Welcome to the April edition of BLUES JUNCTION. As always we have a whole host of new articles and features that we hope you'll enjoy.

First off, we have an interview that is long overdue. It is with Tony “T.C.” Coleman. Tony has had an incredibly long and successful career in the blues field. He is a first call drummer who has toured with and recorded with some of the biggest names in the blues field. He was one of the longest tenured members of B.B. King’s band. He has performed and recorded with Bobby “Blue” Bland, Albert King, Katie Webster, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Koko Taylor and Ike Turner among others. Tony came as advertised. He was described to me as a person who is intelligent, articulate, opinionated and outspoken. Hey, he sounds like my kind of guy. He did not disappoint. Tony is in our Monthly Artist Spotlight for April.  

Our Monthly Album Spotlight feature focuses on a heretofore long out of print CD that is being re-issued by Rip Cat Records and will be hitting the streets on April 15^th. It is Kid Ramos’ first release under his own name, 1995’s Two Hands One Heart. One of my favorite recordings over the past twenty years just got better.  

I would like to welcome back Don “T-Bone” Erickson to the JUNCTION. He contributed an article entitled The Top Fifty Influential Blues Artists of All Time. Don fully expects to hear from our readers on his choices. Let’s not disappoint him. As you might suspect, he has already heard from me as to my thoughts on some of his choices. I would like to thank Don for the hard work and research he put into this project.

Sunday, April 6^th, felt like east meets west and north meets south all in one day. Two very special concerts took place simultaneously and 400 hundred miles apart in California. First off was a very rare west coast appearance by Doug Deming and the Jewel Tones featuring Dennis Gruenling. This show took place in Long Beach. Doug is a Detroit native who resides in Florida. He is a guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and band leader of the first order. His longtime musical collaborator, Dennis Gruenling, is a harmonica player virtually without peer. His approach to the instrument is deeply rooted in the traditional blues styling of the masters, most notably Little Walter, but he has a jazz sensibility combined with his own creative flourishes which make him a unique, and therefore welcome, inclusion to the blues landscape. These two players were joined on stage by the rhythm section and their fellow intra-continental road warriors, drummer Devin Neel and bassist Andrew Gohman.

While this wonderful performance was taking place, a unique show was going off in the San Jose suburb of Campbell. Read about what was billed as NorCal VS So Cal Guitar AXEtravaganza. Much thanks go out to our very freelance NorCal correspondents Leslie Hagins and the show’s producer, Aki Kumar, for their help in assembling this piece on a tight deadline.

As spring brings new growth and warmer temperatures to most of us, so too does the season bring with it a bounty of new blues recordings. We have ten songs in our Jukebox at the JUNCTION from ten outstanding new and soon to be released CDs.

This being the first full month of spring, it has been a long standing April tradition that I dust off and put up on the top shelf an old piece entitled, “Hope Springs Eternal.” I am going to break from tradition and leave that missive in the rather voluminous archive section of our site. That piece dealt with one of my favorite subjects outside of blues music and that is baseball. Let me amend that statement slightly and come clean, make that Dodger baseball. My beloved team plays its home games about half way between the childhood home of Jackie Robinson in Pasadena and the campus of UCLA where he remains the only four sport letterman in the history of that university. It is Jackie who is the focus of Hope Springs Eternal. 

So as not to disappoint the handful of people who really want to come to BLUES JUNCTION to read about Dodger baseball, I am putting up a piece I wrote last September, The Voice. In it I talk about my second biggest hero in Dodger history, Vin Scully. This spring marks his 65^th season behind the mic. I however, along with 90% of the inhabitants of Southern California, haven’t heard the voice yet as due to an agreement between Time Warner Cable and the Dodgers, only subscribers to that service can watch the Dodgers and hear the voice of the greatest broadcaster of all time. It doesn’t feel like spring without the sound of Vin Scully’s voice.  

Remember to visit the Letter to the Editor portion of our site as a few of the many correspondences to BLUES JUNCTION made their way into this feature.

Your thoughtful and insightful comments as to what you see (or don’t see) here in our feature driven monthly on-line magazine are so very greatly appreciated. I enjoy visiting with our readers who really help to bolster my resolve to continue to work my hardest to shed a little light on this illusionary music, as well as the talented and dedicated musicians who make it. Until we meet again, be well and be in touch.

- David Mac