Earwig Artists

Mark Wydra, who has performed professionally since 1973, plays and teaches all styles of guitar (classic rock, jazz, blues, country) with a heavy emphasis on Chicago blues/jazz. Mark has played with many of Chicago’s top blues talents, including Eddy Clearwater, Bob Riedy Blues Band, Sam Lay, and Cary Bell.

As with many blues performers of his generation, Skoller has been influenced as much by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix and the Allman Brothers as by the legends of blues. Skoller’s take on the blues tradition is about letting his own voice come through — his culture, his experience.

Trinidad-American Harmonica Hinds has worked as a blues musician for more than five decades. He remains active on the Chicago blues scene with his own shows and often performs with Eddie Taylor. He continues to play a regular gig at Buddy Guy’s Legends, and has performed at many of the Chicago Blues Festivals.

Michael Dotson is a Chicago bluesman, singer songwriter and guitarist. After 10 years of fronting his own bands he has joined forces with Mississippi Heat. He has two CD releases …. the 2006 Lightnin’ in My Pocket, and 2010’s A Fork in the Road. About the new collaboration Michael says, “This band is a good fit for me, they do... Read more

Earwig Music owner and producer Michael Frank took up the harmonica and blues record collecting during his junior high school years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After his college graduation he moved to Chicago to do social work in child welfare. He also had a goal to meet as many blues musicians as he could.

Not until 1979, at a prestigious Carnegie Hall concert in New York, did all five of these venerable bluesmen from Memphis and the Mississippi Delta play together on the same stage, and it was 1980 before the quintet recorded as a unit. This recording session and the Carnegie Hall concert were the only times these musicians played as a quintet.

Guitarist Paul Kaye has been on stage most of his life playing the blues. He’s played with Honeyboy Edwards, Buddy Guy, Harmonica Hines, Eric Noden, Brother Larry Cox, Orlando Wright from the Buddy Guy band, Sam Lay, and Devil in the Woodpile. He teaches at Old Town school of Folk Music in Chicago and Hogeye Records in Evanston, among others.

Payson Lyon’s songs speak volumes beyond the words and music. Long Day’s Journey Into Light is a more than apt title, as this debut album has truly been a long time coming. Although he’s been writing songs and playing music for over 50 years, the opportunity for everything to crystallize into a record didn’t occur until very recently.

Pianist and singer Phil Baron is a Chicago-born master of rock, blues, Delta swing and boogie-woogie piano.

“Most white folk these days be playing “the blues music” (you know, the hackneyed, soulless, tourist-blues with the wailing guitar solos and the watered-down Cream approach that appeals to all them rusting old hippies with their neatly trimmed pony tails and faded Canned Heat @ Monterey Pop T’s.) Rick plays blues. He also plays country. Ragtime. Hot Jazz. Hillbilly. It’s... Read more

A live performance by The C-Notes can transport the listener back to the heyday of Chicago blues. Fronted by harmonica-playing vocalist Rob Stone, the group comprises four seasoned professionals with well over a half-century of combined blues playing experience. They’ve paid their dues in the smoky Chicago blues joints and toured coast to coast across North America and Europe, as... Read more

Robert Lockwood, Jr., learned his blues firsthand from an unimpeachable source: the immortal Robert Johnson. Lockwood was capable of conjuring up the bone-chilling Johnson sound whenever he desired, but he was never one to linger in the past for long — which accounts for the jazzy swing he often brought to the licks he played on his 12-string electric guitar.

Bob Stroger (born December 27, 1930) is an American electric blues bass guitarist, singer and songwriter. He has worked with many blues musicians, including Eddie King, Otis Rush, Jimmy Rogers, Eddie Taylor, Eddy Clearwater, Sunnyland Slim, Louisiana Red, Buster Benton, Homesick James, Mississippi Heat, Snooky Pryor, Odie Payne, Fred Below, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, and Billy Davenport.

As far as Rusty Ends is concerned, constructing barriers between various roots music genres is an exercise in futility. The Louisville-based singer/guitarist has no compunctions about seamlessly blending those idioms into his own distinctive sound, which he’s been honing to a razor’s edge for well over half a century now. It’s been a long musical odyssey for Rusty, one that’s... Read more

March 20, 1935 – January 29, 2022

Strictly judging from the lyrical sentiment of his recordings to this point, it might be wise not to make Chicago guitarist Byther Smith angry. Smitty’s uncompromising songs are filled with threats of violence and ominous menace (the way blues used to be before the age of political correctness), sometimes to the point where... Read more

During the 1970s, Scott’s home town of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a hotbed of musical talent. Eric Clapton and Freddie King’s bands were based in Tulsa, as was Leon Russell’s Shelter Records. Influenced and electrified by the British Invasion bands, moved by the sounds of Motown, and touched by the soulfulness of the Rhythm and Blues music coming out of Memphis,... Read more