In a career spanning over 4 decades, jazz/blues/gospel guitarist/composer Stew Cutler has established himself as a bandleader, composer and teacher. With 7 record releases to his credit as a bandleader and countless sessions as a sideman, Cutler’s prolific career is a walk-through musical history.

Stew Cutler was born and raised in New York City and through his innate musical talents, found the guitar at an early age. The guitar and Cutler were destined to be together and at 19 years old, Cutler landed his first job with blues legend Z.Z. Hill. Over time, Cutler immersed himself in studying music and soon thereafter was working with instrumental avant-garde artists Bobby Previte and Eliot Sharp. Cutler moved to Woodstock, NY and worked with bassist Harvey Brooks along with many well-known artists that were emerging in that musical kaleidoscope. 

Cutler has worked as a sideman with many musical greats including Percy Sledge, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett, Fontella Bass (featured on Bass' Grammy nominated album No Ways Tired), Earl King, Jimmy Castor and many more. Cutler has also worked with jazz greats David Sanborn, Bill Frisell, Lester Bowie, Charlie Hunter, Wayne Horvitz to name a few as well as artists as diverse as Meatloaf, Jeb Loy Nichols, David Fanshawe, Sweet Georgia Brown, and Jimmy Dale Gilmore among others. 

https://stewcutler.com/home

Abilene Bar & Lounge (map)

Doors 4pm, Music 7:30pm

Cover: $15

Special Thanks to Bop Shop Records. Check out https://bopshop.com/about-us

Stick Men is a progressive rock band created from musicians with extensive experience playing together. Pat Mastelotto and Tony Levin are the rhythm section of the legendary band King Crimson. Mastelotto is in demand all over the world as the premier drummer for progressive rock. Levin plays the unusual instrument, the 12 string Chapman Stick, in Crimson, and with Peter Gabriel and others. Markus Reuter is a composer/guitarist who designed and plays his own unique touch style guitar.

Tony Levin and Pat Mastelotto, the powerhouse bass and drums of the group King Crimson for some years, bring that tradition to all their playing. Levin plays the Chapman Stick, from which the band takes it’s name. Having bass and guitar strings, the Chapman Stick functions at times like two instruments. Markus Reuter plays his self-designed touch style guitar – again covering much more ground than a guitar or a bass. And Mastelotto’s drumming encompasses not just the acoustic kit, but a unique electronic setup too, allowing him to add loops, samples, percussion, and more.

CONCERT HELD AT LOVIN’ CUP BISTRO AND BREWS 300 Park Point Dr, Rochester, NY

Tickets: $30 advance / $35 day of show

Tickets on sale now!

For a real taste of seasonal cheer, nothing says joy to the world like Bill Kirchen singing "Daddy's Drinkin' Up Our Christmas!" 

Bill Kirchen and his Silent Knights will make a stop on their annual Honky Tonk Holiday Tour at Lovin' Cup on Monday 12/4.  Featured is a sleigh-full of rarely heard holiday numbers from the blues, rock 'n' roll and honky tonk bags: "Silent Surfin' Night," "Truckin' Trees for Christmas," "Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin," and more. But be ye not afraid, there'll be so much more than holiday songs of questionable taste; you can count on a truckload of dieselbilly classics, rockers, and country weepers to take the edge off the holiday fuss. So mark your calendars and check 'em twice - Santa Claus is back in town! Kirchen is touring with his all-star Texas guys - Jack Saunders on bass and Rick Richards on drums.

Bill Kirchen is one of the fortunate few who can step on any stage, play those trademark guitar licks which he created for the seminal Commander Cody classic, "Hot Rod Lincoln," and elicit immediate recognition.

As a founding father of the proto-Americana group Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen, Kirchen wrought a diesel-fueled guitar hook that drove their Hot Rod Lincoln into the Top 10 nationwide. Kirchen went on to the Grammys where he was nominated for Best Country Instrumental in 2001. 

He has recorded with Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Dan Hicks, Maria Muldaur, Hoyt Axton, Hazel Dickens, Gene Vincent and Link Wray, and  has toured the world as guitarist with Cody, Nick Lowe, Hoyt Axton and Emmylou Harris. 

