PB & Holiday Jam features local stars
For almost a year and a half now, the Times Free Press has been hosting a thing called Music Wednesdays on Facebook Live every week at noon. The idea behind it was simply to use the medium to show off the many and varied musicians that live and work in our area.
Co-host Lesley Dale and I have been amazed at the quality and quantity of talented people.
We’ve done live shows from a church in Bridgeport, Ala., the Tennessee Aquarium, Puckett’s, Jon Mayfields’s home studio, and from the stage at the Tivoli Theatre. Most of the shows were done live here at the paper in a makeshift space that actually worked out pretty well.
But, when The Studio at the Chattanooga Pubic Library opened in July, we started doing it from there each week. It’s a great space with professional sound, but doing it there offers a lot more.
For one thing, while we were doing our thing, Dynamo Studios’ Kessler Cuffman was creating a program to help teach young people how to produce and engineer music. He’s been training three interns, so now Risheaun Moore, Jafet Mendez and Elizabeth Orr run the board for our shows under the direction of Elizabeth’s dad, Tyler. We’ve thrown a lot at them and they’ve handled it like pros.
I mention all of this to say, we will not have a show next Wednesday. We are taking the week off to work on the second annual PB & Holiday Jam edition. It’s so named because we’ve used the event to help the Chattanooga Food Bank stock their shelves with much-needed peanut butter. You can make donations at its office on Amnicola Highway or here at the paper.
We are actually going to record the show this year so we can better control some of the technical aspects of it, and we’ll post it on our Facebook page on Dec. 13 at noon. That’s the plan anyway.
It’s a pretty steller lineup of local musicians. The headliner has to be Mitch Ryder of Detroit Wheels fame. He was inducted into the R&B Hall of Fame last summer about the same time he moved to the area with his wife.
He’ll be doing a pretty special remake of a familiar classic. As will other standout local talents Jimmy Tawater, Jermaine Purifory, Smith & Wesley, Cody McCarver, Shane Morrow and a special Jazzanooga choir, Heatherly and the debut of Femme NM (library patrons might recognize this duo).
We even have a house band featuring several of my own family members and Tommy Lifsey on drums.
I hope you’ll check it out. Support local.