Some cool gigs coming up. We are booking our summer right now. I’m sooo looking forward to visiting my old Northeast haunts. Also I just booked one of the largest blues festivals in North America! Details soon come.
For booking: sauceboss.com
February 11th, this Saturday night, we will play the BBC for the last time. Another one of the great blues jukes is ending a chapter. (Possibly the whole book) At the beginning of April, The Bradfordville Blues club will close its doors. It’s with a heavy heart that I write these words. The BBC has been a huge wellspring of blues music for Florida; a place where some of the best in the business have hung their hats for an evening, delivering an experience of the most authentic down home blues that you will find anywhere. Evidenced by the portraits of blues players on the tabletops, its a virtual who’s who of the blues. The list is too long to even begin saying who has played the BBC. But it’s safe to say the best bluesicians had the best time ever, and that is when the magic happens. For 21 years Gary and Kim Anton have brought us that magic and good times, but now it’s time for them to kick back have more time for themselves. So here’s a tearful “Thank You!” to you both, and to all who helped make it happen. Come help us celebrate the Bradfordville Blues Club this Saturday. Act now for tickets. This one will sell out.
key west! Here I come.
I’m stoked to get back to the southernmost party in the USA. Hemingway’s Rum Company is hosting a Sauce Boss show on Sunday, February 26. Just two blocks from Sloppy Joe’s, it’s gonna be a rum fueled throwdown.
Swampside Studio News
Cookin in the Studio
While working on some of my new stuff, I have also wrapped the recording, mixing, and mastering of an album for Dick Kraft. I met Dick in the late 60s when he was a teacher in the Florida State University Art Department. At that time he was also heavily involved in the folk scene, accompanying a fledgling Rita Coolidge. Relocated to St. Augustine, Dick got into blowing artisan glass at his St George Street studio and playing at The Tradewinds, the Milltop, and other folk music venues. He became my neighbor when he moved back to Tallahassee, and now continues his music and painting. Like his painting, this album has an abstract, crystal clear, but gentle darkness that resonates in the twenty first century. An unpidgenholeable, indescribable, genre bending listen. Close as I can come to describe it is, “Jazzacana.”
Plantains
I am enjoying my first harvest of plantains now having gotten a cold hearty dwarf plantain pup last year. That’s a twelve foot dwarf, and it is tasty.
Plantains with Collards, Black Beans and Rice, slathered with Liquid Summer Hot Sauce
ORDER LIQUID SUMMER HERE
Benton’s Sugar Shack
2010 Route 175, Thornton, NH 03285 603-726-3867
While we are talkin about food, here’s the latest installment of “Foraging on the Highway”. The Bentons can tell it like it is, so here’s their story.
“The Benton Family has been making maple syrup for six generations. You might say it’s in our blood! When the sugar house was moved here from Millbrook Road, it began as a place to sell our syrup. With more traffic and visitors on the main road, we decided to turn the family farm into a ski touring center, and added a place where folks could sit and eat a small meal before skiing. We served hotdogs, hamburgers, chili, homemade soups, Ma’s famous baked beans, and the basic Pancake Platter.To keep up with the growing demand of loyal customers who were coming less to ski and more to eat, we added our dining room addition in 1999, and the rest is history!”
The Sugar Shack is known for the heartiest of breakfasts, and for their own hand made maple syrup. This family is a testament of hard working American ingenuity at it’s best. Thursday through Sunday, this family slings a slew of bacon and eggs, pancakes slathered with syrup and biscuits smothered in gravy, with a line out the door and round the corner. Once a year they shut the place down for a weekend and put on a HUGE wingding called the White Mountain Boogie and Blues Festival. I have played this festival twice and I can honestly say, “It’s one of the best times you’ll ever have with your pants on.”
Life Goes On
The curb at the Sheetz convenience store in Hermitage, Pennsylvania. Here’s a French Fry.
Namaste…
PS. I made you look