Amy Black and the Red Clay Rascal’s next show is on March 28 at the Bull Run Restaurant in Shirley, Mass. We should be safe from snow at that point. Of course, you never know in New England!

I’m fired up about this show. We are going to perform some new music (new to us at least). You can expect to hear many of the songs we’ve been performing including: Red Dirt Girl by Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt’s Love Me Like a Man and Angel from Montgomery, Move it On Over by Hank Williams, The Johnny Cash trio Big River, Folsom Prison and Walking the Blues.

Plus, you’ll hear newly added songs by Patty Loveless, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Susan Tedeschi, Alison Krauss & Robert Plant and more from Bonnie and Emmylou.

It’s going to be a great night of music. I can’t wait for it and I hope you will be there to enjoy! Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 at the door. You can buy yours by calling 877-536-7190. Visit the Bull Run website for more information.

If you haven’t checked out our YouTube channel, you can now. You’ll see several videos from the Bull Run performance in September and from our recent December performance at J.P. O’Hanlon’s.

Best wishes for a GREAT 2009!

Amy

If you’ve been to one of my shows, you’ve heard Fred Bement go to town on the harmonica. The guy can play! Well Fred recently connected me with a friend of his who was interested in collaborating. His name is Jeff Purchon. He’s the nicest guy and is an incredibly talented guitar player with some heavy duty experience under his belt. Here’s a little blurb from his resume…

Jeff moved to London to become professional guitarist at age 21. He toured with Noel Redding (ex Jimi Hendrix), Clive Bunker (Jethro Tull) and in his career has jammed / gigged with Robert Palmer, Ginger Baker, Buddy Miles, Steve Holly (Wings) and many others.

Jeff has recorded in major studios including Abbey Road, Sun Studios (London), De Lane Lea, Roundhouse, Trident, Air London etc. In the 80’s in the US he founded and toured with Memphis Train, a Boston-based blues band playing at the Crossroads music festival in Nashville, House of Blues and other prestigious gigs.

These days Jeff still jams in three continents with various bands depending where he is. At the last Austin NAMM show in 2007, Jeff played with Buddy Miles and Vernon Reid of Living Color.

Pretty impressive.

This past Thursday night I joined Jeff and four guys that he pulled together-Ron Pastore on bass, Glenn Watkins on keys, Stanley Swan on drums, and another guy (name escapes me) on the organ-and over an hour we worked on four songs. We headed over to the Acton Jazz Cafe’s blues jam and rocked the house.

One of the guys recorded a few of the songs and sent them around today. While the mix isn’t great (and I was struggling to hear myself in the monitor), you can get a good sense of how we sounded.

Here’s Love Me Like a Man written by Chris Smither…

I should have more recordings to share (from the practice soon). I will post them here as well.

I hope to do something with these guys again at some point and will let you know when I do!

I’ve been a bad blogger. I haven’t written since September 25. I do have some good excuses though. I just started a new job (I’m a marketer by day and some times by night too) and have been pretty focused on that. AND I’ve been waiting to get the audio from the Bull Run show so I can share it with you. I’m keeping the faith that I’m going to get it. Also, I’ve got some good video from the night, but am experiencing some technical difficulties. I will spare you the details.

Thanks to one of the people in the audience (Hans Nuecke from Germany) on the night of September 26, I do have some photos to share. I’m not looking my supermodel best : ), although I think Bob Sevigny might be. The photos did a great job of capturing the night. My personal favorite is of Jon Cumming (banjo and dobro). I love it so much, I’m putting it on the site. I’m sure Jon will love me for that.

I’m not giving up hope that I will have video and audio to post. Also, many have been asking me when we are playing again. I’m working on that and hope to have a few dates to pass on soon. In the meantime, I’m still doing some singing. Andy Sicard (bass and mando) pulled me into a bluegrass gig at a church in Medford, MA today and I got to sing with my sister Corrie–always a treat. Andy did promise us a complimentary BBQ dinner, but I ended up eating a burrito in Davis Square instead. Still yummy. : )

Oh, I didn’t mention that the Bull Run show on September 26 was great! It was a rainy night and the first of the presidential debates was on. We still had 110 people out. If you were one of them, thanks so much for coming.

Stay tuned for show dates (video and audio).

Amy

Andy Sicard did it again. Andy’s the bass and mandolin player for the Red Clay Rascals, but he’s also the creator of this website and now the creator of these nifty banners for the upcoming show. If you want to take one and put in on your Facebook, MySpace or elsewhere, please feel free. I’ll take all the help I can get. The links to the images are below. Please link the image to www.amyblacklive.com. Thank you! Amy

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Today’s adventure started with a need. I needed a new promotional photo for the papers for the upcoming show on September 26 at the Bull Run. My husband, Ryan, and I headed down to a super cool abandoned building not far from our house.

We live in the small New England town of Groton and more specifically West Groton. Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE Groton. It’s a very quaint little town with many old, well-preserved buildings and very little flash. Also, it has beautiful public places (Groton Place) and wide open spaces. Yep, I’m a country girl at heart. : )

When we got down to the building we realized that the little shop on the corner–Clover Farm Market an adorable little market that was recently purchased and refurbished–was having a big outdoor party complete with music. We took the photos (the best posted here) and then headed home. But I wasn’t done with the Clover Farm Market!

I’ve been looking for opportunities to promote my show and it hit me that the store’s all day music fest was just that. The people there like music and they live close to the Bull Run…perfecto!! So, I got a stack of my small flyers and headed back down. I’m friends with the owner and checked in to see if I could talk with folks. The answer was yes–so I had some excellent conversations with music lovers and found some who wanted to go to my show.

A bit later, blues guitarist Ronnie Earl (we got a lot of cool folks living in Groton) got up to play a few songs. Man, I love the slide guitar. He drew a good size crowd of attentive listeners. When Ronnie was done tearing it up and the next band was ready to set up, I asked one of the owners if I could sing a song and invite people to come to my show in two weeks. He handed me the mic. : )

I sang one of my favorite songs sans guitar–Shadow of Doubt sung by Bonnie Raitt (click the player below to hear my version) and then invited people to the show. The response was a good one. And the best part was Ronnie. He came up to meet me, shook my hand and said, “You are going to do very well.” That meant a lot coming from him. I hope he’s right. : )

Long story, long, I’m on a mission to spread the word about my biggest show yet in hopes that we have at least 200 people in attendence. And some times spreading the word also means singing it!