“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. From Chicago to her home state of West Virginia and beyond, she takes the blues to concerts, classes, parties, senior homes, and festivals in a solo, teaching team, piano-horn duo, or band. She’s also signing and discussing her new book, the co-authored autobiography of Chicago bluesman Larry Taylor, Stepson of the Blues, published in 2010 by Peaceful Patriot Press. www.stepsonoftheblues.com
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. She has led workshops on 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’s acclaimed singer-songwriter “Lady D,” Doris Fields. In Chicago in 2009-10, working with the charity Rock for Kids, she has brought veteran bluesmen back to the community for class workshops and school assemblies in the band Chicago School of Blues.
Bonni co-produced and played 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, with several songs recorded at the landmark Archie Edwards barbershop.
In 2006-07 she helped organize the Charleston WV Blues Society and arranged for a Humanities lecture 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. She is 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
Bonni’s music sounds best on a traditional acoustic stringed piano, as in this VIDEO:www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D5bLzeR_qY
She has a sound system, microphones and an electric keyboard if needed. All prices are negotiated depending on time, effort, travel, and causes. Whenever possible, she carpools or takes trains and public transportation to her gigs.
Chicago School of Blues - Educational band
Bonni organized and plays keyboard with the CHICAGO SCHOOL OF BLUES, an all-star band of longtime professional musicians from the West and South Side of Chicago, who 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, sponsored by the charity Rock for Kids.
In their in-school and afterschool programs geared to all ages, Chicago School of Blues change 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 how their various instruments and voices work together, 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. See how in their VIDEO:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_nhXaziSFE
FACULTY:
Killer Ray Allison: Now a guitarist leading his own band, Ray played drums and recorded with many greats of Chicago blues and soul since the 1970s, in places as far as Japan, Europe, Africa, and Australia. 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. From South Side holes in the wall to the Chicago Blues Fest and around the world, 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. He is featured in the band Soulfire.
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.
In a tour of West Virginia in March 2010, the band was joined by two of southern West Virginia’s finest horn players, Bob Redd on trumpet and Dugan Carter, sax.; and by guest singer Larry Taylor from the West Side of Chicago, who invokes the spirits of Howlin’ Wolf, Johnnie Taylor and James Brown. Longtime Chicago blues singer Gloria Shannon also guest-starred at an April 2010 Chicago School of Blues assembly sponsored by Rock for Kids at Donoghue Elementary on the South Side.