The Blues comes to Fairfield University's Quick Center for the Arts with Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady of Hot Tuna, blues icon Charlie Musselwhite and two-time Grammy® winner Jim Lauderdale, Friday, February 4 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $40, $35, $30 for this Arts & Minds presentation.

Kaukonen and Casady have consistently led American music over the fifty years they have played together. The duo created much of The Jefferson Airplane's signature sound in the mid 1960s through Kaukonen's lead and fingerstyle guitar playing and Casady's bass style that took the instrument far beyond its traditional role. The two eventually formed Hot Tuna and over the next three and a half decades their band would perform thousands of concerts and release more than two dozen records.

Musselwhite, a native Mississippian, grew up surrounded by blues, hillbilly and gospel music on the radio and outside his front door. His fascination of the blues led him to play guitar and harmonica, but as a poor white boy in Memphis, he felt like an outcast and a stranger, themes that have informed, inspired and haunted his music to this day. Over the last 43 years, Musselwhite has released over 30 albums including 2006's critically praised "Delta Hardware." His latest album, "The Well," was nominated for a Grammy® for Best Traditional Blues Album. It is steeped in the music of Musselwhite's youth - country and city blues as well as rockabilly and gospel - the music that inspired his signature sound. As the San Francisco Chronicle says, "Charlie Musselwhite's harmonica playing shows taste, bite, restraint and power. He's one of the best, and as a bluesman, he's as real as they come."

Lauderdale, a multi-talented performer and songwriter with successes in both country and bluegrass music, has written songs for artists from The Dixie Chicks to John Mayall and he has toured with Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams and many others.

His musical influences include the legendary Dr. Ralph Stanley and George Jones and throughout the years, he has embraced his own unique sense of melody and lyric to forge a sound that is truly his own. He won his first Grammy® in 2002 with Stanley for "Lost in the Lonesome Pines" (Dualtone) and his second as a solo bluegrass album, "The Bluegrass Diaries" (Yep Roc. 2007) at the 50th Grammy Awards.

Lauderdale is featured in the new Gwyneth Paltrow film "Country Strong" as a member of her band and he performed with her as bandleader on rhythm guitar at the 2010 Country Music Awards broadcast on ABC last November. His 2009 release, "Could We Get Any Closer" is a 2010 Grammy® nominee for Best Bluegrass Album. He was honored with the Inspiration Award at the SESAC 2010 Nashville Music Awards in November 2010. The award recognizes "his timeless and genre-defying music which has resulted in collaborations with a diverse group of artists including Elvis Costello, Ralph Stanley and Willie Nelson among many others" according to SESAC, the performing rights organization founded in 1930.

Tickets are available at fairfield.edu/quick or by calling the Box Office at (203) 254-4010. The toll free number is 1-877-ARTS-396. Special offers and discounts are available through the Quick Center's e-mail list. Join, by contacting boxoffice@quickcenter.com . Become a fan of the Quick Center for the Arts on Facebook and keep up-to-date with the latest performance news, plus special offers and discounts. Find the Quick Center at www.facebook.com/FairfieldQuickCenter.

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Directions: Fairfield University is located off I-95, exit 22 at 1073 North Benson Road, Fairfield, CT 06824. Access to the Quick Center for the Arts is through the Barlow Road gate at 200 Barlow Road. Special Note: From Oct. 4, 2010 through June 30, 2012, the southern end of North Benson Road (Rt. 135) will be closed to traffic on nights and weekends. Round Hill Road intersects with Barlow and provides access to the Quick Center for the Arts.

Posted On: 01-20-2011 10:01 AM

Volume: 43 Number: 170