KELLY JEAN CALDWELL
Recently named “Best Local Songwriter” by Real Detroit Weekly, former Saturday Looks Good To Me singer Kelly Jean Caldwell wears her heart on her sleeve onstage. KJC lives up to her RDW title– she truly is a brilliant songwriter and puts more emotion and boldness into each performance than most people could summon in a lifetime. Kelly is backed by some of the top fellas in Detroit, including her husband, Brian Blair, Kevin Sullivan, Terrible Twos’ Craig Brown, and Sugarcoats/Lee Marvin Computer Arm drummer Todd McNulty.
In true Michigan fashion, KJC was conceived in the upper peninsula on Halloween night, 1977, in the dugout of the Cooks Little League baseball field. Her father was costumed as a great black bear, and her mother as a sexy nurse. This wild scene securely set the stage for the rest of her northern childhood. Since moving down to southeastern Michigan after a brief stopover in Nashville, Tennessee, Kelly has sung with numerous local groups and is a well-known fixture on the metro Detroit rock club circuit.
Kelly’s 7″ on Top Magic marks her first solo release on vinyl, and Top Magic’s first foray into the mildly psychedelic side of music. The A-side is a real slow build-up rocker called “Outside Heart,” and the B-side is a heartfelt tune called “Diamonds.”
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Photo/artwork by Vince Mazzola.
ELIZABETH BUTTERS
Elizabeth Butters suffers from nostalgia & false sympathies with the past. These sentiments are evident in the presentation of her music. A purveyor of traditional American music, Elizabeth is a return to the real roots of folk with her dulcimer, pure vocal style & beguilingly simple guitar playing.
Elizabeth used to think she was born in the wrong era. Now she knows that she probably wouldn’t have fit in any time period. She identifies most strongly with the thirties, the highways and open roads, the dust bowl, and Bonnie & Clyde. The only things she prefers to be new have expiration dates.
In her own individual way, Elizabeth is crusading against the tide of modern conformity: the words “digital,” “cellular,” “upload,” “download,” “iPod” (does that one count as a word, she wonders?), and “texting,” among others, make her cringe, but yet she is here, present on the Internet at MySpace and Facebook. Why? Like most of us, she is not immune to hypocrisy.
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Photo by Emily Berger.
Elizabeth hopes that her sentiments are evident in the presentation of her music. She prefers to work with analog recording equipment, to pay for physical copies of her favorite artists’ work, and generally performs pre-war folk blues in dignified and authentic attire.
She is not only a purveyor of traditional American music; after years of solitary research, she was taken under the wing of erstwhile folk socialite and proprietress Betsy Siggins at age nineteen. With Betsy, Elizabeth has worked extensively on archival material relating to Boston’s old Club 47, a venue which she reveres passionately.
During her time at the Club, Elizabeth has had more than a few brushes with greatness. For instance, after his marvelous performance, Charlie Louvin walked by little E.B. and told her, “Gosh, yer cute!” More importantly, however, Elizabeth has had the honor of meeting many lesser-known luminaries of the early 1960s Cambridge Folk Revival. One of them is her regular coffee-buddy and close confidante: artist, manager, and promoter Byron Linardos.
An avid record collector, Elizabeth seeks out Folkways, Prestige, and early Electra recordings, but also enjoys greatly Garage rock. Her radio show no longer braves the airwaves, but if you’d like to hear her deejay live or have a question, drop her a line – elizabeth[dot]butters[at]gmail[dot]com.
Link to Elizabeth Butters’ Electronic Press Kit.
DOOLEY WILSON
Hailing from the unlikely environs of South Toledo, Ohio, Dooley Wilson is among a rare breed of latter-day purveyors of “hard” Mississippi/Louisiana – styled blues. With an approach that is steeped in the tradition of his forebears, Wilson offers a combination of bottleneck/slide guitar virtuosity with a renegade intensity that is more at home in a seedy rock club than at a typical “blues society” venue.
In the mid-nineties, Wilson co-fronted the indie-blues outfit, Henry & June, with whom he released the single, “Goin’ Back To Memphis.” The song has since been made famous by the White Stripes, who have included it in their live show since 1998. Henry & June reunited briefly in early 2010 for an immensely successful one-off show in their hometown of Toledo.
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Photo by Todd Albright.
In autumn of 2001, Wilson migrated to New Orleans, where he spent a formative year busking on the streets of the French Quarter, pitted amongst a peer group of today’s most formidable torch-bearers of traditional American Blues.
2003 saw Wilson back home in his native Toledo, where, as a soloist, he became a finalist in the 2004 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tennessee. He was the first-ever contestant from Toledo’s Black Swamp Blues Society to earn such a distinction.
Wilson has earned a modicum of international recognition touring Europe twice (2004 & 2005) as a support act for Detroit’s Soledad Brothers, and has been enthusiastically received by rock fans up and down the U.K., France, Spain, Portugal, and The Netherlands. In September 2005 Wilson returned to the U.K to play a co-headline tour alongside The High Plane Drifters.
Since returning from Europe, Wilson has performed in various capacities throughout the Midwest, including at the 2008 and 2009 Deep Blues Festivals. Wilson also fronts the popular blues/rock group Boogaloosa Prayer, as well as old-timey trio The Staving Chain, and has recently expanded his musical repertoire by joining Toledo-based hiphop group MC Habitat & Draw Blood.
Look for Wilson’s first full-length release out on Top Magic sometime this decade.