Chattanooga getaway

This past weekend wife and I took a little jaunt down to Chattanooga to see a good friend of ours, Ann Rabson perform at the Chattanooga Billiard Club. It's only a 2 1/2 hour drive from Nashville and a beautiful one at that. [I appologize for some of the pictures being out of line with their captions, but Blogger refuses to cooperate with my attempts to align them.]












We saw four award-winning singer/songwriters including Dalton Roberts,













Tom Horner,













EG Kight

and of course our friend Ann Rabson

Here they are together after the show.

Here are short bios of these fine performers:

Ann Rabson is a nine-time Blues Music Award nominee. She was inducted into the Boogie-Woogie Hall of Fame in 2003 in honor of her "lifelong dedication and contribution to the art of boogie-woogie piano." Ann has recorded 28 original songs among the tunes on her three solo CDs and her many albums with Saffire -- The Uppity Blues Women, the acoustic trio she co-founded in 1984. Her piano playing, expert guitar work and soulful vocals express the humor and pain of the blues.

Dalton Roberts picked up a guitar at the age of 13. His career took many turns, including one that led down the path of music. Besides being a musician and songwriter, this colorful Tennessean is a poet, philosopher and humorist. Dalton attributes his creativity to "taking good lines out of bad songs." He has written numerous songs and is a favorite in Chattanooga and beyond.

EG Kight, the "Georgia Songbird" is a five-time Blues Music Award nominee. Two of these nominations were for Song of the Year -- one for "Southern Comfort" and the other for "Nothing Ever Hurt Me." Koko Taylor recorded EG's "Fuel to Burn" on her Grammy-nominated album "Royal Blue." EG considers her writing a vital component of her artistry, sharing inspiration gathered from everyday life with the listener.

Tom Horner has played many roles in the music business. A singer, musician and songwriter, he is a two-time winner of Billboard Magazine's Annual Song Contest. He has collaborated many times with fellow songwriter EG Kight. The two artists received a 2004 Blues Music Award nomination for Song of the Year. Horner was the lead guitarist for Sweetwater during the early '80s. He continues to perform, record, produce and write with various artists in many music communities.

I studied with Ann in the early 1990s. I signed up for Blues Week, which is part of the Augusta Heritage Workshops, held in Elkins, WV. Ann was one of the piano teachers, and it quickly became evident that my skills and experiences put me on a par with the instructors instead of the students. So Ann and I became collaborators, jamming and trading stories.

It was past 2:30 a.m. when we finally returned to our motel. Sunday morning we slept late past the Comfort Inn's "free breakfast" time and took the scenic route home through Soddy Daisy and across scenic Rt. 111

and enjoyed a country breakfast at the Dunlap Restaurant in Dunlap, TN. Then we headed across Tennessee on Rt. 30 to Woodbury, where we had a milkshake at the McDonald's. Armed with sufficient nutrition, we continued westward to Murfreesboro where we picked up I-24 and finished the trip home to our patiently waiting cat Roger.