Uncle Sam Jam Celebrates Troy’s musical heritage Labor Day Sunday

Troy:
Hugh Pool, one of The Big Apple’s hottest blues rockers, headlines The Uncle Sam Jam Sunday, September 2nd from noon to 8 p.m. in Troy’s Riverfront Park. The Uncle Sam Jam presented by Mayor Harry Tutunjian and the Troy City Council features eight hours of music free to the public. Included on the bill are Northeast Blues Society Colossal Contenders winning band Tas Cru & The Slow Happy Boys, rockabilly favorites Rock Velvet, veteran soul and funk band The Foy Brothers, the rocking Outta Hand Band, young rockers featured on The CBS Morning Show Stuck on Stupid, and teen country sensation Renee Lussier & Branchwater.

Uncle Sam Jam sponsors include The Northeast Blues Society, Whitney Young Health Center, Hannaford Supermarkets, Wellcare, and www.powermusica.com. The schedule subject to change is:

Hugh Pool Trio
Contact Hugh Pool 718-383-4866 (h), 347-351-3990 (c) hugh@hughpool.com
Hugh Pool returns to the Capital Region to headline the Uncle Sam Jam after having headlined last year’s Lake George Blues Festival and closing out The Electric City Blues Fest in July. He has never signed a record contract and has never entered into any management deals, but he’s survived 20 years in the New York music scene, playing what he calls “jacked-up Delta blues and Rust Belt roots rock.” He’s released several albums including Live at The Rodeo Bar. Blues Revue raved, “Before there was grunge, there was Howlin’ Wolf. Now there’s the Hugh Pool Band. This power trio takes no prisoners.”

The Village Voice has said, “You can’t swing a cat in this city without hitting Hugh Pool,” and indeed his encounters with musicians who have defined the various genres of American music from folk to blues, hard rock to metal are fables that are the modern equal to Grimm’s fairy tales.

He opened for Johnny Winter on the nights Winter cut his legendary “Live in NYC ’97” CD at the Bottom Line. He once told folk icon Dave Van Ronk that he was the reason he played finger style. Van Ronk slapped him on the back and told him, “Sorry, kid.” He played the 1991 Greenwich Village Folk Concert on 30 seconds’ notice with a broken string and still ended up on “The Best of the Greenwich Village Folk Festival” album with his “I’ll Make A Deal with You.” As a 20-year-old sound man for The Speakeasy in Greenwich Village, he found himself running down Bleecker St. begging for a better amp for Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist Hubert Sumlin and walked out of Kenny’s Castaways with a twin reverb.

It’s like caffeine-free coffee or nonalcoholic beer. It’s the taste without the kick. Hugh Pool kicks you so hard it almost – almost – stops your St. Vitus dance that’s virtually uncontrollable, but he does it with a smile. He’s a high without the hangover, safe sex in a world that’s made the very term an oxymoron. Hugh Pool is the real deal.”

Tas Cru and The Slow Happy Boys
Contact: Rick Bates 315-267-2536 (o) 315-244-1468 (c) bates@potsdam.edu
Contact: Jeremy Walz 737-1627 (c) badstudnt77@yahoo.com
www.tascru.com

Tas Cru’s song “Black and Poor in New Orleans” is being aired along with New Orleans flood songs by Irma Thomas, Mem Shannon and Tab Benoit on XM Satellite Radio’s Bluesville 74 in a special Second Anniversary Katrina Remembrance airing Labor Day weekend. The song is taken from the album “Biscuit,” a solo album that was called “a keeper” by Blues Revue magazine and is currently enjoying airplay on XM Satellite Radio’s Bluesville. The Slow Happy Boys are the hottest blues band currently playing in Capitaland. The house band for the Northeast Blues Society’s Sunday night open jams at Cheers Roadhouse Grille, Fuller Road in Colonie, they combined with Tas Cru to win this year’s Colossal Contenders Contest and will represent The Society in the International Blues Challenge in Memphis next February. Led by jam coordinator Jeremy Walz, The Slow Happy Boys have opened and/or played with such blues luminaries as Sleepy LaBeef, The Nighthawks, Studebaker John, James Sohlberg and Danny Kalb.

For more information call Don Wilcock 518-347-1751

The groups performing:
Rocky Velvet
Contact: Graham Tichy 441-0298 (cell), 273-0101 (home)
www.grahamtichy.com
www.rockyvelvet.com
www.myspace.com/grahamtichy
www.myspace.com/rockyvelvet

“ It Came from Cropseyville,” the band’s first CD in 11 years of existence, this year established Rocky Velvet as the area’s premier rockabilly band. Formed as a teenager by Graham Tichy, son of Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen’s original guitarist and RPI professor John Tichy, Rocky Velvet has opened for such veteran icons of the genre as Link Wray, Sleepy LaBeef and Los Straitjackets. Tichy himself has an international reputation as a leading guitarist in the field backing such rockabilly veterans as Wanda Jackson and Robert Gordon. Commander Cody himself has been quoted in the “San Francisco Chronicle” as saying, “(Graham) is Tichy’s kid, and he plays like James Burton used to play with Elvis in the ’60s.”

The Foy Brothers
Contact: Joe Pennisi 438-8827 (home), 447-7040 (work), 221-8827 (cell)
Ten years together, this soulful blues, funk and jazz band has built a solid reputation around brothers Kevin and Mark Foy’s vocals and drum sound respectively. The 2001 winners of the Northeast Blues Society Colossal Contenders contest, they represented the Capital Region in The Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge in Memphis. They are about to release their second album “Time,” recorded at Arabellum Studios.

Outta Hand Band
Contact: Joe Montepare 337-7695
www.theouttahandband.com
With more than 160 gigs a year, The Outta Hand Band calls itself the hardest working band in Capitaland. Led by drummer and lead vocalist Joe Montepare Jr, who started his career at 15 working in his dad’s band the Joe Montepare Trio, the group plays everything from rock to swing. Lead vocalist, keyboardist and guitarist Frank Esposito is the former lead singer and keyboardist for the Howard Stern Show band Pig Vomit. Chip McKibben on bass has played in several area pit orchestras and newest member guitarist Mike Termante has studied with John Abercrombie and attended Berklee School of Music. He’s past member of The Out of Control Rhythm & Blues Band and Larry Lewis & Solid Smoke.

Stuck on Stupid
Contact: Tony Dimauro 857-5076 (cell)
www.myspace.com/stuckonstupidrock
www.stuckonstupid.150m.com
Lead singer and guitarist Dom Brino, bass player Adam Albright and drummer Garrett Dimouro have already tasted fame as young teenagers. Stuck on Stupid’s video was picked as one of the top three presented nationally on The CBS Early Show. They’ve been profiled locally in the daily press and their rockin’ blues covers and originals have made them favorites at the Northeast Blues Society open jams.

Renee Lussier ^ Bracnhwater
Contact: Sherri (Mom) 861-8179 (office) 861-8794 (home), altamontenterprise@csdsl.net
At age 15, this country singer has already won awards and has had her original song “Somewhere in Love” recorded by Jim Staats of Mirinda fame for the compilation CD “Angels of The Heart.” At age two she was singing scales backwards and forwards. By 10, Renee had written a song that won a plaque for excellence in music at the New York State level of the National PTA Arts competition. Earlier this year, she became a “Berkshire Idol,” taking first place in the youth division of this prestigious contest over hundreds of competitors. She will perform classic and contemporary country hits backed by BranchWater, a band of area country music veterans including her father, Rich Luccier.