Jelly Roll Team Profiles - Ricky Barkosky

 

Ricky Barkosky

My day job is a freelance English teacher. I have a B.A. in Global and International Studies with a minor in German language and culture from the University of Kansas and have been actively playing music for over ten years now. The latter is what defines everything about my day-to-day life. I love discovering and listening to music and I really can’t imagine being anything other than a musician and artist. 

I luckily found music and art at a young age. My mom is a painter and always had records on, my dad is a drummer, my uncle a guitar player, and my step mom and step dad always encouraged creativity and individuality. I would always go along to my dad’s band practice and remember being simply transfixed by how everything appeared—I loved how the drums looked when they were set up, the posters of maple-like leaves on the wall, and how the silver grill of the Fender amp face glistened everywhere except the cigarette burns. 

I started playing drums at sixteen and at nineteen moved to Seoul, South Korea with my family. I joined a band called On Sparrow Hills, which happened to be formed by English teachers, and recorded an EP, The Sitting Choir, in 2009.
 
In the midwestern college oasis of Lawrence, Kansas I met and became friends with Ron Miller, drummer for Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds, and formed the garage rock and roll band Up The Academy. We recorded numerous times at the Harveyville Project and released a selftitled 7” in 2012 on Replay Records. Additionally, we played numerous shows, including two years in a row at the SXSW festival in Austin, TX, and toured the States.  

Some years later, I joined the psychedelic, shoegaze band Psychic Heat and continued to play rigorously—including another year at SXSW. I toured with Psychic Heat and recorded the album Sunshower at the Harveyville Project, which was released in May 2016 on High Dive Records.  
I’ve been extremely lucky, knock on wood, in convincing the woman who is now my lovely German girlfriend to be with me and in finding so many other amazing people in Germany. In other words, I call Hamburg my home nowadays. I’m working with my new band The Wayward Howls and continue to write and play music daily. 

I’m really pleased to be working with the extremely talented and diverse individuals on The Jelly Roll Factory team and look forward to see what the future brings.  

Street musician - Hamburg

I was out today in the beautiful sunshine. I went down to Park Fiction for Feierabend and met Igor, a Russian guy who has lived and played the streets in Hamburg for the last 20 years. I got out my harps and we jammed for about 2 hours as we went from rock t jazz and then into some dirty slide blues. Happy Days :))

Grassroots Community Budget recording studio

Grassroots Support of local Hamburg Artists

Just a reminder to all of you out there that focus of our project is a community based recording studio. This is the main focus of of our fund-raising drive over the next few months :)) 

Who do we want to help?

Those who don't have the resources to take thier music to the world. Those short on cash, tied by family financial commitments, stuck in the same practice/street playing cycle. Those who find it hard to get heard and seen. Those who can't get a pratice room, who find it hard to keep a band going due to lack of resources. We simply want to help those people who want a chance to take thier music more seriously or who do already and can't get a foot on the ladder.

What do we want to create?

A budget recording studio to produce demo recordings for hard up musos and street musicians who normally wouldn't have access to these opportunities. Any genre is possible, from blues and soul to singer-songwriters or hip hop, though this is not really suited to say... death metal bands.

How would it work?

1. We set up a first meeting with the prospective artist who shows us the work they want to record, either played for us or recorded on their phone. We don't want to spoon feed people we want to enable them, thus some initiave on their part is necessary.
2. The artist will be asked to cover a Public Domain piece of music in their own style as part of honouring the heritage The Jelly Roll Factory is founded on.
3. Once they have done that we will arrange a studio appointment of 2 to 3 hours. The onus is on the artist to make the most of the time allotted and to be ready and professional.
4. There will be a token charge of xyz€. People take things more seriously when there is even a small amount of money in the game.
5. When the demo of 3, 4 or 5 songs is complete they will be given the master copy on CD rom or on thier USB stick as mp3 files. We will not store back ups unless asked to by the artist.

Jelly Roll Team Profiles - Phil Dalton

Phil Dalton - The Jelly Roll Factory

My day job is as a freelance business English teacher. However, I have carried a passion for music for most of my life. I started playing the blues harmonica when I was 14 and have played the guitar since 2000. I fell into Delta blues in my late teens and found myself listening to the haunting tones of Son House and Skip James. I was hooked!