Bill Kirchen was inducted into the Hall Of Fame of the Washington DC Wammie Music Awards in 2001, alongside Dave Grohl and John Phillip Sousa. He joined a remarkable list of prior inductees including Bo Diddly, Duke Ellington, Ruth Brown, Marvin Gaye, Patsy Cline, Shirley Horn, Emmylou Harris, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady.

His recent disc, Transatlanticana, entered the Americana Radio Chart Top 10 in 2018, joining his extensive catalogue of over 2 dozen albums, from the Commander Cody discs on through his current 12 releases on the Proper and Last Music Company labels. Bill’s latest releases are Back from the Ozone, a Lost Planet Airmen reunion CD out in October 2023 and, from 2021,  the LPs Waxworks and Tombstone Every Mile, along with The Proper Years and Tombstone on CD and in all digital formats, all on the Last Music Company label.

Washington Post:  "Seldom has traveling across the rock and country landscape been this much fun"

Guitar Player magazine: “The Titan of the Telecaster...cuts loose with some of the fattest, gnarliest low-down twang imaginable”

Rolling Stone: “A musical treasure, a fantastic player, and, in these roots-conscious times, very much a pioneer, Bill Kirchen is one of our best.”

Tickets: $30 advance / $35 at door

Presented by Lovin’ Cup & Bop Shop Records

For more than eleven years, Northcoast Americana band Hey Mavis has been weaving a musical tapestry and igniting a following of dedicated fans. With heartfelt vocals, honest songwriting, blazing instrumental solos, and an undeniable onstage musical chemistry, this quartet is the definition of great Americana music.

Banjoist/songwriter Laurie Michelle Caner and violinist/fiddler Eddie Caner formed Hey Mavis while serving as artists-in-residence in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Producer Don Dixon (REM/Smithereens/Red Clay Ramblers) “discovered” the group on a local Christmas compilation CD and went on to produce their first two albums, both of which hit the top 10 on the national Folk DJ-L radio charts and amassed favorable reviews across the globe. Hey Mavis’s third release, produced by Yonder Mountain String Band’s Adam Aijala, features guitar playing by Aijala as well as a title track co-written by Chuck Auerbach, who has written lyrics to several Black Keys songs.

Hey Mavis has appeared on NPR’s Mountain Stage, NPR’s Whad’ya Know?, PBS’s Applause and PBS’s Songs from the Center. The group has performed standing-room-only shows at the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival as well as nine consecutive sell-out concerts in their hometown of Akron Ohio. In 2018, Melissa Etheridge hand-picked Hey Mavis to be one of the headliners for her music cruise.

Hey Mavis’s latest release, Silver Ribbon Dream—Songs & Stories of the Ohio & Erie Canal, is a book/CD of original songs by Hey Mavis songwriter Laurie Michelle Caner with illustrations by nationally-acclaimed artist Leandra Drumm. Funded by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, reviews have ranged from “unconventionally beautiful” to “startlingly original.” Hey Mavis has scheduled performances of the work in cities throughout the East and Midwest through 2020, including appearances with several symphony orchestras. Concerts featuring the work include an exhibition of Drumm’s artwork alongside featured stories, history, and technology of the canal.

“This crew could single handedly ignite a whole new folk music scare. Killer stuff.” ~Midwest Record

Doors @ 6pm | $15 general admission
Show @ 7-10pm

Presented by Lovin’ Cup & Bop Shop Records

Featuring Mike Bond, Ryan Devlin, Gene Perla, & Adam Nussbaum

Ryan Devlin (sax) has performed with Terell Stafford, Dick Oatts, Jerry Bergonzi, Jerry Weldon, Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, the Florida All-State Jazz Band, and the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra. Now studying at New England Conservatory for a Master's Degree, and promoting his new recording "A Series Of Circumstances."

Mike Bond (keys) has performed with Savion Glover, Conrad Herwig, Mark Gross, Joe Ford, Bruce Williams, Joe Magnarelli, Duane Eubanks, Jean Chaumont, Billy Kilson, and Josh Evans. At Rider University, he accompanies singers during their lessons and provides vocal coaching. His new recording is "The Honorable Ones."

Gene Perla (bass) has recorded and/or performed with Elvin Jones, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Sonny Rollins, Sarah Vaughan, Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, and Stone Alliance. He's taught music and music business at Lehigh University and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City. Adam Nussbaum has recorded and/or performed with Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Gil Evans, Phil Woods, Michael Brecker, 'Toots' Thielemans, Gary Burton, Art Pepper, and Joe Henderson.

