The Big Blues Bender is a 4-day music festival held annually in Las Vegas, NV. Each year the opening night is a fundraiser that supports the HART (Handy Artist Relief Trust) Fund. The Bender graciously donates all [...]

“Can’t Stop the Blues” (CSTB), was founded by Karen Gottheimer in March of 2020. The CSTB virtual concert series, streamed on Facebook and YouTube, created a groundbreaking and desperately needed virtual space for the blues scene, during a time when [...]

Fashioning his adult life around giving back to the music community, Tom Claypool has followed music for most of his life. Going to concerts and events eventually led to him hosting a blues show on WEVL FM [...]

Since 1981, FitzGerald’s Roadhouse in Chicago has been a champion for all kinds of American roots music that has included a constant flow of top-notch blues artists. In 2018, Bill FitzGerald put the club up for sale, but [...]

Award-winning blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa founded the Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation in 2011. The foundation aims to support arts and music education through grants, scholarships, and donations to schools, colleges, and other nonprofit organizations. [...]

Following his 22-year-long career in traditional radio, Jackson, Mississippi-based entrepreneur and promoter Jerry “Boogie” Mason built a network of traditional and new media connections via e-mail, print advertising, and social media, to promote blues, Southern soul, [...]

Phil Ranstrom is an American documentary filmmaker living in Chicago, Illinois. He has been writing, producing, and directing documentaries since the 1980s. Among his credits is the Emmy Award-winning, feature-length documentary, Cheat You Fair: The Story [...]

Raúl de la Rosa has been a broadcaster, journalist, and cultural promoter and curator of the blues since 1964. In 1978 he organized Mexico’s first blues festival to help share the blues and its history with the [...]

For over 30 years Jack Sullivan has used his skills in magazine circulation sales for various publishing houses including Time Inc., Wenner Media, and Hearst to excel in his passion for blues music. To this day, [...]

Well known to thousands of musicians in Europe and the United States, Peter Astrup has dedicated his life to establishing, and expanding, the blues music scene in his native Denmark and throughout Europe. After two [...]