Category Archive for: "Uncategorized"

We know this is the biggest travel season of the year – and so, in the spirit of the season we continue with our series of posts reminiscing about our 20 year history of traveling to gigs [...]

  I came in the office one morning to find a very interesting drawing on my desk; it was scrawled on a piece of legal lined paper. An isosceles triangle encased in an egg-shaped oval; atop [...]

It’s the holidays, and we know that will mean a lot of traveling for many of our supporters. We’d love to revisit some of our favorite stories of traveling with artists in the spirit [...]

In 1991, Guitar Gabriel and I were playing at a public radio station where we performed in front of a live audience. After the show, an old black man dressed completely in dot-painted clothing [...]

In 1991, I was down in Mississippi visiting my friend David Nelson, who was at the time the editor of Living Blues Magazine. He introduced me to a German postal worker named Axel Küstner. Axel [...]

As we approach Captain Luke’s 86th birthday, I was thinking about the first time I ever encountered him, or Music Maker. I used to work at a music store in Durham, NC. The store was flanked [...]

Denise has catered parties large and small (and huge) throughout Music Maker’s history. Feeding musicians has been a large part of recording sessions, gigs, and gatherings for the past 20 [...]

This past week Aaron and I went to speak to the Raleigh Charter High School’s SOOTS (Sustaining Roots Music Community Project) program. The group was founded by teacher Charles Montague in 2006 [...]

Did you miss part one of our Celebrate with the Blues series? Check it out here! Menu Notes For menu items I am not providing recipes for, but you want to prepare and not purchase, I recommend [...]

Nobody loved a holiday more than Guitar Gabriel. He loved to put on his suit and go out on the town or party hopping for 4th of July, Memorial Day, or MLK Day. Gabe thought that even minor [...]

When a Music Maker Partner artist passes away, folks always ask me, how many artists do we still have with us and is this the end of Music Maker? This is exactly why I started the Music Maker [...]

Two weeks ago, Captain Luke came down to Music Maker with his daughter Theresa for a tintype photo shoot. It was a chilly rainy day, so we set up the shoot inside the studio. As head chemist, [...]

It’s hard to believe we’re heading into the Holiday season (wasn’t it just summer?) This is the time of year when I’m able to slow down a little and reflect on what Music Maker does for our [...]

Years ago, Adolphus Bell, the Worlds Greatest One Man Band, drove up from Birmingham, Alabama to do a recording session with us. While here he delivered a cassette and promo photo of Dr. GB Burt, [...]

Over the weekend, Music Maker artist Cary Morin visited us at the Music Maker Grotto to have Aaron and I do a Tin Type session with him. We were fortunate to have interns Swathi and Thomas on [...]

Last month T-Bone Burnett called up Rhiannon Giddens and asked her to be part of a special concert at The Town Hall in NYC to be filmed by Joel and Ethan Coen that will be aired on Showtime in [...]

While in the grocery store the other day, my husband and I had an encounter that wasn’t extraordinary, but to me further solidified the impact Music Maker has on our artists and on the outside [...]

It’s been a busy month for us here at Music Maker – then again, any given month is a busy month. A couple of weeks ago, we were pleased to hold an extremely successful benefit show at The [...]

I was driving home from work the other day and was feeling a bit worn out by the CD that’s been sitting in my car’s CD player for the last two months, so I did the unthinkable: I [...]

I was just having a conversation with our intern, Margot, about our weekly Diggin’. (Margot, it should be said, is so devoted to MMRF that despite having ended her internship in June, she still [...]

The last piece from our collaboration with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University is an audio snippet captured by the students who worked with Mississippi blues man Ben Payton, who [...]

Most of the material that came out of the class with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University was video, true, but we also got some insightful photos, snippets of audio and art [...]

We’ve got another one of the side-project pieces from the class at the Center for Documentary Studies. This one is a snapshot of Ironing Board Sam during his interview; Ironing Board Sam [...]

Musicians need instruments. Without them, they cannot fully realize their potential. It’s pretty straightforward. Sadly, the poverty that many Music Maker artists live in, does not afford them [...]

A part of the learning process when picking up a camera is when you get surprisingly beautiful, unexpected shots. It seemed like a consensus among the other CDS students and MMRF staff when we [...]

One thing that I can say I did not learn until I came to Music Maker – there is nothing like planning a concert series outdoors. Attending them, well, I’d done my fair share before joining the [...]

Aaron Greenhood and I have been working hard on photo shoots of Music Maker artists for the last couple of years. Lately, we have been learning and practicing the art of wet plate photography. [...]

If you step into the Music Maker office on any given day, it’s usually abuzz with a million different things: phone calls for Aaron from artists or agents looking to book artists, meetings [...]

There are many remarkable things about Music Maker artist Captain Luke, but the most identifiable – and usually the first you notice – is his deep bass singing voice. It rumbles in tracks like [...]

The first time that I saw Lakota John play was at the Fall edition of Shakori Hills, a local music festival that’s held out in the middle of nowhere, North Carolina. He was on stage in a [...]

Last week we said bon voyage to our two French interns, Raphaël and Simon, who have been with us since last October.  As they head back to France and University, they carry with them the many [...]

