Blues Dues

Imagine a night of blues music in modern-day Dallas. Ready? Let me guess: The first image that came to your mind was a middle-aged white guy wearing a leather vest and turquoise bolo tie, doing a passable-but-unnecessary Stevie Ray Vaughan imitation to a bar full of yuppie weekend bikers. As you probably know, that scene has about as much in common with traditional blues as a marketing copywriter has in common with a sharecropper. So it may surprise you that a Dallas blues CD has landed on the Grammy nominations ballot for Best Traditional Blues Album. But when Henry James Townsend, Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins, Robert Lockwood Jr. and David "Honeyboy" Edwards played at the Majestic Theater on October 16, 2004, traditional blues is what Dallas got. Their efforts were recorded and released as Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen to benefit the Blue Shoe Project, a Texas nonprofit that educates schoolboys and little girls about the music at the root of today's rock 'n' roll, R&B and hip-hop. To celebrate the Grammy nod, "Honeyboy" Edwards and guests will perform at 8 p.m. Friday at the Palace Theater, 300 S. Main St. in Grapevine. Tickets, priced from $25 to $100, are available at blueshoeproject.org.
Fri., Feb. 8, 8 p.m., 2008