The Big Damn Blues Revolution Tour brings together three amazing artists who are master musicians and showmen. The Reverend Peyton, Dom Flemons, and J.D. Wilkes also have a special bond in the blues-roots-folk music that they love and live. This unique tour showcases the best their genres have to offer and culminates every night in a special jam session with all three artists.
The tour begins November 6 in Asheville, N.C., goes up along the Atlantic coast, and wends its way Midwest in time for a November 23 finale in Columbus, Ohio. (Full itinerary below.)
(And on December 9, the Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Steve Cropper, Dom Flemons, and Scot Sutherland will record “Shake Your Moneymaker” at Sun Studios in Memphis. The single will be released through Thirty Tigers in early 2020.)
The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, a 2019 Blues Music Award nominee, is simply the greatest country-blues band in the world. The trio, which includes the Reverend’s wife “Washboard” Breezy Peyton and drummer Max Senteney, is led by the Reverend Peyton, who most consider to be the premier fingerpicker playing today. He’s both a singularly compelling performer and a persuasive evangelist for the rootsy, country blues styles that captured his imagination early in life and inspired him and his band to make pilgrimages to Clarksdale, Mississippi to study under such blues masters as T-Model Ford, Robert Belfour, and David “Honeyboy” Edwards. Now the Big Damn Band is back with an explosive new record and world tour. Reverend Peyton’s guitar work on the release, Poor Until Payday, howls the blues and is phenomenal. Payday debuted at #1 on the iTunes Blues Chart and #4 on the Billboard Blues Chart.
With a repertoire drawing from more than 100 years of American folklore, ballads, and tunes, Grammy Award winner and two-time Emmy nominee Dom Flemons is known as “The American Songster.” He’s a music scholar, historian, and multi-instrumentalist — an expert player on the banjo, fife, guitar, harmonica, jug, percussion, quills, and rhythm bones. His 2018 Smithsonian Folkways release Dom Flemons Presents Black Cowboysreceived a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. Flemons co-founded the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who won a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album in 2010 and were nominated for Best Folk Album in 2012.
J.D. Wilkes is a true Renaissance man — musician, visual artist, author, filmmaker, and self-proclaimed “Southern surrealist.” He too is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist (notably on harmonica and banjo) who’s recorded with Merle Haggard, John Carter Cash, Mike Patton, and Hank Williams III. Wilkes is perhaps best known as the founder of the Legendary Shack Shakers, a Southern Gothic rock and blues band whose fans include Stephen King, Robert Plant, and former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra. Rolling Stone named Wilkes “best frontman” at the 2015 Americana Music Association Festival for his performance with the band. Regarding the group’s “Southern gothic” lyricism, Billboard magazine said, “[Wilkes writes] mind-blowing lyrics rife with Biblical references and ruminations of life, death, sin and redemption.” Legendary Shack Shakers have toured with Robert Plant and the Black Keys, among others.
Big Damn Blues Revolution Tour Dates:
Wed., Nov. 6 ASHEVILLE, NC The Grey Eagle
Thurs., Nov. 7 WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.The Ramkat
Fri., Nov. 8 RALEIGH, NC The Pour House Music Hall
Sun., Nov. 10 ANNAPOLIS, MD Rams Head On Stage
Tues., Nov. 12 BOSTON, MA City Winery
Wed., Nov. 13 BROOKLYN, NY Knitting Factory
Sun., Nov. 17 HAMDEN, CT Space Ballroom
Wed., Nov. 20 BUFFALO, NY The Tralf
Thurs., Nov. 21 CORNING, NY Corning Museum of Glass
Fri., Nov. 22 MORGANTOWN, WV 123 Pleasant Street
Sat., Nov. 23 COLUMBUS, OH Woodlands Tavern
The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band with J.D. Wilkes
(These dates without Dom Flemons)
Sat., Nov. 9 LEESBURG, VA Third Annual Chad Dukes Veterans Day Jamboree at Tally Ho Theater
Thurs., Nov. 14 SELLERSVILLE, PA Sellersville Theater 1894.
Fri., Nov. 15 TUCKERTON, NJ Lizzie Rose Music Room
Sat., Nov. 16 SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY Caffe Lena
Tues., Nov. 19 SYRACUSE, NY Westcott Theatre
Fri., Nov. 29 INDIANAPOLIS, IN The Vogue
Sat., Nov. 30 NEWPORT, KY The Southgate House Revival