Adam Nussbaum (drums) has recorded and/or performed with Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Gil Evans, Phil Woods, Michael Brecker, 'Toots' Thielemans, Gary Burton, Art Pepper, and Joe Henderson.He's presented master classes at Berklee, NYU, SUNY, The New School, University for the Arts, and numerous conservatories around the planet.

Tickets: $20 advance / $25 day of show

No less an authority than Nels Cline, the high priest of art-rock guitarists, has called Mike Baggetta a “guitar poet.” That poetry, alternately gnarled and flowing, is on fine display in Main Steam Stop Valve, the second album by (and the decompressed namesake of) mssv, an experimental rock trio featuring Baggetta, the legendary punk bassist Mike Watt, and the versatile drummer Stephen Hodges.

The collaboration began when Watt, of The Minutemen fame, joined Baggetta and seasoned session drummer Jim Keltner to record an improvised jazz-rock album called Wall of Flowers, an eight-track romp from pastoral splendor to urban din and back again. When Keltner declined to tour, they brought in Hodges, whose credits as a player include Mavis Staples, Tom Waits, and David Lynch, not to mention Contemplating the Engine Room with Watt.

Solidified as mssv—some heretofore unimagined hybrid of a punky power trio and a dreamy experimental rock band—they released Main Steam Stop Valve, which blends industrial vigor and impressionistic languor into a lingering impression of “pressure, combustion, power, and hissing clouds of sonic poetry,” as Premier Guitar said. From the throttled surf guitar of “The Mystery Of” and the glimmering post-rock of “Every Growing Thing” to groovy, songful numbers like “Old Crow,” there’s no telling which way the band will turn at any given moment, a proposition that becomes a promise when they break down and reassemble these songs live, with an instinct for restraint and an openness to anarchy.

“…vintage twang in service of Americana-meets exploratory Jazz-psych…”
-Rolling Stone

“The chemistry is palpable, the vibe is loose, and the songs are all worlds unto themselves.”
-Aquarium Drunkard

“...stealthy, mysterious music…”
-New York Times

"…full of subversive surprises, hellacious skronking, string-scraping and a general hornets’ nest of fuzz-toned dissonance.”
-Slate Magazine

“Mike Baggetta is a genre-blurring guitar hero…at the forefront of an army of guitar innovators”
-JazzTimes

Tickets: $25

Stick Men is a progressive rock band created from musicians with extensive experience playing together. Pat Mastelotto and Tony Levin are the rhythm section of the legendary band King Crimson. Mastelotto is in demand all over the world as the premier drummer for progressive rock. Levin plays the unusual instrument, the 12 string Chapman Stick, in Crimson, and with Peter Gabriel and others. Markus Reuter is a composer/guitarist who designed and plays his own unique touch style guitar.

Tony Levin and Pat Mastelotto, the powerhouse bass and drums of the group King Crimson for some years, bring that tradition to all their playing. Levin plays the Chapman Stick, from which the band takes it’s name. Having bass and guitar strings, the Chapman Stick functions at times like two instruments. Markus Reuter plays his self-designed touch style guitar – again covering much more ground than a guitar or a bass. And Mastelotto’s drumming encompasses not just the acoustic kit, but a unique electronic setup too, allowing him to add loops, samples, percussion, and more.

Tickets: $30 advance / $35 day of show

The metaphor at the center of Henry Dumas’ short story “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” is the Afro Horn, an instrument so mythically potent that it simultaneously unites and empowers the African diaspora through the sounds of jazz.

Francisco Mora-Catlett and his New York-based jazz ensemble, AfroHORN, draws from the metaphor of theAfro Horn an imperative to explore, intone, and celebrate African cultures and their expressive, artistic, and political possibilities.

“The music is African; not African-inspired, not African-derived, not African-influenced,” Mora-Catlett pronounces emphatically, “it is African.”

Avant-garde cries of pleasure-pain, moments of soulful introspection, and densely interlocking rhythms all come together, illustrating the unity of African expression central to Mora-Catlett’s ideology.

In the 1960s, Dumas was stimulated by conversations taking place around blackness within the Harlem-basedBlack Arts Movement. Although he was influenced by artistic figures including Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez– Dumas was particularly inspired by Sun Ra. At its heart, the movement was about reclaiming blackness; about wresting it from the margins and placing it front-and-center. No apologies. No qualifications.

