A Good Time Coming To The Raue Center Friday and Saturday

This Friday and Saturday Raue Center will host two of Blues music’s finest performers for its Annual Blues Weekend. Friday, November 12 at 8:00 pm, Nick Moss & The Flip Tops will blow away the intimate Lucy’s Café stage for a night of gritty, down-home Chicago Blues. Following on Saturday, November 13 at 8:00 pm, Corky Siegel’s Chamber Blues will take the main stage with a fusion of classical and blues music so unique, you’ll have to ask, “Is it blues or is it classical?”

Friday Night 

Fresh off the release of their newest album, Privileged, Nick Moss and The Flip Tops will bring the house down at Lucy’s Café: A Night of Music, November 12 at 8:00 pm. Long before Nick forged his own direction, he spent time learning with some of Chicago’s finest musicians including Jimmy Dawkins, Willie “Big Eye” Smith and Jimmy Rogers. These experiences allowed Nick to launch his own band, The Flip Tops, and also his own record label, Blue Bella Records, in the late ’90s. Their first album, First Offense, was the start of something special. The next three album releases received numerous awards, nominations and accolades including Play It ‘Til Tomorrow named to “Decades Best Blues: 25 Great Albums That Defined the Past 10 Years” in Blues Revue Magazine 2010. Relentless touring and multiple strong studio releases have helped Nick Moss and The Flips Top build a substantial, devoted and raucous audience.

Privileged, is the eighth album for the band and takes advantage of Nick’s willingness to push the band to grow, explore and expand. Moss has written some of the finest songs of his career, and by stretching beyond the traditional blues idiom, he has expanded his sound without losing his identity. This is a band, and album, not to be missed.

Saturday Night

Following on Saturday, November 13 at 8:00 pm, Corky Siegel’s Chamber Blues will take the main stage with a fusion of classical and blues music so unique, you’ll have to ask, “Is it blues or is it classical?” Siegel has played with all the blues greats since Chicago is considered the blues center of the world. He is also the Siegel of the Siegel-Schwal Band.

Blues is not a sad form of music. Siegel explains on his website, "The rhythms in the old blues tradition stretch and shrink and vacillate to follow any mood or phrasing."

That's what is coming to Crystal Lake this coming weekend. .

Blues may be a somewhat misleading description of the music and as Siegel explains "The the rhythm of this music particularly swept me away when I was experiementing with it at home. I would always get caught up in a particularly hypnotic rhythm called the shuffle which is similar to a heart beat. I would play this over and over and over with little or no apparent variation and I would close my eyes and just start laughing. It made me feel so good that I could have burst open."