Acrpost: A Project of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres

Event Description

MARCIA BALL BAND
“Rollicking, playful, good time blues and intimate, reflective balladry…her songs ring with emotional depth.” – Rolling Stone
Plus Dave Harris

Tickets on sale Wednesday, September 15, 2004.
Available at: A&B Sound (jazz dep’t), Central Bar & Grill, Victoria Jazz Society office
(388-4423)

There’s a roadhouse on the musical map where Texas blues meets Louisiana R&B, a place where Gulf Coast balladry mixes with rollicking New Orleans boogie-woogie, a place where people only stop dancing long enough to soak in the intensity of a slow-burning torch song. This is the place singer/ pianist/songwriter Marcia Ball calls home. For the past 30 years, Ball has been raising roofs, tearing down walls and stirring souls. According to the Boston Globe, "Marcia Ball is a firecracker, combining killer piano with throaty-to-tender vocals. She delivers a hot kick that lingers." The Austin Chronicle heralds her as "a class act whose soulful, horn-laden swamp pop and murderous honky-tonk make her a stellar example of musical artistry."

Ball joined the Alligator Records family in 2001 and released the critically acclaimed Presumed Innocent (the ninth album of her career), which took home the W.C. Handy Blues Award for "Blues Album Of The Year." Now she’s back with So Many Rivers, featuring Ball’s trademark mix of raucous boogie and heart-melting ballads, which recently won her the W.C. Handy Award for “Contemporary Blues Album of the Year”, as well as “Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year” for 2004. So Many Rivers finds Ball at a creative high point in her career. Of the album’s 14 songs, six are Ball originals and all are fueled by her mastery of two-fisted piano playing, swaggering rock and sweet Southern soul.

Fortune magazine declared, "Marcia Ball is one of the treasures of Austin. She’s one of the great New Orleans-style piano players: she can rock, she can boogie, she can play the blues." Time Out New York put it even more succinctly, simply stating, "this singer-pianist seems at the peak of her powers." Ball’s mastery of so many musical styles makes SO MANY RIVERS a soul-stirring journey: one that brings the roadhouses of Texas and the Gulf Coast to listeners all over the world. Marcia Ball and her band make their debut in Victoria at the Central Bar & Grill on Tuesday, October 12!