 I have also experienced the hardships of playing; homelessness, poverty and frustation of not being able to go beyond your station. In South Africa, I ran an open house policy for musicians who passed through Jeffreys Bay, in the Eastern Cape. I also supported and represented some of these artists and was able to play with many exceptional people. On many occasions, I guested on my harp for Brent Kozak, a well-known, talented Knysna artist.

I studied French cuisine and spent many years in the hospitality industry, in both front and back shop positions. Later, whilst living in South Africa, I built and ran a small but successful construction and renovation business, with which I bought and sold properties, renovated and built properties.

Since moving to Germany, I have completed a Business Administration HNC/D with Edexcel in my spare time. I have also been playing music with friends and on the streets. I have written two books; a novel and a teaching aid.

I am a self-driven, intrinsically motivated person, who demands the best from myself and from others. I am passionate about this project and would gladly sit down with anyone who is interested in hearing about what we are doing.

A New Jelly-Roller picture version

So we have a new collage of the 70pma Jelly-Rollers

The stars of the show :)

The 70pma Jely-Rollers

70pma Jelly-Rollers

Peetie Wheatstraw - Legend profile

Peetie Wheatstraw (December 21, 1902 – December 21, 1941) was the name adopted by the singer William Bunch, an influential figure among 1930s blues singers. The only known photograph of him shows him holding a National brand tricone resonator guitar, but he played the piano on most of his recordings

A true great. As comfortable with a guitar or playing piano and crooning with a jazz band. I have been blown away by his recordings ever since I came across them. I have attached Gangster blues here, enjoy :))

To read more about Peetie Wheatstraw visit: wiki Peetie Wheatstraw

Six New Public Domain Jelly Rollers

**** Jelly Roll update: We are working on the financial side and getting all the costings and numbers sorted at the moment. We are also refining the recording process, doing feasability studies on the vinyl production and writing both risk analysis and the double marketing mix. :)****

We are very pleased to announce the addition of six new faces to our 70pma club (died before 1946)

Richard "Rabbit" Brown (c. 1880 – c. 1937) was an American blues guitarist and composer. His music was characterized by a mixture of blues, pop songs, and original topical ballads. On May 11, 1927, he recorded six singles for Victor Records. "James Alley Blues" is included in the Anthology of American Folk Music and has been covered by Bob Dylan, among others.

Jim Jackson (c.1884 – 1933) was an African-American blues and hokum singer, songster, and guitarist, whose recordings in the late 1920s were popular and influential on later artists.

Virginia Liston (1890 – June 1932) was an American classic female blues and jazz singer. She spent most of her career in black vaudeville. Liston recorded "You Can Dip Your Bread in My Gravy, but You Can't Have None of My Chops," and "Just Take One Long Last Lingering Look." She performed with her then-husband, Samuel H. Gray, billed as Liston and Liston. She also performed with Clarence Williams, singing with the Clarence Williams Blue Five on "You've Got the Right Key, but the Wrong Keyhole" and "Early in the Morning" and the Clarence Williams Washboard Band on "Cushion Foot Stomp," and "P.D.Q. Blues."

Laura Smith (unknown – February 1932) was an American classic female blues and country blues singer. She is best known for her recordings of "Gonna Put You Right in Jail" and her version of "Don't You Leave Me Here". She led Laura Smith and her Wild Cats and also worked with Clarence Williams and Perry Bradford. Details of her life outside the music industry are scanty.

 Mamie Smith (née Robinson, May 26, 1883 – September 16, 1946) was an American vaudeville singer, dancer, pianist and actress. As a vaudeville singer she performed in various styles, including jazz and blues. In 1920, she entered blues history as the first African-American artist to make vocal blues recordings. Willie "The Lion" Smith (no relation) described the background of that recording in his autobiography, Music on My Mind.

Johnny Dodds (April 12, 1892 – August 8, 1940) was an American New Orleans based jazz clarinetist and alto saxophonist, best known for his recordings under his own name and with bands such as those of Joe "King" Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Lovie Austin and Louis Armstrong.Dodds (pronounced "dots") was also the older brother of drummer Warren "Baby" Dodds. The pair worked together in the New Orleans Bootblacks in 1926.