When James “Bubba” Norwood graduated from Lincoln High School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1961, he was already a drummer, but he didn’t think he was much of one.  Ike Turner thought differently and hired him to play drums for both the Ike & Tina Turner Revue and Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm. But […]

By Nick Loss-Eaton This Friday will be the last “Bandcamp Friday,” a day when Bandcamp takes no cut for sales of music on its platform, so Music Maker has decided to blow it out. In addition to my usual recommendations (and see social media for more), we are offering 20 percent off of the entire […]

This summer marks a milestone for the Music Maker Foundation. For the first time, we will have three exhibitions on view at three different museums around the South. “Our Living Past” is already on view in the Museum of the Birthplace of Country Music in Bristol, Tennessee. In June, the “Hanging Tree Guitars” exhibition will […]

As it did for every touring musician, the pandemic changed everything for Dom Flemons, a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a 15-year friend of the Music Maker Foundation, and a member of our board of directors for almost 12 years.  For all of those 15 years, Flemons’ live shows and education programs have […]

By Gabi Mendick Ring up Benjamin Tehoval and you might be taken aback by the thick, jovial French accent on the other end of the line. When you listen to Benjamin’s one-man-band take on the classic Roosevelt Sykes song “44 Blues,” you could reasonably assume he had deeper roots in the South, or had at […]