Alligator Records adds another show to their 40th Anniversary Series at SPACE, this one coming the day after Thanksgiving. more ›

Alligator Records has been churning out blues rock artists for 40 years now, and tonight they kick off a special anniversary celebration at SPACE that will continue well into December. With all those decades under their belt, Alligator’s got a rich history, and in a six concert series, they’ll showcase some their best veteran artists, some who have been singing the blues almost as long as Alligator has been around (some even longer), and are all still making music. more ›

This is the corner the programmers for Blues Fest have painted for themselves. The lineup is full of acts you'll see any time of the week at Our Town's blues clubs. more ›

Chicagoist was out at Martyrs’ last night for the launch of the Chicago Music Commission, which kept the focus not so much on the “commission” but on the “music.” The soft-sell approach was probably best considering the crowd of “extras from High Fidelity” (in the word of one Chicagoist writer), ex-hippies and others with nothing better to do on a Tuesday night. It was a night to “solidify the base” as political consultants like to... more ›

An article in The Chicago Journal last week detailed the efforts of a Japanese television crew that sought to document the last vestiges of the Maxwell Street blues scene. The authenticity of the current scene could most charitably be described as “in question” (if for no other reason but its presence on Canal Street rather than Maxwell Street. Fortunately, the flag for Chicago blues is still carried nightly by an army of local musicians in... more ›

Bringing a movie about Mississippi blues to Chicago may seem a bit like bringing coal to Newcastle. We Chicagoans are a boastful lot so we’ll be happy to tell our Mississippi friends about our excellent blues scene (that serves both the tourists and the purists) and inform you that we’re the home of one of the premier blues labels—Alligator Records. Of course, your Mississippi friends might just as well turn around and point out that... more ›