Nightflying: The Entertainment Guide

Odie’s Fires Up Summer With Solid Acts

Odie’s House of Blues comes into the summer time home stretch with some solid acts making their way to the Spa City. In addition to the nightly music provided by local performers, Odie’s will bring in several national touring acts in August and September.

Philadelphia music dynamo Gina Sicilia will take the stage on August 21-22.
Exposed to music early on by her family, Sicilia began singing at the age of three and wrote her first song at the tender age of twelve. Upon hearing blues legend Bobby Bland for the first time at the fourteen, she became instantly enthralled by the raw emotion and power of blues & soul. After spending her teenage years polishing her vocal and songwriting skills, Sicilia began singing in clubs around the Philadelphia area and has since branched out worldwide.
As an artist who has been performing on the blues circuit for only a few short years, it is obvious to see that Sicilia’s star is rising, and it is rising fast.
In December, 2007, only five months after the release of her critically acclaimed debut album, Allow Me To Confess, Sicilia signed with Piedmont Talent booking agency. That same month, her impressive talent was recognized by the Blues Foundation, earning her a 2008 Blues Music Awards nomination for "Best New Artist Debut".
Now an elderly 23, this soulful, passionate vocalist and songwriter has just completed her sophomore CD. Entitled Hey Sugar, this musical masterpiece proves Sicilia to be not only a stunning vocalist but an extraordinarily gifted, unique, songwriter, capable of writing soulfully and effectively in a multitude of genres. The record is a reflection of Sicilia's diverse musical talent and tastes, as well as her undeniable and continuous growth as a vocalist and songwriter. The album consists of thirteen soul-stirring tracks, nine of which were written entirely by Sicilia herself .
Hey Sugar was produced by 2007 Blues Music Awards Nominee Dave Gross, who also lends his own innovative guitar playing to the mix. Backed by a cast of some of the finest players in the business, including young harmonica master Dennis Gruenling and acclaimed pianist David Maxwell, Sicilia’s powerful vocal delivery, range, and conviction command the attention of listeners throughout the entire album. With Hey Sugar, Sicilia continues to develop a competence that belies her age. She is an artist in high-demand, and continues to receive rave reviews from critics and music fans alike.
More than just a throwback to the great blues & soul vocalists of the 50's & 60's, Sicilia uniquely separates herself from the pack of current vocalists with a style that is distinctive, magnetic, and anything but cliché.
Now an international touring artist, Sicilia’s ability to evolve as a vocalist and songwriter is boundless. This is only the beginning for Gina Sicilia, as she will undoubtedly continue to make her mark among the new generation of musical artists.

The weekend of September 18-19 will see a double bill of smokin’ hot blues with a pair of nationally recognized artists taking the stage. Friday, September 18, Smokin’ Joe Kubek and Bnois King will unleash their Texas-style blues attack on the Spa City. Saturday, September 19, will feature International Blues Challenge and two time Handy Award winner Eden Brent playing her raucous style of boogi-woogie piano.
Kubek began playing in Dallas night clubs around the age of fourteen. A few short years later he began to take a deep interest in the blues and eventually played rhythm guitar behind blues legend Freddy King until King’s death in 1976. In 1989, Kubek teamed up with Bnois King to form a partnership that has lasted two decades.
The Kubek-King union began during a gig in Dallas when Kubek invited King to sit in and found that King’s softer, jazz based guitar and vocals complimented Kubek’s headier, rock inspired work. Although the partnership seems natural, Kubek still is amazed that it worked at all. Months earlier, the pair had shared and uncomfortable meeting that Kubek still recalls today. “We laugh at it now,” says Kubek. “When we first ran into each other , it was in a club dressing room awhile before I’d invited him to sit in with my band. Neither of us remembers why we were there, because it wasn’t our gig. We never said a word to each other. We just kinda sat there and looked at each other. It was weird.”
Kubek has a staggering arsenal of instruments, effects and techniques, delivering a flame throwing display of guitar prowess tempered by the remarkable accompaniment of King’s Jazz influenced guitar. Muscling his way through the proceedings of a live show, Kubek will pull, bend, pick and push his strings well beyond the normal levels of endurance as he runs through his and King’s songs. Using Hendrix style crybaby wah-wah leads and ear bleeding, Johnny Winter meets Elmore James slide work, he brings things to a boiling point with screeching and shimmering lines that rattle speaker cones and make the fillings in your teeth vibrate before stomping on the brakes and drifting into some of the sweetest slow blues around. Throughout the entire set, King accompanies on his guitar, shouting out lyrics and making the entire package complete.

