The Hoodoo Men are blues conjurers bringing the stripped-down, driving immediacy of rural Southern
blues when it first went electric. When artists like Muddy Waters, Frankie Lee Sims, and Hound Dog Taylor
traded in their old acoustic guitars for an amped-up, rough-hewn sound that more closely resembled the
coarse, raspy quality of their singing voices, honed by years of cigarettes and cheap whiskey.
Formed in 2013, the Hoodoo Men started with the desire to showcase some of the best, yet obscure,
American blues music from the time of WWII into the 1960’s, a time when blues artists, shaped by the
traditions of the pre-war period, converted rural acoustic music into the first electric blues and laid the
ground work for the birth of rock and roll.
The Hoodoo Men play blues that you would have heard in roadside juke joints of the deep South, or rent
parties in the North in the late 40’s and early 50’s, when the memory of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Charley
Patton still resided in the fingers of down-home musicians, newly invigorated with the power of electricity,
taking the deep blues from the cotton fields uptown to the Southside of Chicago, Beale St. in Memphis and
across the river into St. Louis.
Expect stripped-down, greasy, juke joint blues, leaning on tradition and thriving on new sounds and
infectious grooves, performed by Bill Steber (guitar, vocals, harmonica, saw, diddley bow) and Sammy
Baker (drums, electric jug, bass, primal screams) while enjoying a performance space transformed with
candles, talismans, skeletons, and ritual objects that speak to the mysterious traditions of “conjure.” Plan to
come early to enjoy an exhibit of Bill’s documentary photographs of Mississippi Delta musicians and Delta
blues culture which will be on display in the Fine Arts Center Lobby.