Guitarist. Bandleader. Songwriter. Singer. Producer. Session musician. And a one-man cheering section for the blues, in all its forms and permutations.

The Blues Music Awards (formerly W.C.Handy Awards) have named Duke Robillard "Best Blues Guitarist" four years out of five (2000,2001,2003,2004) making him the second most honored guitarist for that award! He was also nominated in that category in 2005, 2007 and again this year of 2008.

In 2007 Duke received a Grammy nomination for his "Guitar Groove-a-rama" CD and was also honored with the prestigious Rhode Island Pell Award for "excellence in the arts" along with actress Olympia Dukakis, actor Bob Colonna, and R.I. Choreographer/Festival Ballet director Mihailo "Misha" Djuric.The Pell award is named for Senator Claiborne Pell who help establish the the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities in 1965. Other awards over the last decade include three Canadian Maple Blues Awards in 2001, 2002, and 2003 for "Best International Blues Artist," The Blues Foundation's "Producer of the Year" award in 2004, The French Blues Association "Album of the Year" award in 2002 (Living with the Blues) and "Guitarist of the Year" awards in 1999 and 2002. BB King himself has called Duke "One of the great players," The Houston Post called him "one of God's guitarists. And the New York Times says "Robillard is a soloist of stunning force and originality.

None of that goes to Robillard’s head. He’s still on the road, still playing as many as 250 dates a year. And still proving, night after night, that his true talent is bringing people out to hear the music, appreciate the show, and dance to the blues. Duke had his first band in high school — he was born in Woonsocket, Rhode Island — and he was fascinated from the beginning by the ways in which jazz, swing, and the blues were linked. In 1967, he formed Roomful of Blues, and the band was tight enough and tough enough to accompany two of its heroes, Big Joe Turner and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson on record and in live appearances.

Always ahead of his time, Duke’s first band pre-dated the renewed interest in jump blues by more than a decade — and almost 20 years later, in 1986, when he recorded with jazz sax master Scott Hamilton, he recorded a collection of classic big band tunes from the ’30s and ’40s, thus skillfully pre-dating the neo-Swing craze of the mid ’90s. Roomful of Blues — which still continues, forty years later — gave Duke his first exposure to a wide public, and when he left after a dozen years, he played briefly with rockabilly king Robert Gordon, then cut two albums with the Legendary Blues Band (a sterling collection of former members of Muddy Waters’ band). He led his own band until 1990, and then replaced Jimmy Vaughan in the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

In 1993, as he was about to sign a world-wide recording deal with Virgin/Pointblank, he met Holger Petersen, head of the Canadian independent label Stony Plain, at a folk festival in Winnipeg. In conversation, he mentioned he wanted to record a complete album of blues, without the r & b and jazz influences of his work to date. Petersen was interested; Virgin gave the go-ahead, and the resulting album, Duke’s Blues, earned rave reviews. It was so successful, in fact, that Virgin soon licensed the record from Stony Plain and released it around the world (except in Canada, where it continues in the Canadian company’s catalogue.

In the years since his relationship with the Canadian label has been astonishingly fruitful. As a soloist , he has released eleven CDs, plus one with label mate Ronnie Earl and one with The New Guitar Summit. Duke's next release will be in May/June of 2008 Just as remarkable have been the projects he has produced (and played on) for Stony Plain, including two albums with the late Jimmy Witherspoon, two with Kansas City piano king Jay McShann, comeback CDs for Billy Boy Arnold and Rosco Gordon, a swinging confection with the Canadian band The Rockin’ Highliners, and a superb album of guitar duets with the jazz legend Herb Ellis. As if this growing catalogue was not enough, he has found time to share studio gigs with Bob Dylan (the Daniel Lanois-produced Time Out of Mind sessions), Ruth Brown, the late Johnny Adams, John Hammond, Pinetop Perkins, and Ronnie Earl, among many others. He now has his own 24-track studio in his home, and he has become deeply involved in graphic design and photography as well as record production. Duke Robillard is a man in command of a full range of creative talents — unique in the blues, and rare in the music industry as a whole. He is, in fact, a complete artist at the height of his power.

Guitarist, singer and songwriter Clarence Spady has been credited with taking the music in new and exciting directions, writing at times introspective, autobiographical blues lyrics for the next generation of blues lovers. His debut for the Philadelphia-based Evidence Music, Nature of the Beast, received critical praise from all corners of the blues world, and he's signed to a multi-album deal with the label. (Spady recorded the album independently before executives at Evidence signed him.) Like diddley bow player Lonnie Pitchford, Spady was cited by Living Blues magazine as one of the "top 40 under 40" blues players to watch in the future.

