Newsletter #1 06/24
Texas Coastal Bend Blues Society
With much anticipation and planning over the past 18 months, The Texas Coastal Bend Blues Society, Inc has been established to fill the void that blues bands, fans, and venues have felt in the area for as long as I can remember. The TCBBS is a 501c3 Non-Profit, currently operating with seven volunteer board members and two liaison volunteers. I have taken it upon myself to write the first monthly newsletter.
A bit about my background. I have been a blues fan since I was 14, when I first heard Luther Allison on the radio. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would be fortunate enough to meet him on a couple of occasions later. The last time was at The House of Blues in Hollywood, where he went out of his way to leave the stage to shake my hand in the middle of a set. He passed away a few months later… I played with blues bands in Southern California, hosted jams and was a partner in a blues club out there as well.
Retiring from the business world, I relocated back to Corpus Christi, where I had attended high school and college, and put the blues on the front burner.
In 1979 or 1980, long before Dr. Rockits (which is now Rockits and not considered a blues club), there was a blues club in Corpus Christi called Dr. Livingstons. I got my fix there where I watched the house band, Rockville Blues Band, on many occasions. It was the only blues band and the only blues venue in town that I knew of. I couldn’t tell you for sure. It was, however, enough to inspire me to buy my first electric guitar at Clawson’s – a used 1961 Epiphone Casino hollow body electric that is still in my family.
Fast forward 30 plus years, and I met John Cortez after a series of events that all started with Jak Payne (which is an entirely different story).
John, a phenomenally good guitarist and frontman of his own blues based band, mentioned to me his desire to start a blues society, which had also been in the back of my mind at the time we met. I had been a member of the Los Angeles Blues Society as an individual, with a blues band, and as a sponsor venue when I had a stake in a blues club in California. I knew basically how it worked and the benefits of being a member.
After forming a local corporate blues band, The Catfish Blues Band, and having our first event at the Rialto Theater in Aransas Pass, I met a lot of blues fans and musicians I had not been able to connect with before because there was no platform like a blues society to do so. That first concert morphed into me hosting the Catfish Blues Jam, which I had started in 2013, in California, more than a decade ago. To this day, it is the only all-blues jam in the Coastal Bend, unless there is a secret one I don’t know about! I am currently the lead guitarist of the FBI Blues Band, whose name pays homage to my and several band mates past, Flour Bluff, Texas.
If you are reading this, you have found the website and I encourage you to look around. We have a lot going on already and membership is increasing steadily with individuals, bands, businesses and venues all joining up now.
I handpicked board members to join me based on their outstanding dedication to the blues and their desire to support the blues community as well as their skills which are critical to this blues society start up.
So welcome, look around the site, check us out on Facebook and keep up with our events!
Please become a member and join us!
Frank Butler
President
