Barrelhouse Bonni: Bio

Barrelhouse Bonni

“Barrelhouse Bonni” McKeown’s blues piano, singing and songwriting style echoes back to the upright pianos in the juke joints and barrelhouses of the South, and the Bessie Smith era of vintage 1930s blues. She travels between Chicago and her home state of West Virginia, taking the blues to concerts, classes, parties, senior homes, and festivals in a solo, teaching team, or piano-horn duo.

Bonni doesn’t just sing the blues; true to the tradition of this community music, she involves the audience. For seniors, she includes a campfire and barbershop sing-along of early 20th century favorites. She has taught blues history and music to groups varying from elementary students at Austin Town Hall on the West Side of Chicago, and Charleston WV’s inner-city Piedmont School, to seniors at Charleston’s FestivALL Elderhostel. In 2007 and 2008, she organized a Sunday Blues Ladies Brunch series at Junior’s Lounge on Chicago’s Maxwell Street, featuring up-and-coming blues women with traditional Maxwell Street musicians as guests.

Bonni co-produced and played several songs on Chicago singer and bandleader Larry Taylor’s debut CD in 2004, They Were in This House, which the Chicago Sun-Times called “one of the year’s best blues albums.” Three of Washington DC’s finest acoustic bluesmen—Jay Summerour, Mike Baytop and NJ Warren—play as guests on Bonni’s own 2003 CD, Barbershop Blues. She played a duo with southern West Virginia’s trumpet master Bob Redd at the 2007 Frostburg MD Appalachian Festival. In 2006-07 she helped organize the Charleston WV Blues Society and arranged for a Humanities lecture about the history of black swing bands traveling through West Virginia. In 2008 she accompanied Doris Fields, "Lady D," in a three-day residency leading elementary students in Morgan County, WV to sing their own blues tunes. In Chicago in 2009, working with the charity Rock for Kids, she has brought veteran bluesmen back to the community for school and afterschool concerts and workshops.

To Barrelhouse Bonni, the blues is a bridge between ethnic groups and generations. Her motto is:
Pray for Peace, Work for Justice and Boogie for Survival!

Bonni’s music sounds best on a traditional acoustic stringed piano; she has a sound system, microphones and an electric keyboard if needed. All prices are
negotiated depending on time, effort, travel, and causes.

“Bonni plays and sings her pure heart, honestly.”
--Gaye Adegbalola, singer & songwriter
Saffire, the Uppity Blueswomen

1. COFFEEHOUSE BARRELHOUSE: Bonni sings and plays, sometimes solo, sometimes with accompanying harmonica or saxophone player. Enjoy 1930s vintage piano blues, Chicago favorites, and her originals. Adapted for retirement homes, Bonni’s act includes an old-fashioned sing-along. One to two hours.

2. BLUES SCHMOOZE: This piano solo or duo (with horn) background, mostly instrumental music makes for classy, groovy receptions. Blues-based music with a few show tunes and holiday songs. In West Virginia you might hear Bonni play with horn masters such as Bob Redd on trumpet, or Marshall Petty or Dugan Carter, sax. In Chicago her special guests may include Abb Locke, who played with Howlin' Wolf. One to three hours.

3. SING THE BLUES WORKSHOP: Sing Your Own Blues Tune: Folks from age 7 through 107 can tell their own stories in classic three-line 12 bar blues verse. 45 min.- 1½ hours. Bonni usually co-leads this in West Virginia with Doris Fields “Lady D” www.ladyd.org . In Chicago, she works with the Chicago School of Blues (see bio's below). 1-3 classes of 45 min. each, two leaders.

4. BLUES HISTORY WORKSHOP: Adapted to all ages. Spirituals, field hollers and work songs are demonstrated with the group joining in. Live and recorded blues songs show how the music helped African-Americans survive, and how blues took different forms over the last 100 years: gospel, jazz, R&B, rock, soul, hiphop, even country & bluegrass. It’s music for all! When you’re proud of your heritage, it’s easier to accept yourself and to share with others. 1-3 classes of 45 min.each, two leaders.

