When: 7.30pm on Friday 9 November 2018
Where: St Michael’s, 36-38 George Leigh Street, Ancoats, Manchester, M4 5DG

We’re delighted to be welcoming Jerron ‘Blind Boy’ Paxton to Manchester for the first time!

Although still in his 20s, Jerron ‘Blind Boy’ Paxton has earned a reputation for transporting audiences back to the 1920s and making them wish they could stay there for good. Blind Boy Paxton may be one of the greatest multi-instrumentalists that you have not heard of. Yet. And time is getting short, fast.

Jerron performed to a sold out audience at the Lead Belly Tribute at Carnegie Hall on 4 February 2016 along with Buddy Guy, Eric Burdon, Edgar Winter, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and other stars. It is no exaggeration to say that Paxton made a huge impression. In the two years since his incredible performance at that star-studded show in one of the world’s great concert houses, Paxton’s own star has been rising fast. He opened for Buddy Guy at B.B. Kings in NYC; for Robert Cray at the Reading PA Blues Festival and performed at numerous other festivals including: Woodford Folk Festival and Byron Bay Blues Festival in Australia; Calgary Folk Festival in Canada; Jewel City Jam in Huntington WV; Freihofers Jazz Festival in Saratoga Springs FL; Clearwater Festival in Croton-on-The Hudson NY; Fayetteville Roots Festival in Fayetteville AR: Cambridge Folk Festival in the UK, Harvest Time Rhythm & Blues Festival in Ireland; and headlined the 2017 Brooklyn Folk Festival.

Jerron Paxton is a two-time participant in the Keeping The Blues Alive Cruise and is the new Artistic Director of the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival & Workshop at Centrum in Port Townsend, WA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cn_tbUGvdU

Paxton was featured on CNN’s Great Big Story and appeared in the multi-award-winning music documentary American Epic, produced by Robert Redford, Jack White and T-Bone Burnett. In October and November 2018 Jerron ‘Blind Boy’ Paxton will be touring the U.S. with the musicians from this groundbreaking American Epic Sessions music documentary.

This young musician sings and plays banjo, guitar, piano, fiddle, harmonica, Cajun accordion and the bones (percussion). Paxton has an eerie ability to transform traditional jazz, blues, folk and country into the here and now, and make it real. In addition, he mesmerises audiences with his humour and storytelling. He’s a world-class talent and a uniquely colourful character who has been on the cover of Living Blues Magazine and the Village Voice, and has been interviewed on FOX News. Paxton’s sound is influenced by the likes of Fats Waller and ‘Blind’ Lemon Jefferson. According to Will Friedwald in the Wall Street Journal, Paxton is ‘virtually the only music-maker of his generation – playing guitar, banjo, piano and violin, among other implements – to fully assimilate the blues idiom of the 1920s and 1930s’.

Support comes in the form of a rare solo performance from the band leader of Manchester’s own Dr Butler’s Hatstand Medicine Band. Dr Butler has been a mainstay of the city’s folk and blues scene for well over a decade; a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with influences ranging from the folk and Music hall traditions of the British Isles to early blues, jazz and ragtime.

This will be one of the first public concerts in St Michael’s since its recent re-opening, having been closed since 2004. The Roman Catholic church was founded in 1859 and became the heart of the Little Italy Community in Ancoats.

AGE RESTRICTION: This show is 14+. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

Buy tickets now. Tickets are available from Vinyl Exchange,  WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

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