Saturday May 31, 2008
5:00pm to 9:30pm

Buddy Guy is a five-time Grammy Award-winning American blues and rock guitarist and singer. He's a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a chief guitar influence to rock titans like Hendrix, Clapton, Beck and Vaughan, a pioneer of Chicago's fabled West Side sound, and a living link to that city's halcyon days of electric blues.

Buddy was all of seven years old, he recalls, when he fashioned his first makeshift "guitar" - a two-string contraption attached to a piece of wood and secured with his mother's hairpins. It would be nearly another, decade, however, before Buddy would own an actual guitar - a Harmony acoustic that now proudly sits on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

Internationally acclaimed, Guy has firmly cemented a blues legacy that places him squarely in the company of his heroes who came before. "This all reminds me of something my mother used to tell me," Guy says of his current-day status as a music icon. "She said, 'If you got the flowers for me, son, give 'em to me now so I can smell 'em, 'cause I'm not gonna smell 'em when you put 'em on the casket.'

"I'm gettin' to smell a few now."

With an almost non-stop performance schedule for the last 36 years, Roomful of Blues has earned critical, popular and radio success and a legion of fans around the globe. Since 1967, the band's deeply rooted, horn-driven blend of swing, rock 'n' roll, jump, blues and soul has earned it five Grammy Award nominations and a slew of other accolades.

Twice, the prestigious DownBeat International Critics Poll selected Roomful of Blues as Best Blues Band. USA Today says Roomful of Blues plays "marvelous wall-to-wall grooves" between the wicked guitar work and the brassy horn section, things never stop swinging." With their masterful combination of jumping, hard-edged blues and R&B, it's no wonder why the great Count Basie called them "the hottest blues band I've ever heard." DownBeat said the band is "in a class by itself." Without a doubt, Roomful of Blues is all this and more.

The Sonny Moorman Group is a Cincinnati based Blues/Rock band consisting of Sonny Moorman - guitar & vocals, Marc Hoffman - bass, and Dave Fair- drums & vocals. Sonny and the band are nine-time winners of CAMMY awards (Cincinnati Area Music awards sponsored by the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper). The band was formed in 1994 and was signed to its first recording deal by 706 Records/Sun Studio at the 1994 Crossroads in Memphis. Since then the band has played 300 nights a year and has performed at regional festivals and clubs and toured the US with Easyriders Magazine, performing at all their events.