Barrelhouse Bonni: Bio

Barrelhouse Bonni - Piano Vocal

  "Barrelhouse Bonni" McKeown is a journalist, blues piano player, teaching artist, and citizen activist who presents and supports heritage musicians upholding the blues and soul tradition. Her motto: PRAY FOR PEACE; WORK FOR JUSTICE; BOOGIE FOR SURVIVAL.

 Bonni'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. From Chicago to her home state of West Virginia and beyond, she takes the blues to concerts, classes, parties, senior homes, and festivals. True to the tradition of this community music, Bonni involves the audience. For seniors, she leads a campfire-style sing-along of early 20th century favorites.

Bonni performs solo and also with a Chicago area duo with singer Gloria Shannon called the Barrelhouse Ladies. From tastefully naughty ragtime era tunes to goodtime dances and beautiful ballads, the ladies are delighting fans with the truth: good music never fades away!  www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyFwIvUMrkk 

She also has performed in duos with outstanding horn professionals such as Chicago saxophonist Abb Locke, who played with Howlin' Wolf; and Charleston WV trumpet player Bob Redd and saxophonists Marshall Petty and Dugan Carter.

Bonni’s music sounds best on a traditional acoustic stringed piano, as in this VIDEO:www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D5bLzeR_qY

But she also has piano, will travel: a sound system, microphones and an electric keyboard if needed. Financial arrangements for concerts, classroom workshops, and book talks are negotiated depending on time, effort, travel, and causes. An advocate of sustainable transportation, she carpools or takes trains and public transportation to her gigs.

On Bonni's own 2003 CD, Barbershop Blues, three of Washington DC’s finest acoustic bluesmen—Jay Summerour, Mike Baytop and NJ Warren—play as guests, recording several songs at the landmark Archie Edwards barbershop.

Bonni co-produced and played on Chicago West Side 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.”  Wolf Records in Austria reissued Taylor's album in 2011 She occasionally plays with Larry Taylor's blues and soul band: www.larrytaylorbluesnsoul.com

Chicago School of Blues - Educational blues workshops

 During the early 2000s, Bonni taught blues history and music with elementary students at Austin Town Hall, Donoghue Elementary in Chicago; Piedmont School in Charleston WV; with seniors at Charleston’s FestivALL Elderhostel; and on the road in Morgan County, WV with West Virginia singer-songwriter “Lady D,” Doris Fields.

Since 2009, she has helped reconnect generations through a traveling educational workshop called Chicago School of Blues, which she now co-leads with movement and dance teacher Miss Taj.  Students learn to compose their own blues tunes, and a band of South and West Side musicians introduces them to musical instruments.  Through blues, students discover the history of African Americans and America in general. Blues is at the root of much of America's popular music-- rock, hiphop, R&B jazz, and even country.   http://chicagoschoolofblues.org

Stepson of the Blues - Larry Hill Taylor's autobiography

Bonni's writings and presentations convey a lifetime of grassroots citizenship and a respectful, constantly growing knowledge of African American culture. In 2006-07 she helped organize the Charleston WV Blues Society and arranged for a Humanities lecture by WVU jazz professor Dr. Christopher Wilkinson about the history of African-American swing bands traveling through West Virginia. She wrote an article on today’s Charleston area black musicians for the magazine Metro Valley, spring issue 2007, and wrote the cover story on Chicago West Side musicians for Big City Rhythm and Blues magazine in August 2006.

Bonni is also a contributing writer to West Virginia Encyclopedia and the author of Peaceful Patriot: The Story of Tom Bennett, the 1980 biography of a West Virginia conscientious objector and Army medic killed in Vietnam.  In 2010 she co-wrote the autobiography of West Side Chicago blues singer/drummer Larry Hill Taylor, Stepson of the Blues, and gave a series of talks in Chicago area public libraries during Black History Month 2011.   www.stepsonoftheblues.com  

Both books are available on line through Bonni's own Peaceful Patriot Press. http://peacefulpatriotpress.blogspot.com/

Her blog about the art and business of blues appears on this website.