-Last year, the young Grammy-nominated Georgia blues singer/guitarist Jontavious Willis played a concert at the Stone Church in Brattleboro.
This year, blues singers Corey Harris and Sunny Lowdown gave a concert at Next Stage Arts in Putney.
For multiple years, there has been a blues component to the Discover Jazz Festival in Burlington.
What these shows and others have had in common is that they were co-sponsored by the Vermont Blues Society (VBS), a recognized tax-exempt non-profit that is dedicated to spreading blues and blues education in Vermont.
The Vermont Blues Society was created in 2018 by Dennis and Marion Wilmott, Sandy Combs, and Charlie Frazier from the Burlington area.
Other states had their own blues societies, but Vermont did not. The goal was to increase awareness of the blues in Vermont — the various blues jams that were taking place, the Vermont musicians who play blues, the Vermont radio shows and other media that focus on blues.
VBS created a website (vermontbluessociety.org) with a blues events calendar and profiles of blues musicians and bands in Vermont. They also began to sponsor an annual local competition for bands and artists who wanted to participate in the national Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge (IBC) in Memphis, an annual competition that attracts blues musicians from all over the world.
Local competitions in each state determine who will be sent to the IBC each year, and two musicians from the Brattleboro area, Sunny Lowdown and Jesse Lepkoff, won the local competitions in two different years.
The current board chair of VBS is Bob Stannard, a former member of the Vermont Legislature and a blues musician himself.
When asked about VBS’s mission, he said that “I’ve spent all my adult life listening to and playing blues music, a music that was born out of great pain and suffering and played by people I greatly respect. It is the best music ever made. The Vermont Blues Society exists to help keep this music alive and well.”
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The Blues Society is expanding its mission to include more blues education and more concert co-sponsorships. It has also built a blues history section on its website.
Some members have been reaching out to schools to present live music and blues history sessions. The first of these was held at the Manchester Community Library, and was a big success. It was livestreamed and archived on Greater Northshire Access Television (GNAT), the community public-access television station there.
On Saturday, June 20, starting at 2 p.m., the Vermont Blues Society will hold its first-ever blues picnic, concert, and jam session fundraiser at the Manchester Community Library (138 Cemetery Ave, Manchester Center). It is an opportunity for Vermont blues fans and musicians to get together, jam, and celebrate the music.
The concert lineup includes Stannard’s band as the house band, backing Blues Music Award winner and Grammy nominee Anthony Geraci, blues singer Gina Coleman, blues pianist John Fusco (who also wrote the screenplay for the film Crossroads), and other special guests.
Blues Blast Music Award nominee Sunny Lowdown will open the show with a solo blues performance.
The blues picnic is free to the public, with donations encouraged, and musicians should bring their instruments for the jam session.
Also coming up: On Saturday, July 25, VBS will cosponsor harmonica virtuoso Howard Levy at Next Stage in Putney. For more information, visit vermontbluessociety.org.
louis erlanger (aka Sunny Lowdown) lives in Brattleboro and is a blues musician and member of the Vermont Blues Society. The Commons’ Deeper Dive column gives artists, arts organizations, and other nonprofits elbow room to write in first person and be unabashedly opinionated, passionate, and analytical about their own creative work and events.
This Arts column was submitted to The Commons.