NC BEERS WIN MEDALS

NC Brewers Get International Recognition


Four North Carolina Brewers bring home awards from the 2010 World Beer Cup. Outer Banks Brewing Station, Olde Hickory Brewery, Foothills Brewing and The Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery Inc. all won medals!
So Make sure you check these guys out!

Here's a nice little recipe for a dry rub, if you like that kind of BBQ. In a future post I will discuss the differences in dry rubs, wet rubs, brines, marinades and injections. But for try out if your have a hankerin' for some delicious pig.

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup paprika
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 teaspoon cayenne
¼ cup ancho powder
¼ cup lemonade powder mix

This preparation emphasizes spices, meat, and caramelization from the brown sugar. The recipe for this rub shares a lot of similarities with both Czech goulash and mexican cuisine, so I suggest a German Pilsner with this recipie.

NOW on to the music. In this installment i will give you 12, thats right a whole dozen, of the most essential Blues guitarists. If you have any interest in starting and maintaining a Blues music collection, you need to start here.

1. B.B. King.


Well, really, who else? The Master has knocked 'em dead from the Delta to Las Vegas for going on 50 years. To most casual (and some not-so-casual) listeners B.B. is the blues. The four-CD box King of the Blues (MCA) covers virtually every era of his career; it's the place to go if you're looking for an all-in-one package. Most people will tell you that Live at the Regal (MCA) is his best live album, but don't believe 'em. Good as Regal is, suss out the harder to find Blues Is King, an incendiary performance captured at a Chicago club in 1966. The Best of B.B. King Volume 1 (Flair/Virgin) contains lots of early material not on the box set. From there you're on your own, but it's pretty hard to miss with B.B..

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2.Albert King

Big Albert's stinging left-handed guitar leads, often drenched with sustain, are unmistakable. Live Wire/Blues Power (Stax, also Mobile Fidelity), a superb show from the Fillmore West in 1968, is one of our ultimate desert island discs. His powerful Stax recordings from the '60s shaped the sound of players across the blues-rock spectrum. King of the Blues Guitar (Atlantic) covers most his crucial material for that label, but it may be out of print. If so, go for Born Under a Bad Sign (Mobile Fidelity). The Ultimate Collection samples a good chunk of his career on two CDs, but to hear his early Bobbin/King sides you'll have to dig for Let's Have a Natural Ball (Modern Blues Recordings).

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3. Aaron "T-Bone" Walker

Practically every guitarist on this list has claimed T-Bone as an influence. The definitive showman on stage, his lean, biting licks could swing with the best or get way down, as on his legendary "Stormy Monday Blues." T-Bone Blues (Atlantic Jazz) sounds like it was recorded yesterday and contains versions of some of his best-known tunes. The Complete Imperial Recordings (1950-54) (EMI) and The Complete Capitol/Black & White Recordings are more rooted in the swing era.

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4. Albert Collins

Albert's piercing style marked him as a true Texas original. As of yet, no lifetime overview set has been released. So we'll have to settle on Ice Pickin' (Alligator) as the signature of his later work and Truckin' With Albert Collins (MCA) -- which includes the original version of "Frosty" -- for his classic early '60s dates. Of course Showdown, with proteges Robert Cray and Johnny Copeland getting equal time, is a brilliant release that proved the selection committee for the Grammys can occasionally do something right.

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5. Freddie (Freddy) King

These days the big Texan is best known for his '70s recordings for Shelter that were produced by Leon Russell and occasionally counted Eric Clapton among the contributors. The really choice stuff, though, was recorded for King Records in the '50s and '60s. Hide Away: The Best of Freddy King (Rhino) lives up to its name, serving up 17 tough tracks from that era. Just Pickin' (Modern Blues Recordings) combines two beautifully remastered instrumental albums from the same period.

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6. Otis Rush

An impassioned guitarist and singer, his songs -- like "Double Trouble," "Mean Old World" and "All Your Love (I Miss Lovin')" -- were staples of many a '60s rock band. Cold Day in Hell (Delmark) is probably his best studio release. His chilling early work is on The Cobra Records Story (Capricorn), along with several other fine artists like Buddy Guy and Magic Sam, and Blues Interaction (Castle Communications) is a great live performance.

