About the people who volunteer for the Boston Blues Society

Karen Nugent joined the Boston Blues Society as a writer for the Boston Blues News, our former print magazine, in 2004. She later became a contributing editor, and took on the editor’s post after Ken Chang left in 2006. The next year, she was voted BBS vice president under former president Heather McKibben. Karen was voted president in June after Heather stepped down.

Karen has been a staff reporter at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette since 1992. She also writes for Worcester Living magazine, published by the Telegram & Gazette. Before that, she was a staff reporter at the Clinton (Mass.) Daily Item, and a contributing writer for the Ayer-based Montachusett Times.

Karen has a bachelor’s degree in biology from UMass-Boston. (She used to work as a medical technologist in hospital laboratories, but switched careers to journalism after her daughter, Kristina, was born.)

Karen became a blues fan while in high school in the early 1970s, and was a regular at the Speakeasy in Central Square, Cambridge; (Remember, the drinking age was 18 at the time…) as well as Jonathan Swift’s, Night Stage, and Joe’s Place; Paul’s Mall in Boston, and the Sit ‘N Bull Pub, in Maynard, where she resides with her husband, Peter.

Mike Mellor has been in a blues-induced trance since one fateful Saturday night when he was 12. Instead of watching Nickelodeon or lurking in the shadows at a school dance like other kids, he sat in his room scanning the bottom of the FM dial. Just before ten o'clock the needle fell on Muddy Waters' "Walkin' Thru the Park."

It strutted out of the speakers like a sneering taunt, as if vocals and harmonica were teaming up for a menacing, finger-wagging na-na, na-na-na while the muscle of the rhythm section stood behind them with their arms folded. At the end Mai Cramer credited Waters, Little Walter on harp, Otis Spann on piano and Pat Hare on guitar before segueing into the top-of-the-hour newsbreak on Blues After Hours. The sonic landscape of his world was forever changed.

Now grown, he spends his time haunting libraries and traveling the country, studying American regionalism and savoring its musical diversity while trying to identify the one shared soul. Waylon Jennings once said, "I’ve always felt that blues, rock 'n' roll and country are just about a beat apart." Mike simultaneously celebrates the distance between the beats and the fact that there is hardly any distance at all.

As Editor for the Boston Blues Society, he is looking for enthusiastic people and creative suggestions. Do you have a tip on a band or venue? Do you know any blues musicians who are popular in other regions of the country? Do you have writing talents to volunteer? Drop him a line at editor@bostonblues.com. After all, a society is about people.

Dan Sevush has woven music and techology throughout his so-called career. Dan started playing the piano at the age of 11 and played around NYC during the intense early seventies. He learned how to build computers and program them while upgrading his home brewed synthesizers. In the early eighties he moved to the Boston area and worked for a little startup called Lotus Development. Dan was technical lead for 1-2-3, the most popular spreadsheet of its time.

Dan now plays with Track44, rides his motorcycle, volunteers as the BBS webmaster and oh yeah, he's looking for a job or contract work.

Bill has been a working journalist since 1996 when he became a regular contributor to many publications. Bill was an arts and entertainment reporter for local newspapers in his native southern New Hampshire for many years. He started his writing career covering local government and community events for weekly and daily newspapers.

He received a BA in English from Rivier College in Nashua, N.H. He was halfway through a graduate program in writing and literature at Rivier when he realized he "liked getting a byline more than getting good grades." Bill has been known to whip out a camera now and then to take what he calls "serviceable shots."

Aside from buying blues CDs and attending blues events, Bill listens to just about everything under the sun. His other interests include movies, food, Kenpo karate, newspapers, and CNN.

Rachel Lee was born in N.Y.C , and she lived in Providence until she was 11. She has lived in the Boston area since.

Although Rachel is new to the art of journalism, she has been a music lover all of her life. Rachel is into 1960’s rock, soul, country, disco, sacred steel and Satie.

Her fondest blues recollections are having seen Koko Taylor in the 1980’s and delivering a case of beer to Buddy Guy and Junior Wells.

Her favorite contemporary blues artists would be the Scissormen, L.C. Ulmer, Little Joe Washington and anybody with the last name of Morganfield.

