At 7:30 PM on Saturday, January 12, The Flying Monkey is excited to present an evening of Blues Rock with Johnny Winter and his blues band. Johnny is a perennial favorite in New England, known for his scorching live shows and constantly shifting between simple country blues in the vein of Robert Johnson, to all-out electric slide guitar blues-rock. Michael Vincent Band will open the evening. Tickets for this concert start at $33.50.
Johnny Winter burst on the blues scene like the Lone Ranger. He could play blues that had just the right touch of rock in it to appeal to both blues fans and rock fans – not an easy thing to do. But that’s always been Johnny Winter’s appeal, and if that don’t get you, his Texas blues will knock you cold.
Can you imagine playing with Muddy Waters? Much less recording an album with him? That’s exactly what Johnny Winter did: recorded the album Breakin’ It Up and Breakin’ It Down with Muddy Waters.
The clear link between British blues-rock and American Southern rock throughout the ’70s and ’80s, Winter was the unofficial torch-bearer for the blues, championing and aiding the careers of his idols like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. Winter and his younger brother Edgar had been playing on Texas radio since the mid-1950s and recording since 1960. Now, some 50 years later, the 67-year-old Winter is celebrating hard rock’s blues origins on Roots, which finds the bluesman performing a selection of songs that helped shape his talent and features such notable guests as Vince Gill, Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, and Susan Tedeschi.
The Texas guitar tradition runs deep. It’s a gutsy school of blues playing, marked by thick tones, aggressive attack, and tons of technique, all delivered in a flamboyant, swaggering style that is endemic to the Lone Star State. From T-Bone Walker and Clarence Gatemouth Brown on through Albert Collins and Freddie King, Billy Gibbons, and the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, the tradition of the Texas guitar slinger has lived on. The one name that ranks at the top of that exclusive list is Johnny Winter, an international ambassador for rocking Texas blues.
This is a great opportunity to see this superb bluesman in top form at the peak of his career in an intimate setting.
Tickets for the Johnny Winter concert are on sale now for $33.50, and $39.50 for Premier seats. For tickets and more information on concerts and the Flying Monkey Performance Center, visit FlyingMonkeyNH.com or call 536-2551.