Long time friend, Music Maker supporter and ace photographer Mark Austin says, “its really pretty simple,” before he proceeds to blow our minds. It’s Saturday morning or a Wednesday afternoon and [...]

Ms. Pudding’s drink house is a neighborhood gathering space where people go to meet friends, have a drink and a fried bologna sandwich. The last time I was there, the Avon lady stopped by and my [...]

Part of the privilege of working with our artists is the opportunity to broker relationships with venues that help them establish a regular and reliable source of income. For Ironing Board Sam, [...]

The first time that I met Captain Luke, we were getting ready to sit in a car together for the 6-hour haul up to Washington, DC. I had this idea of him that was heavily influenced by the [...]

Following last week’s group project about Ironing Board Sam, we’ve got a shorter piece cut together by just one of the students about music in Sam’s life. This video is a small [...]

A couple of weeks ago, Ironing Board Sam took to the stage with a bevy of elementary school students backing him up on ukeleles, glockenspiels and with their voices; a middle school jazz band was [...]

“First time that I played washboard, I just won’t forget this…I was on stage had my thimbles on and two thimbles just popped off and just went out and that was just the funniest thing and I just [...]

For the past five months, Music Maker has partnered with Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies for a class in Multimedia Documentary. We mentioned the class in a previous blog [...]

It has been just over a month since the Music Maker Blues Revue returned from Australia. The full experience is finally carving itself down to a cohesive memory. As a primer, the Music Maker [...]

Since Aaron, our Artist Services Coordinator, works directly with the artists we serve, my role means I most often don’t work with the artists as directly. I mainly work with supporters, and [...]

One hot summer day, I was on the porch of Ezelle’s drink house with Captain Luke listening to his wild stories about Guitar Gabriel. He trailed off of one particularly interesting tale, despite [...]

My brother Dan brought home each American Splendor comic book as Harvey Pekar published them when I was growing up.  Harvey Pekar was a jazz critic, an original bebop fan, who wrote an annual [...]

One of the great boons to being located in the Triangle region of North Carolina is the thriving cultural scene: museums, music and film abound, and this atmosphere naturally lends itself to the [...]

  *At Music Maker, our hearts and thoughts are with all those affected by the tragedy in Boston yesterday. We think this poem from artist Ironing Board Sam is particularly appropriate right [...]

[nggallery id=2] Dr. Burt flew up north this past weekend to perform with the Carolina Chocolate Drops and give a lecture at Dartmouth College. What Dom Flemons had to say in the program’s [...]

It seemed to me that everyone in the neighborhood would come by Ezelle’s drink house in Winston-Salem, when I was living nearby in the early ‘90s. You would see white tobacco growers from Stokes [...]

This March, Tim and our interns from France, Simon and Raphael, headed on a trip to Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans, Lafayette and Middlesex, NC to visit with artists. They visited with Eddie [...]

In case you hadn’t heard, we were incredibly fortunate to line up an incredible touring gig for some of our artists in Australia. Bluesfest Byron Bay brought the  Music Maker Relief [...]

The Blues has been and always will be storytelling at its core. Originally in intimate home settings with family and friends, the players chose music as their vehicle to express guitar-laden [...]

Music Maker began working with a then-twelve year old guitar prodigy, Lakota John Locklear, in 2010. We’re committed to working with younger artists as time allows – we feel that young artists [...]

Essie Mae Brooks from Perry, Georgia has been singing and writing gospel songs since she was a girl. So, she’s kind of an expert. Her songs are meditations on getting through hard times, facing [...]

I just had a big birthday. When I reached 40, I was irked, because I felt the compulsion to accept certain realities about my life and where it might not go in the future.  Having not won an [...]

Nobody works as hard as a Bluesman, and if you’ve ever been at a bar where Ironing Board Sam is performing, you believe it. An energetic stage show is almost always followed by mingling with the [...]

Traveling with artists to shows is an essential, especially when your goal is to bring Roots music to audiences around the country and the world. Along the way I have often faced challenges [...]

“You listen to my CD in your ear, wear my tee shirt on your chest, and you’ll feel good about yourself in the morning.” This was Guitar Gabriel’s mantra between tunes at every one of the hundred [...]

Soul food and Roots music share a common birthplace among the poor, rural communities in the American South. As I recently read on NPR.com, “…soul food was survival food in the black [...]

Working at Music Maker invites death and mortality into your life. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, sad yes. But death is a condition that no living person can escape. That’s life. When you get [...]

In a society where the healthcare industry is a booming business and Americans are increasingly concerned with the upkeep of their bodies, some organs still get downright overlooked and [...]

It was an unseasonably warm day in mid-January when Jeff Littlejohn came out to Hillsborough to record a few songs to send to our musical director, Ardie Dean. He parked himself in our small [...]

Ironing Board Sam has bad luck with cars – but somehow always manages to coax out every mile they can give him. The day he moved to North Carolina a few years ago, his old van broke down just a [...]

Welcome to our blog, the Music Maker Signifier, and Happy Fat Tuesday! On this day of cultural celebration, we would like to introduce you to the newest endeavor from Music Maker Relief [...]