May 2nd, 2008

MAY BRINGS THE BMAs! We are psyched about heading south for the Blues Music Awards in Tunica, Mississippi in early May. It is a thrill to have TEAR CHICAGO DOWN nominated for "Best Contemporary Blues Album." And the event spawns all this great side activity. We are going to be on WCIA-TV, CBS for Central Illinois on Friday, May 2nd, playing, to draw attention to the nomination. We are going to have a great send-off show at Memphis on Main in downtown Champaign on Tuesday, May 6th-- come on out if you are anywhere near! Saturday after the awards, we are playing at The Blue Levee in Rosedale, Mississippi-- second only to the un-named "crossroads" in blues lore and legend, the Rosedale of "Lord, I'm goin' to Rosedale, gon' take my rider by my side" from the immortal "Travellin' Riverside Blues."

HUGE weekday shows at Stevie Ray's in Louisville and at Buddy Guy's Legends in Chicago in May! This show at Buddy's will be our first time "headlining" at this incredible place where the blues ring from every molecule of the joint.

COME ON OUT TO SILVER CREEK! Friday, May 23rd we are going to do a special event at Silver Creek in Urbana, Illinois. We play an early happy hour type of set at five, there is some time for dinner, and then we come back to play two more sets from seven to ten. Silver Creek is fine dining, and they are going to do their take on bbq for the night-- we are thinking this is going to be amazing, and you would be really missing something to miss it.

MORE BIG SUMMER EVENTS! Since last we updated here we have added three new summer events-- in Urbana the Blues, Brews, and BBQ event on Saturday June 28th (also on the bill Bernard Allison, Lonnie Brooks, and at least one other act), the Ft. Wayne Botanical Roots Concert Series on Friday August 29th, and tentatively the Beloit Folk and Blues Festival on Friday September 5th. Don't forget the first of our summer festivals-- the BBQ, Blues, and Cruise in Taylorville Illinois on Saturday May 31st.

WE ARE POSTING a May schedule, but thinking there are one to three more shows out there this month, so check back or follow our Myspace page calendar!

WON OUR THIRD STRAIGHT C-U MUSIC AWARD Thursday, April 3rd, there was a big show at The High Dive in Champaign, where they gave out the Fourth Annual Champaign-Urbana Music Awards. Everybody's got to be from somewhere, and we are from this amazing "Big Ten" university town, home of the main campus of the University of Illinois. Certain things get done world class in our home town, and there is not a lot of wild applause for mediocrity around here. So, youth culture mecca that it is, we've got a thriving, and sometimes wonderful and even important music scene. The "important" part of the equation is fragile, but you get the idea. These awards are sponsored by radio WPGU-FM and Buzz-- which is the arts & entertainment weekly of the Daily Illini. So we won best Jazz/Blues band in 2006 and again in 2007, but it all seemed a little off because almost all the other nominees were jazz groups. This year the category was just "Blues," and the nominees were our good friends, the guys who lent us many a hand in starting out, in some ways our respected "elders" (notice we put that in quotes so nobody can say we said they are old) and admired good examples-- Candy Foster and the Shades of Blue Band, Bruiser Rumenie's band The Impalas, the Delta Kings, and Billy Galt's Blues Deacons. Now this is a popularity contest worth being in! So, we were pleased to win, and would the nominators please stop nominating us!

HOUSE OF BLUES RADIO HOUR. So we are tough guys, not affected at all by empty stuff like celebrity. Hollywood. Yawn. So, why were we so tickled to hear ourselves discussed, our song played, the same song made into the theme of a hilarious extro narrated by none other than Elwood Blues over yet another of our songs, on the "House of Blues Radio Hour"? What a trip!

RUNNERS-UP to KOKO TAYLOR! Thanks to your generous support, Kilborn
Alley's Tear Chicago Down was the runner-up to Koko Taylor's Old School
in the Bluescritic.com reader's ballot for "Best Contemporary Blues
Album" of 2007. This is a tremendous honor, and we appreciate your
votes.

GO TO YOU TUBE (TM), search for Kilborn Alley, and see what comes up. Here is what we think you will find: an amazing mini-documentary that ran repeatedly beginning in 2006 as a part of WILL-TV's "Prairie Fire" series. Built around footage shot at the Shades of Blue music festival on 8 July 2005, and subsequent interviews, this is a treat. Next, you will find some live performances taped at The Iron Post in Urbana, Illinois on 11 January 2008. You'll see some smokin' hot play there. You can also look on there for a video in which KABB pretends to be proto-punk band MC 5 playing "Kick Out the Jams." Top bands in all genres on the robust Champaign-Urbana music scene cover an act they ordinarily wouldn't play.

CHECK THE SHOWS PAGE, and just check back often to see what we're doing!

DID YOU KNOW, or maybe you knew and forgot, Kilborn Alley Blues Band has a distribution agreement with Burnside Distribution Corporation of Portland, Oregon? What this means is, when you are looking for the two Blue Bella releases, TEAR CHICAGO DOWN and PUT IT IN THE ALLEY, have your local records store contact BDC about getting the cds.

DON'T FORGET, while this site changes slowly, the Kilborn Alley Blues Band Myspace page changes almost daily, at least in some small way-- and additions to the performance schedule get posted there fastest. Check it out at: myspace.com/thekilbornalleybluesband

. . . it is the music which changes the place from the rear room of a
saloon in back of the yards to a fairy place, a wonderland, a little
corner of the high mansions of the sky.
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)