Tory Gates - Page 2

'I try to take people to a place that they really can't get to by themselves.'

'I think the more (women) just keep picking up instruments, and keep writing, and making our presence known, and not backing down, I think more and more people will be inspired to pick up instruments and continue on with that.'

'I think the most important element I like to keep in the music is the blues feeling, regardless of different chord or what we do with the notes, it's just the blues feeling has to be there.

The 13th Annual Lehigh River Blues Jam celebrates the music, and will raise funds for Mike Mettalia, a sufferer of ALS.

'My aim is to get them to start getting used to the different sounds that I'm bringing to Japan and rest of Asia. The way I see it, somebody's gotta start doing it, and why not me?

'The original idea for the show has this common thread in the universe that everybody is connected--how do you experience that with music?'

'To understand where you're going, you gotta know where you've been.' -- Slam Allen

'...there was something about the saxophone that really connected with me. It became my sort of best friend and trusted ally, still to this day, it's right there for me all the time.'

'I don't see any other genre that does not progress. Jazz progresses, hip-hop progresses, rock progresses, why shouldn't blues as well...?'

'You know who you sound like?' I say, 'No, but you're gonna tell me.' She says, 'Yeah, you're like Janis Joplin and Tina Turner all rolled in to one!”

'I think entertaining is what I do, that is what my spirit is called to do, and the blues is kind of like my salvation. It was a form of music that I felt like it was in me. It is in me to communicate.'

'Smoke from campfires, incense, tobacco and fried foods, along with farm-filtered air set us up for a series of performers that brought voices, songs and what someone once referred to as 'high profile' musicianship.'

'I can go a lot of different directions from here...at the end of the day it's my life.”

'When you get new technology and it falls into creative hands, something entirely new happens."

Songs “that are bluish purple with silver gold shimmers.”

Expect a "hallelujah time," she told me, for those who'd never seen her, and she would be right...

An October Sunday evening found a friend plus two newfound ones in the first balcony of Philadelphia's Academy of Music for a celebration of not only Joan Baez's 75 years of life, but also the music, and an enduring symbol that bridges generations...'

“The blues will always be alive, the blues doesn't need our help.' -- Bill Wax, host of 'Roots and Fruits,' WPFW Radio, Washington, DC

'It was pretty hardcore, you sink or swim; I went into the deep end of the pool, but I was determined and I was just thrilled to be jamming with these guys. Meeting Otis Rush; playing with Buddy Guy, James Cotton, Junior Wells. I can't believe I'm actually doing all this! I was 22, 23 years old.'

'I just tell people to keep an open mind and it's a great environment and it's definitely something for everybody in all ages.'