This has been a year of changes for Antone’s. The change in ownership to Emo’s went smoothly, if bittersweet. New blood fills the club, yet it’s hard saying goodbye to the old ways – and friends Hubert Sumlin and Doyle Bramhall. Tonight at 8pm, all the old mojo gets conjured up once again for a grand finale to the venue’s 37th Anniversary month.
You want names? These musicians playing tonight virtually built the venerable venue’s reputation when it began on Sixth Street in 1975: Derek O’Brien, W.C. Clark, Denny Freeman, Paul Ray, Mike Buck, George Rains.
After the club raised its first generation of musicians, it started on a second on Guadalupe – where I Love Video now sits – in the Eighties and into the Nineties: Charlie Sexton, Alan Haynes, Mike Keller, Jason Moeller, Johnny Moeller, Corey Keller, Riley Osbourn, Sarah Brown.
Those who weren’t born to the blues came around, like Kathy Valentine, and those with it in their blood, like James Cotton and Ronnie James, both of whom will be there tonight. And an entirely new group of arrivals came with the move back downtown: Tameca Jones, Julia Magness.
If there’s lingering regret about the passing of time and the changes it brings, leave them out on the street tonight. This lineup is about hope. It seamlessly integrates decades of experience with dreams for the future, and if that’s not blues, nothing is.
This article appears in July 27 • 2012.