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7.Buddy Guy

Any discussion of Buddy Guy invariably involves a recitation of his colossal musical resume and hard-earned accolades. He's a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a chief guitar influence to rock titans like Hendrix, Clapton, Beck, and Vaughan, a pioneer of Chicago's fabled West Side sound, and a living link to that city's halcyon days of electric blues.: Stone Crazy (Alligator). The Very Best of Buddy Guy (Rhino) is a thumbnail career retrospective (up to 1982) on one disc that might lead you in some other directions.

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8. Magic Sam

Sam Maghett was a slashing, prototypical Chicago electric guitarist who was just starting to make his mark when he died suddenly in 1969 at the age of 32. West Side Soul and Black Magic (both on Delmark) are the places to start, but his early sides are well worth checking out on The Cobra Records Story (Capricorn).

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9. Elmore James

His unforgettable slashing slide guitar brought the Robert Johnson sound up the Mississippi and into the age of electricity. A few years back we tried to sort out the mishmash of seemingly endless repackagings of Elmore's work. The bulk of his recordings were released on the Bihari brothers of Los Angeles' Modern, Meteor and Flair labels or New Yorker Bobby Robinson's Fire, Fury and Enjoy labels. The key sides of those early '50s Modern releases are on Let's Cut It: The Very Best of Elmore James (Flair/Virgin). Robinson's '60s recordings are detailed on the two-disc King of the Slide Guitar (Capricorn). The Sky Is Crying: The History of Elmore James takes the wideband approach, drawing from both these and other catalogs.

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10. Gatemouth Brown

Gate goes out of his way to emphasize that he is not a blues artist. But that's just because he doesn't want to distract attention from his jazz, country swing and Texas-Louisiana gumbo stylings. To hear him play it straight and nasty, you'll have to snoop out The Original Peacock Recordings (Rounder), which is not out on CD to the best of our knowledge. Otherwise, all his Rounder and Alligator releases are of high quality.

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11. Guitar Slim

This hard-drinking Louisianan (nee Eddie Jones) was a wildman on stage. Slim died young but he was profound influence on guitarists from Buddy Guy to Jimi Hendrix. Sufferin' Mind (Specialty) goes right to the heart of the matter with killer tracks from 1953-55, including his giant R&B smash, "The Things That I Used to Do."

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12. Johnny "Clyde" Copeland

Houston's blues ambassador to the world is a relative latecomer in terms of national recognition. He's an excellent composer and incredibly soulful singer with a singular guitar style. Two Rounder CD compilations qualify as gotta haves: Texas Twister and When the Rain Starts Fallin'. Some of his most brilliant work is on Bringing It All Back Home (Rounder), an LP inspired by his State Department sponsored trip to Africa. A few tracks from it appear on the CDs.


Well, I sincerely hope that I was able to impart a little bit of knowledge your way. Please let me know if you are into the blues at all.  If this has made you curious about the Blues and you've never really checked them out, let me know that too. Next time I'll share my Top 5 Classic Chicago Blues Artists, so make sure you stay tuned!

Brown Chicken, Brown Cow!

First Entry...A Little About Something

So in this entry I will introduce myself. I'll give you a little background on me and maybe you can come to understand why I am the way I am.

First and foremost, there will be times that I don't use the shift key when starting a new sentence, therefore not using capital letters....Now on with the rest of the show!

I was born and raised in North Carolina, and was immersed into all kinds of music and food, everything from 50's rock and fried chicken dinner on Sunday after church, all the way up to Death Metal and sushi. But my favorites from this full range are The Blues, and BBQ!

Let me define BBQ for you. BBQ or Barbeque is FOOD, not cooking on a grill. BBQ is almost always, pork (my fave), sometimes it can be beef or chicken.

OK, so just like Blues comes from different regions and has differnt sounds, BBQ comes from different regions and has different flavors, and so do Beers.

I am a 30 something man, who is married, happily I might add. No children, although we do have 2 pet mice, Rosa Lee, and Alice, and a leopard gecko named Camo. My wife, Christy also has a blog on here. We LOVE to read and listen to all types of music.

So, in closing what I intend to do here is take you all on a journey with me as we explore, Blues, Brews and BBQ.

MMMM PIG!