Presented by the Capital Region Blues Network and WEXT Presents

An explosive blues double bill featuring Tommy Castro & The Painkillers and Tinsley Ellis

Over the course of his career, guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Tommy Castro – a six-time Blues Music Award-winner – has played thousands of shows to hundreds of thousands of ecstatic fans. Castro, along with his band, The Painkillers — bassist Randy McDonald, keyboardist Michael Emerson and drummer Bowen Brown — plays music that is guaranteed to fill the floor and raise the roof. With seemingly telepathic musicianship, the Painkillers bring an unmatched passion to Castro’s blue-eyed California soul and hard-rocking, good-time songs. Delivering the songs from his brand new Alligator release, Stompin’ Ground, Castro both looks back with autobiographical originals and cover songs that inspired him, melding contemporary lyrics with blistering blues-rock. No Depression says, “Castro plays gritty, string bending blues like a runaway soul train…a glorious blend that rocks the soul and lifts the spirits.”

Southern blues-rocker Tinsley Ellis may speak no evil, but he sings and plays with the conviction of, as Billboard wrote, “…a man possessed.” Over the course of eleven albums and literally thousands of live performances, Ellis easily ranks as one of today’s most electrifying blues-rock guitarists and vocalists. He approaches his music with rock power and blues feeling, in the same tradition as his Deep South musical heroes Duane Allman and Freddie King and his old friends Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes. Atlanta Magazine declared Ellis “the most significant blues artist to emerge from Atlanta since Blind Willie McTell.”  Since first hitting the national scene with his debut Georgia Blue in 1988, Ellis has toured non-stop and continued to release one critically acclaimed album after another. Tinsley Ellis wears his Southern roots proudly. Born in Atlanta in 1957, he grew up in southern Florida and first played guitar at age eight. He found the blues through the back door of British Invasion bands like The Yardbirds, The Animals, Cream, and The Rolling Stones. He especially loved the Kings — Freddie, B.B. and Albert — and spent hours immersing himself in their music.

Tickets are on sale now at The Egg: tickets.theegg.org