Spady learned blues from his father, and played his first professional show as a five-year-old in kindergarten, where he performed B.B. King and James Brown tunes for his classmates.

Raised in Scranton, Pa., where he's still based, Spady would sit on his dad's lap and watch him play guitar until bedtime. Spady got his first guitar at age four; blues fever caught him early on, and he's never let it go. His first show came later that year, when he was six, playing with his father, older brother, aunt and uncle at the Paterson Elks Club in New Jersey. Like any good bluesman, Spady was raised singing in church, which he attended every Sunday with his mother. Unlike other Southern bluesmen who were raised just a generation earlier, the blues were not forbidden in the Spady household; quite the contrary, they were encouraged, since his father and other relatives played the music. Spady sang gospel music in church and took his cue from the secular music of the day played on the radio around New York City, including James Brown, the Isley Brothers and Jimi Hendrix. He counts B.B. King and Albert Collins among his main blues mentors, and throughout his formative years, Spady played with various rock and gospel groups, honing his chops in the hope that one day he would lead his own blues band.

After he graduated from high school in 1979, Spady hit the road with regional groups and spent most of the 1980s with the Greg Palmer Band, which opened for major touring acts like the Temptations, the Four Tops and the Spinners. After getting off the road in 1987, Spady played lead guitar in several Scranton-area blues bands and also directed the Shiloh Baptist Church Choir. By the early 1990s, Spady decided to lead his own band.

Much of the material on Nature of the Beast is drawn from his personal experience with drugs and his former relationships with women. Although he's long since dropped the drug habit he picked up in his years after high school, the experiences provided him with fodder for some of the songs on his debut. Spady's multi-album deal with Evidence Music was formalized in February, 1996, after the company agreed to remaster and repackage Nature of The Beast, the independently released album which got him radio airplay and allowed him to tour clubs and festivals up and down the East Coast. Spady will be a force in the blues world for a long time to come, as he backs up great singing with stellar guitar playing and a creative muse for blues lyric writing that the world will find refreshing.

Grace was born in Jersey City, New Jersey but moved to Trenton, NJ at the age at the age of five. Growing up in Trenton with six siblings, Grace’s mother, a gospel singer, and her father, who also sung in the church, inspired her. The family would all come together in the evenings to listen to records and perform some of their favorites. A young Grace was captivated by "Joey" a Natalie Cole tune that she would play over and over again. By age twelve Grace was already doing amazing things; such as her audition, performance, and win at the world famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York with an astonishing win in the adult category. At an audition at Trenton Central High School, Grace met a mentor who began giving Grace voice lessons. At age thirteen Grace began performing with a four-piece band. At age seventeen Grace began performing in the theater world. Having signed with a managing company Grace began performing in famous plays such as "The WIZ", "Dream Girls" (playing Effie, a role that was initially performed by Jennifer Holiday), and "Oh Calcutta". Grace traveled the world with these productions seeing all that the world had to offer. Grace caught the attention of the musically quintessential Leon Huff, one half of the Philadelphia International Records label while singing at a private party in Camden, New Jersey. Mr. Huff later called Grace to listen to a sound similar in vein to the Electric Slide; the listening of the song titled "The Line Dance" turned into a six month recording project. This project cultivated a full length CD titled "Amazin’ Grace" which was released by P I R. On this release Grace accompanied the Dells on a song entitled "Somebodys Gotta Move" that quickly became an anthem for Washington, DC and Baltimore area. It is faith and perseverance that’s driven Grace throughout her career, and the strength that carried her thus far. It can be heard in each one of her songs…Concluding that Grace is truly Amazin’.

Larry Garner was comfortable in the 9-to-5 routine of commuting to his day job, and making a good salary working for Dow Chemical. On his drive home one night, he was forced to take an alternate route. “There was an accident on the interstate, and I took a detour to avoid it,” remembers Garner. “I drove by this place that had a sign outside on wheels, with a couple lights that said, ‘Blues Jam Tonight.’ I went in, and they said to be back at 10 that night. I went home and told my wife about it. She said, ‘You know you’ ve got to go to work tomorrow.’ I went anyway, played, and got home at 2:00 in the morning. That was Tabby’s Blues Box.”

The scene at the legendary Baton Rouge blues hotbed was a marked contrast to the occasional weekend gigs Garner was playing at the time. It was the early 1970s, and Garner had just returned from a three year tour in the army. “There were no gigs except the gospel freebies,” he remembers. “It was all disco. There were occasionally American Legion gigs or weddings or rent parties. I became a wild child and only played with friends. My sister found me a good wife and I took a job with Dow Chemical, started a family, and rarely played in public.”