Eden Brent's piano playing and singing style ranges from a melancholic whisper to a full-blown juke joint holler. She's simultaneously confident and confiding, ably blending an earthy meld of jazz, blues, soul, and pop as she huskily invites listeners into her lazy, lush world.
That world lies just north of Greenville, Mississippi, on the two-lane Highway 1, which follows the twists and turns of the river through fecund swampland, time-forgotten plantations, and blink-and you'll-miss-'em communities like Rosedale, Benoit, Wayside, and Grace before it dead ends into Highway 61 at Onward.
It was there that Brent was able to develop her gutsy vocal and piano chops via family sing-a-longs and a 16-year apprenticeship with the late blues pioneer Boogaloo Ames, who ultimately dubbed his protégé "Little Boogaloo."
"Music school taught me to think, but Boogaloo taught me to boogie-woogie," says Brent, who appeared alongside her mentor in the 1999 PBS documentary Boogaloo & Eden: Sustaining the Sound and in the 2002 South African production Forty Days in the Delta.
Where most 21st century roots musicians merely emulate their heroes, Brent and Ames were both "…soul mates and road buddies," says friend and journalist Julia Reed. "She was a young white woman of privilege and he was an aging black man in the Mississippi Delta, but theirs is a phenomenal story of mutual admiration and need."
Yet much more than the blues flows through Brent's talented hands. Critics laud her "Bessie Smith meets Diana Krall meets Janis Joplin" attitude, compare her to jazz/pop dynamos Norah Jones and Sarah Vaughn, and wax effusively about her "whiskey-smoke" voice, which serves as a constant reminder that Greenville, nestled into a bend of the Mississippi River, is located a few hundred miles north of New Orleans.
Whether performing as a solo artist or bandleader, Brent's performance is fresh and spontaneous, often filled with audience requests and participation. Her unshakable talent and her carefree demeanor have taken her across the country and around the world, with appearances at the Kennedy Center, the 2000 Republican National Convention, the venerable Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and tours of South Africa and Norway under her belt.
Since launching her career, she's won the Blues Foundation's 2006 International Blues Challenge, and was a 2004 inductee on the Greenville Blues Walk. Sharing a bill with B.B. King, Brent performed at the 2005 presidential inauguration, and solo, she's appeared at the British Embassy and at the My South celebrations in Mississippi and New York. She's also burnished her reputation via appearances on radio shows like the syndicated Beale Street Caravan and XM's Bluesville, at festivals like the Waterfront Blues Festival, Edmonton Labatt Blues Festival and the annual B.B. King Homecoming, and aboard the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise.
With the 2008 release of her new album Mississippi Number One, Brent is now ready to take her place as one of the fresh voices propelling this vital American music forward. As Chip Eagle, publisher of Blues Revue, BluesWax, and Dirty Linen says, "in Eden's huge playing and singing you can hear the ghosts of Mississippi in duet with the future of the blues."
Show time for all shows is 9:00 pm.
Odie’s, located at 3413 Central Avenue in Hot Springs, features live music six nights a week in the bar from 4:30 to 8:30. Tuesdays and Thursdays visitors can hear Larry Womack. Wednesdays, it’s Chana and Randy Caylor. Brian Sink and company hold down Fridays and Saturdays. On Sundays, Chana and Randy Caylor provide light music for the brunch crowd and the Midnight Shuffle Kings take the bar stage starting at 7:00 pm.

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