Rachel also plays keyboards for the garage-soul band the Black Mosettes who tell her not to quit her day job. “I get really confused by this remark since I’m currently unemployed,” Rachel quipped.

Little of what is thought to be known about Georgetown Fats can be substantiated. However, the Boston Blues Society has winnowed some of the obvious tall tales and legends away from a more plausible truth.

Of Scottish and Portuguese descent, Georgetown Fats was born into a small clamming community of modest means. It was Fats’ Great Grandma who first introduced him to music. Great Grandma Fats balanced playing Dudlow Joes at the local silent movies and gut bucket fisherman watering holes at night, with playing church hymns on Sunday. In efforts to stop young Georgetown Fats from gnawing at her piano stool while teething, Fats’ Great Grandma came up with the idea of giving the young Fats his first blues harp. The rest, as they say, is history.

Georgetown Fats is an enigma. He is typically unshaven, clad in Wayfarers (standard black or tortoise -shell), a No. 49 Red Sox jersey, and a tin foil- lined Kangol Ventair cap. After paying his professional dues as a late night disk jockey on C-92 in Buckhannon, West Virginia - and playing as part of a house band at the Cheshire Cat Bar & Grille - Fats came back to Massachusetts to try his hand at a career as a music critic. To supplement his income, Fats conducts seminars on The Roswell Conspiracies while filing nuisance lawsuits.

When not limping off to another juke joint with the leash of his trusty beagle Otis (My Man!) in one hand, with a flask of Cabo Reposado tequila in the other, Georgetown Fats can often be seen at the corner of a bar feeling an odd gravitational pull from a bottle of Canadian Mist, while behind his Mac Book screaming “FREEBIRD!!” to all live performers…

You can read more about his adventures on his blog

Brian is a freelance music journalist and an interviewer of legendary and up-and-coming musicians, primarily guitarists. With the intention to enlighten others to guitar playing virtuosity, his articles and CD/DVD reviews are published regularly in numerous print and online magazines. He also writes stories of profound fiction, a few of which have been published as well. Quite content writing about music currently, he hopes to have his completed first novel published eventually, and to continue in a literary direction. Although blues and blues-rock are his primary areas of attention, he's interested in many genres; including r&b, jazz, classical, folk, acoustic, new age, and rock and all its subgenres.

Hearing Roy Buchanan's haunting guitar solos for the first time, back in 1970, lit a spark in Brian's musical inquisitiveness, especially within songs like "The Messiah Will Come Again" and "Pete's Blues". He then began listening to the likes of John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, The Yardbirds, and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. These performers led the way for more music to come gushing through, by blues performers who would eventually become his favorites as well. These include Robert Johnson, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Elmore James, Sonny Boy Williamson I & II, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy, the three Kings, Peter Green, Ronnie Earl, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Winter, Rory Gallagher, Robert Cray, Lonnie Brooks, Otis Rush, and many, many more.

Brian worked for the railroad in Massachusetts for 22 years, where the sound of a passing train always summoned an acoustic guitar and a blues harp. He resides in Massachusetts with his wife Nancy and their two children.

Brian's website, www.briandholland.com is devoted to the artists he has had the pleasure to write about, as well as many others.

Peter was a "New Yawka" whose blood turned blue after attending a concert at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on June 29, 1973. It was a satellite event of the "Newport Jazz Festival" called "Newport In New York" and the show was billed as "Best of the Blues - A Summit Meeting." The stage was set up like a cabaret, with several small cocktail tables seating two or three people. Amazingly, all of those people were performers: B.B. King, Muddy Waters, "Big Mama" Thornton, Jay McShann, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson", Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. For the 25 year old long haired hippy freak, the show was life altering. The blues found Peter and never let go.

Peter started writing in 1997 when he met his partner Mary. Together they run what could be the Internet's most comprehensive blues web site - www.Mary4Music.com. His articles and reviews appeared in Big City Blues Magazine, Blues Wax (the online E-Zine), musicians web sites and hundreds of blues society newsletters from as far away as Austria and Australia. The Blewzzman, who has resided in Florida since 1980, has written reviews for blues bands from every continent except Antartica.

You can contact him at Blewzzman@aol.com regarding anything to do with blues.