Garner started moonlighting for the first few years he played out at Tabby’s Blues Box. He met and played with such Baton Rouge bluesmen as Silas Hogan, Whispering Smith, Lonesome Sundown, Clarence Edwards, WW Woolfolk, Chuck Mitchell, Arthur "Guitar" Kelly and Raful Neal. He occasionally played in New Orleans at Tipatinas, Rhythms on Bourbon Street, or with Bryan Lee at the late, lamented Old Absinthe House. But eventually he couldn’t keep burning the candle at both ends. He recalls hanging out at Tabby’s one night with Kenny Neal, who’d just finished touring. When Neal pleaded with him to stick around for another drink instead of getting ready for work in the morning, Garner tried to explain. “He said, ‘You got to quit that job.’ I said, ‘I know, but I still got to go to work in the morning.’ I left, but what Kenny said stuck in my head."

It was a chance for Garner to play the music he’d loved since his early childhood. Growing up near Baton Rouge in the small town of Oaknolia, Garner heard the music coming from the church near his house. “There were traveling preachers coming through, and I heard that, and I listened to WLAC in Nashville on Friday and Saturday night,” he say. “I started playing guitar because I had an uncle, George, who taught me. He was a paraplegic, and he played like Jimmy Reed. I learned through him, and started playing at the church and behind a gospel group that played on the radio.

“My parents didn’t want me playing the blues,” Garner continues. “They thought it was the devil’s music — then I guess the jook joint a quarter-mile down the road was the devil’s recruitment office. I never went into the jook except during the day, when it was a store.”

Garner continued playing music during his military service, and playing in army bands — while stationed in Korea — steeled him for the life of a full-time musician. Leaving Dow Chemical was initially tough for him, but now he has a devoted following throughout the country and across the Atlantic Ocean. “I’m on tour all the time,” he says. “I go to Europe twice a year sometimes trice. Except for the airport hassles and the weak dollar, I love going overseas. They’re really appreciative there. I’m also on the road here a lot,” says Garner. “I have a 2001 7.3 liter, diesel, Ford van. It’s got 296,000 miles on it now but with proper care it should make 500,000. An early self-released cassette of Garner’s songs led him to a record contract with London’s JSP label. After his 1992 JSP debut cd "Double Dues and his second JSP release "Too Blues", he recorded the classic You Need to Live a Little on Verve/Gitanes. This CD has tunes such as “Keep Four Cars Running,” where a father laments about the expenses of heading a large household, and the hilarious “The Preacher Man Stole My Woman.” His recent efforts include Baton Rouge (Evidence), Standing Room Only, Once Upon the Blues, and Ebarrasment to the Blues?(Ruf). Garner’s original songs mark all these records; he rarely plays other people’s music. “I get inspiration every day, talking to people, watching TV, listening to the radio, seeing things happening around me that put an extra thought in my mind.” "I can't write about my mule died this morning but I can write about diesel prices going up 200%, gigs paying less and the band wanting more."

In tunes like “Virus Blues” or “If She Tells You No,” listeners can tell that Larry Garner is paying close attention to what is happening and putting it into songs — which is what good blues performers have been doing since the music danced from Africa into America. Garner keeps it dancing out of Baton Rouge. Be sure to watch for his long awaited new release "Banished", thats in the making as we speak to be released in 2008. It will include Larrys tribute to Mr Riley King.

At nineteen years old he joined the legendary "Little Milton Band". After playing with Milton for two years, he joined Albert King's Blues Band.

After playing with Albert, he returned to the local scene in Chicago and began to play with many blues bands in the area too numerous to mention.

Entertaining has been a way of life for Frank, starting at the tender age of four. Growing up in Millen, Georgia and the son of a gospel singer, Maggie Jordan, Frank learned at an early age that singing was his God-given gift. Frank says, "I can remember singing as early as I can remember talking." Later, in the 1960s during his teenage years, Frank toured with the Otis Redding Review. He later Joined "Archie Jenkins & The Incredible Saxons," touring extensively in the United States and as far away as Canada, Alaska and Spain. In 1977 Frank left the music business.

"A voice this wonderful should not have been silent for so long..." Bill Mitchell, Blues Bytes, MARCH 1998

Frank began performing again in 1996 and released his debut CD, "Steppin' Out" in 1998. "Steppin' Out" clearly demonstrates Mr. Bey's ability to perform multiple blues styles including swing, standard slow blues, delta, country, folk.. At live performances, Frank's rich and exquisite style is presented with such feeling that each member of the audience can relate it to his or her own experience.