tangled crochet of oaks dripping with Spanish moss. You might think you've stepped back in time.

Tallahassee is only minutes away, but here there’s the sensation its urban pulse is far behind. Here, you feel you’ve entered an era when speakeasies, juke joints and honky-tonks could be found along the out-of-the-way rural roads of South Georgia and Florida's northern line.

In a kind of time travel, you bump off Sam's Lane and onto Moses' Lane. You're not far now. The Bradfordville Blues Club – a pulsing, literally throbbing holdover from the days when bluesmen traveled the "chitlin' circuit" – is just through the trees.

- Marina Brown, from a story a decade ago

Monday, March 20, 2023

Celebrate Women's History Month with JAZZ at Faena Theater in Miami Beach

Tune into Sammy Figueroa's show on WDNA ( www.WDNA.org) now to catch an interview with Sara Gazarek who is the featured artist in this week's jazz series concert at the Faena Theater in Miami Beach! 
Monday, March 20, 2023, 11am-noon.

THE JAZZ SERIES
AT THE FAENA THEATER
CELEBRATES
 WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH

The Jazz Series at the Faena Theater and its Grammy-nominated producer, Rachel Faro, are pleased to honor Women in Jazz  during Women’s History Month. 


Grammy Nominee Sara Gazarek needs no introduction to jazz lovers.  Considered to be one of today’s top jazz vocalists she will be appearing with her good friend Shelly Berg, a consummate accompanist and multiple Grammy-nominated jazz star in his own right.  A protegé of jazz giant Kurt Elling and a professor of voice at the University of Southern California, Sara will be performing music from her most recent release, “Vanity” along with standards and other original songs.

Come celebrate these accomplished and entertaining musical artists – let’s honor women in jazz this month!

For tickets to GABRIELLE CAVASSA on March 15th click HERE

For tickets to SARA GAZAREK w/ SHELLY BERG TRIO  on March 22nd click HERE

Faena Theater at
Faena Hotel Miami Beach
3201 Collins Ave
Miami Beach, FL 33140
MAP
faena.com (786)559-6016

Upcoming Series Performances

APR 12: Etienne Charles

MAY 10: Shayna Steele

JUN 7: Big Chief Donald Harrison


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Saturday, March 18, 2023

The Phoenix Artist Agency - Blues Rockin' Stages Across Florida, the U.S, and the World


Now Booking Local, Regional, National and 
International Blues Artists at Clubs, 
Concerts and Festivals

ARTIST ROSTER

BOOKING CONTACT:
Bigg Lou Phoenix
(941)677-0290
Agency License #TA1601
~ ~ ~ 

Distribution by

(561)313-7432 (Text is Best!)
#JazzBluesFlorida #Jazz #Blues #Clubs #Concerts #Festivals
Making the scene since 2006!
If you wish to be included in our personalized 
subscriber list please use this FORM
Join us on INSTAGRAM!
See what we see on YOUTUBE!
And, of course, you can LIKE us on FACEBOOK!
(Maxed out at 5K on the personal page since 2016)
We link to business on LINKEDIN.
And, yes, PINTEREST, too!

Thursday, March 16, 2023

South Motors Jazz Series at Pinecrest Gardens Presents John Lloyd Young on March 18, 2023 *SOLD OUT!*


THIS SHOW IS
SOLD OUT!
Season FINALE in April
w/ Eliane Elias is Already
SOLD OUT!

South Motors Jazz Series
2022 - 2023
at
11000 Red Road
Pinecrest, FL 33156
MAP
pinecrestgardens.org (305)669-6990
 
Saturday, March 18, 2023
John Lloyd Young
SOLD OUT!

UPCOMING CONCERTS:
🔘 SEASON FINALE
April 15, 2023Eliane Elias
SOLD OUT!

NEXT SEASON 2023 - 2024: 
Subscription Renewals: April 1, 2023 - May 15, 2023. 
New Subscriptions: June 1, 2023 - September 30, 2023. 
Single Show Tix: Sept 30, 2023 thru season.
 
Have you heard about Tropical Nights?
More about this series HERE.

Outside food, beverage or alcohol is not permitted.
Children not admitted without a guardian.
Event programming subject to change.
 
  
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Distribution by
(561)313-7432
#JazzBluesFlorida #Jazz #Blues #Clubs #Concerts #Festivals
Making the scene since 2006!
If you wish to be included in our personalized 
subscriber list please use this FORM
Join us on INSTAGRAM!
See what we see on YOUTUBE!
And, of course, you can LIKE us on FACEBOOK!
(Maxed out at 5K on the personal page since 2016)
We link to business on LINKEDIN.
And, yes, PINTEREST, too!
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