Chicago bluesman Ronnie Baker Brooks to open for B.B. King
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Purdue Convocations and the Student Concert Committee are presenting the performance.
Brooks, who has just released this third album titled "The Torch," is no stranger to blues music. As the son of Chicago blues mainstay Lonnie Brooks, he came of age watching the fieriest guitar players and most soulful singers of a previous era express their deepest feelings through their music, said Kerry Schutt Nason, Purdue Convocations director of marketing.
"I grew up among the best of the best," Brooks said. "Every time I play, I feel like I've got to do it with the authenticity and passion that I saw in guys like Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, B.B. King and my father. But I also have to put my twist on it. None of those guys repeated what came before them."
Brooks does not parrot his father's style, however. His music involves enlivening blues-rock with deep soul and modern hip-hop vocals and funk rhythms, Nason said.
Working with Minneapolis producer Jellybean Johnson, a veteran collaborator of Prince and Janet Jackson, Brooks takes roots sounds and transforms them.
"I like to think of how Muddy Waters took the Mississippi blues he heard in his youth and modernized it for his times by making it electric and harder," Brooks said. "That's what I'm trying to do for my generation. I want to take what's authentic and powerful about the music I grew up loving and bring in other influences without losing the heart and conviction of it."
Brooks spent a dozen years backing his father, watching how he interacted with the audience night after night. For years, the younger Brooks put his lessons on stage every night, opening his father's show to great response, Nason said. With his father's blessing, he left the band to strike out on his own shortly after releasing his own debut album, "Golddigger," in 1998.
After the release of his second album, 2001's "Take Me Witcha," he hit the road for what turned out to be a three-year tour, picking up new fans along the way. Five years later, he released "The Torch," which includes a collaboration with his father and Chicago artists Eddy Clearwater, Jimmy Johnson and the late Willie Kent and another highlighting rapper Al Kapone.
Tickets are still available for B.B. King with special guest Ronnie Baker Brooks at the Elliott Hall and Stewart Center box offices at (765) 494-3933 or (800) 914-SHOW. Tickets also are available through Ticketmaster outlets.
Tickets are $41.25 for adults and $31.25 for children 18 years and younger, Purdue students and Ivy Tech Lafayette students.
Source: Kerry Schutt Nason, Purdue Convocations director of marketing, (765) 494-5045, knason@purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
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