Mora-Catlett was born to an African American mother and a Mexican father. His parents, Elizabeth Catlett andFrancisco Mora, were both prominent artists. Mora-Catlett first encountered Dumas’ writings during his time with Sun Ra’s Arkestra in the 1970s.

For an AfroHorn jazz performance Mora-Catlett brings together: Aruan Ortiz on piano, Alex Harding on baritone saxophone, and soprano saxophonist Sam Newsome. Mora-Catlett, himself on drums, is augmented by the master Afro-Cuban percussionist Roman Diaz. Together, they explored the musical connections between the Caribbean, America, Africa, and Latin America – highlighting moments of congruency between each other.

Mora-Catlett’s project is a musical metaphor for the middle passage: a nexus, a site of negotiation, a place that unites the diaspora through a shared experience of in-between-ness. 

This performance is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Tickets: $25 advance / $30 day of show

PAKT recalls the fearless attitude and daring approach that originally defined progressive music: where the magic of the moment always triumphed over preconception. Templates be damned ... this music blazes its own path! This is truly exquisite fare, serving as a reminder to aficionados of what initially drew them to this most creative, visionary of genres.

PAKT is made up of fretless bass guitarist Percy Jones, guitarists Alex Skolnick and Tim Motzer, and drummer Kenny Grohowski. They are all very experienced players. Skolnick is best known as the lead guitarist in the thrash metal band Testament; he went on to freelance work, playing jazz with his Alex Skolnick Trio, and experimenting with World Music. Motzer has a long background in free improvisation as well, including the bands Bandit65 (with fellow guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel) and Orion Tango, plus many other recorded collaborations for his 1k Recordings label. Welsh bassist Jones (long time a New York resident) is known for his tenure in the jazz fusion group Brand X, collaborations with Suzanne Vega, as well as extensive studio work (especially with Brian Eno). Grohowski's recent associations include Imperial Triumphant, John Zorn, Brand X, Felix Pastorius & the Hipster Assassins.

PAKT is...
Percy Jones - bass guitar
Alex Skolnick - guitar
Kenny Grohowski - drums
Tim Motzer - guitars, electronics

Tickets: $25 advance / $30 at door

Forget the Nutcracker and Handel’s Messiah. For a real taste of seasonal cheer, nothing says joy to the world like Bill Kirchen singing Daddy’s Drinkin’ Up Our Christmas. Bill Kirchen’s annual Honky Tonk Holiday Tour is finally back at Lovin’ Cup Bistro & Brews on 12/6!

Featured is a sleigh-full of rarely heard holiday numbers from the blues, rock ‘n’ roll and honky tonk bags: Silent Surfin’ Night, Truckin’ Trees for Christmas, Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy, and many more. But be ye not afraid, there’ll be so much more than holiday songs of questionable taste; you can count on a truckload of dieselbilly classics to take the edge off the holiday fuss.⁣⁣⁣

Guitar Player Magazine dubbed Bill Kirchen the “Titan of the Telecaster.” Rolling Stone said he’s “an American treasure” and “one of our best.” No matter what you call him, Kirchen is a founding father of the Americana movement, now at the peak of his impressive career.⁣⁣⁣

Tickets: $25 advance / $30 at door

“Like all great blues men, MacLeod lives his music, and the songs are not just on the tips of his fingers and tongue, they are one with his being.”   – Blues Music Magazine

“One of the great blues artists……period!”   – Jorma Kaukonen

Doug MacLeod is known for his superb songwriting, guitar wizardry, warm soulful vocals, wit and unforgettable live performances. At the heart of a Doug MacLeod performance is his knack for storytelling, bringing characters-from the faceless to the legendary-to strikingly real life.  Doug is a multiple Blues Music Award winner, including the 2020 Blues Music Award for Acoustic Artist Of The Year and the 2018 Blues Music Award for Acoustic Album Of The Year ‘Break The Chain’. He is nominated for the 2021 Blues Music Award for Acoustic Artist Of The Year.

His new album with producer Jim Gaines will be released in 2021.

This concert is presented by Bop Shop Records and hosted by Lovin’ Cup Bistro & Brews.

Doors: 7:00pm / Show: 8:00-11:00pm
Tickets: $20 advance / $25 day of show