5. BLUES CHORDS & PATTERNS WORKSHOP: Use your voice and instruments to hear and learn 12-bar blues patterns that use traditional African American call-response techniques and European musical scales. Blues is based on the same 1-4-5 chords we learn in classical music. The standard verse is three lines: “I got a bad report card, please have mercy on me/ I got a bad report card, please have mercy on me/ Give it to a squirrel, let him run it up a tree.” Learn the pattern, catch the boogie rhythm, and repeat til it’s automatic. Blues is an easy style to pick up; it teaches basic music concepts quickly. Adapted to age groups. One to three classes 45 min.each, two leaders.

Chicago School of Blues - Educational band

The CHICAGO SCHOOL OF BLUES
are a band of longtime professional musicians from the West and South Side of Chicago whose mission is to engage young and old in blues and soul music the way it works in the African American community. They first performed together in August 2009 under the sponsorship of Rock for Kids, a charity offering music education for underprivileged children.

In their in-school and afterschool programs geared to all ages, Chicago School of Blues teachers show how blues music changes hard times to good times. Blues not only tells the history of the African American community; it’s the root of all American popular music-- rock, hiphop, R&B jazz, and even country. Band members show youth how their various instruments and voices work together. They give workshops on how to write your own blues tune and how to learn basic rhythms, chords and scales. Their positive attitude breaks through generational barriers and lifts the spirits of everyone in the audience.

FACULTY:

Killer Ray Allison: Now a guitarist leading his own band on the South Side and in the Chicago Blues Fest, Ray played drums and recorded with all the greats of Chicago blues and soul. Since the 1970s, in Japan, Europe, Africa, Australia to neighborhood holes-in-the-wall on the South Side, he played with everyone from Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Koko Taylor and Syl Johnson, to rock scene stars like Paul Butterfield and Joe Cocker. In 1995 he appeared in the movie Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead with Andy Garcia, and in 1998 he played for Hilary Clinton’s birthday party in Chicago. Ray never fails to please crowds of any age with his energetic shows, and his quick-draw staging gets audiences of kids clapping and singing along. www.myspace.com/killerrayallison

C C Copeland: This talented bass player grew up in the era of funk and soul, and he can throw down every kind of song from 50s rock’n’ roll, with Elvis-style gyrations, to rap from Kanye West. C.C. says music helped him learn math. He enjoys using his rhythmic bass lines to help students put music behind their song lyrics. He has played and recorded with top-notch artists like Big James, Mike Wheeler and the Chicago Playboys; Billy Branch, Vance Kelly, and Sharon Lewis.

Abb Locke came to Chicago from the cottonfields of Arkansas and played saxophone in the 1950s with Howlin’ Wolf. From his first week of Chicago, when he had pawned his horn and ran out of money, bologna and crackers, to sharing the spotlight with the Rolling Stones, Abb has the stories behind the music. He has recorded and worked with Buddy Guy (Chess box set), Willie Mabon. Earl Hooker, Albert Collins (they played Carnegie Hall), Koko Taylor, Magic Sam, Eddie Clearwater, Lonnie Brooks, Muddy Waters, Elmore James. In addition to heeding his experienced advice to work hard and save their money, kids like to hear him squeal high and honk low on the sax.

West Side Wes, school bus driver by day and a drummer by night, has lived and played music on Chicago’s West Side since he was a teenage Temptations fan in the 1960s. His parents bought him a set of drums and he banged away while other guys were out gang-banging. In addition to leading his own West Side band, Wes has played with nationally known Chicago senior blues artists such as Sam Lay, Johnny Christian, Lee “Little Wolf” Solomon, Little Arthur, Vance Kelly, Melvin Taylor and Smokey Smothers. He has toured with Aron Burton, Larry Taylor, and Eddie Shaw and played on records by Larry Taylor and Robert Plunkett. Wes says one of his main goals now is to pass the music on to younger generations.

Larry Taylor: Coming up on Chicago's West Side, with parents in the blues (Vera Taylor, singer, and Eddie Taylor Sr., guitarist), Larry carries his drumming rhythms into his singing and bandleading. He howls like the Wolf, patterning his own tunes after him;belts out Johnnie Taylor's soul songs, and funks with Magic Sam and James Brown. Larry's knowledge and feeling of history impels him to pass on blues and soul traditions of his ancestors. www.larrytaylorbluesnsoul.com

Barrelhouse Bonni McKeown, blues piano player, writer and educator from West Virginia, helped organize the Chicago School of Blues. She is one of their students and biggest fans.