Robert ���Nighthawk' Tooms and Brad Webb perform in March 13 Bluesday Tuesday concert

March 07, 2012
Radio station KASU's next Bluesday Tuesday concert features Robert Nighthawk Tooms and Brad Webb, on Tuesday, March 13, 7 p.m., in the ballroom of the Newport Country Club, 703 Walker Drive, Newport. Admission to Bluesday Tuesday concerts is free, but KASU passes the hat to supplement the band's payment.

Radio station KASU’s next Bluesday Tuesday concert features Robert “Nighthawk” Tooms and Brad Webb, on Tuesday, March 13, 7 p.m., in the ballroom of the Newport Country Club, 703 Walker Drive, Newport. Admission to Bluesday Tuesday concerts is free, but KASU passes the hat to supplement the band’s payment.

Tooms, a 30-year veteran of the national blues scene, switches effortlessly between harmonica and keyboard in several bands, including his own band, The Wampus Cats, when not authoring articles for the American Blues News website. Webb is just as versatile on bass and guitar, and both are mainstays in the Memphis blues community. Tooms and Webb have backed up such greats as B.B. King, James Cotton, Little Milton, Blind Mississippi Morris, Bob Margolin, Reverend Horton Heat, Jimmy Thackery, Fred Sanders, Reba Russell, Eric Hughes, and Richard Johnston, whose contemporary classic, “Foothill Stomp,” was engineered and mixed by Webb at his own studio in Memphis.

Both Tooms and Webb can be heard as multi-instrumentalists in Fred Sanders’ final studio album, “I Believe,” released last September, and Webb can be heard on Eric Hughes Band’s latest, “Two in the Morning.” Webb helps run I-55 Productions, a record label dedicated to the promulgation of the Memphis blues sound. I-55 Productions has also purchased the Mempho label record catalog, featuring such artists as Willie Foster and the previous work of Sanders, the late Memphis bluesman who performed at least a half-dozen times for KASU blues events in Jonesboro, Paragould, and Newport.

KASU Bluesday Tuesday concerts are presented on the second Tuesday night of each month in the ballroom of the Newport Country Club, 703 Walker Drive, Newport. Admission is free, thanks to the sponsors--ASU-Newport, C and C Distributors, and KASU 91.9 FM--but KASU passes the hat to supplement the band’s payment. For more information about KASU’s live events, call station manager Mike Doyle at (870) 972-3486.