W.C. Handy Award-Winning blues duo Paul Rishell & Annie Raines have received 2 nominations for this year's Blues Music Awards (formerly known as the W.C. Handy Awards).  They received a nomination for Acoustic Artist of the Year and their new live album, A Night in Woodstock, was nominated for Acoustic Album of the Year. Rishell & Raines plan to attend the awards, which will be held in Memphis on May 7.  Voting closes March 1 and voters must be members of the Blues Foundation.  For information on how to join the Blues Foundation, please visit www.blues.org or call 718.522.7171

Please join us in welcoming the new live CD!  Featuring special guests John Sebastian on harmonica and Bruce Katz on piano and keyboards, this is a night of old friends hanging out and making music together.  A live DVD is on the way soon.

CDs or downloads can be previewed and purchased from our Nimbit OMT (scroll down a bit on the main profile page), our website store at www.paulandannie.com, through Amazon.com, at regular ol' record stores, and of course at live shows.  Full-length songs can be heard in our Myspace jukebox above.

Thank you for your patience!  Let us know what you think.

From Dirt Road Blues, Paul Rishell's new instructional CD-Rom just released by Truefire. http://www.truefire.com/dirtroadblues/dirtroadblues.html

An excerpt from a myspace blog written by "lyfestile1":

"Every once in a while, I'll be on myspace tryin' to find interesting folks who just mite like the music I make. Then it happens. ... I go to "add friends" and I get the message __________  DOES NOT ACCEPT FRIEND REQUESTS FROM BANDS!!!!"  

…   "As an artist who's in a crew (band), I would like to know what atrocities my comrades have committed to cause this wave of  predjudice and discrimination. Why are emcees, singers, producers and musicians being shut out, while web cam hoes are damn near unblockable???"

I was shocked to find this out as well.  I was checking out profiles of friends of our friends, and I spotted a profile for William Shatner, of "Star Trek" fame.  Well, it seemed kind of campy to add him so I went ahead and put in an add request, only to receive the same message: "William Shatner does not accept friend requests from bands."  Oh.  I felt let down.  Don't musicians endure enough rejection as it is?

To add insult to injury, or at least to the first insult, I saw that he has over 32,000 "friends," including the "webcam hoes" as lyfestile called them as well as pretty much anyone and everyone else.  I'm guessing he doesn't know most of them personally.  So why are they more desirable as friends than an actual creative person who generates something besides virtual bodily fluids?  And what does this say about peoples' attitudes about musicians in general?  It's as though the people at Myspace are implying we're a bunch of grasping, desperate, attention-starved moochers who multiply faster than cancer cells and make a lousy fan base because we never pay for anything.  Even if that were true, it wouldn't change the fact that Myspace profits handily on the advertiser dollars thrown towards these prolific musicians' pages. 

Of course they've got us over a barrel, as usual.  No one would want to boycott myspace for fear of being kept out of the cage when the cheese comes in.  We musicians are a little too hungry, after all.  However, I have another idea:  I encourage all musicians to send messages to William Shatner pressing him for an explanation.  Ditto for anyone else out there who prohibits hardworking and earnest musicians from reaching out in the darkness.  Be creative, be original, and bug the hell out of them until they relent and change their insular ways.

Peace,

AR

Paul Rishell & Annie Raines have available dates in the following regions in 2007:

Northeastern US - anytime

Mid-Atlantic states - March, late May, July

Southeastern US - March, late May

Midwest  & South Central US - March, September

Northwest US - late July, early August

California - make us an offer!

Eastern Canada - April, June, early July

Western Canada - August

UK - October

Europe - November

HOW TO CONTACT: send us a message via myspace or our website contact form: www.paulandannie.com/content/contact.php

When Tone-Cool Records was bought by Artemis two years ago, we knew that some things would fall through the cracks.  It turned out to be one giant crack.  Use your imagination.

The first casualty of the transition was that we could no longer obtain copies of our first collaborative CD, 1996's I Want You to Know.  Eventually amazon.com and all the other retailers sold out of their stock and couldn't get any more either.  For the last year, only used copies have been available from online merchants.  We were particularly pained by this as the album has always been a big seller at gigs.   Recently, Artemis merged with Virgin North America.  There was some employee turnover and our little submerged CD finally floated up to the top of someone's list.  Thanks to Jesse, Greg and Rob at Artemis/V2, we finally have copies in hand and available for sale.  For more information, go to http://www.paulandannie.com/content/iwantyou.php

Now I know why I was destined to play music.  It was really just a means to an end...