Welcome to the Austin Blues Society Web Site
We hope you will join us in promoting the Blues in Central Texas. If you are reading this, we probably already share a love of Blues music. Hopefully we can also share membership in our Blues Society! Our goal, with the help of blues musicians and fans like you, is to promote and educate about blues music, one of America’s oldest and most important musical genres.
Clifford Antone played a huge roll in providing a vibrant Blues talent pool and working gigs for many Blues artists for the past 3 decades. Consequently their wasn't a real big need for a "society" here in Austin. In the wake of loosing Clifford, a group of loving friends who admired his great contribution to the Blues community felt compelled to roll up their sleeves and set the wheels in motion to organize the Austin Blues Society. They held a successful kickoff event completed all the legal ground work for starting a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and nursed the first official Austin Blues Society through it's Freshman year.
On the coat tales of their success and hard work, the current incarnation of the board and volunteers have worked very hard to produce an amazing number of successful events and programs in our sophomore year. We've been able to stoke the Central Texas Blues Music scene with several monthly ABS sponsored events and provide monetary contributions through our fundraising events to several deserving not-profit community organizations including the Capitol Area Food Bank, and Music For Literacy Foundation.
We are participating in the International Blues Challenge and for the very first time Austin will send a band and solo or duo act to Memphis to compete on our behalf. We have dubbed the local competion the "2008 Heart O' Texas Blues Challenge." 14 bands and 7 solo/duo acts to will perform in our semi-final events and then 7 bands will perform at the finals. The events will be held at area venues in October and early November. The H.O.T. Blues Challenge committee is also organizing a Charter Bus of fans to Memphis to support our entrants and will be booking a block of rooms soon.
Please feel free to get in touch with us with any questions or suggestions you may have.
We invite individuals and businesses to apply for membership.
Society News:
Heart O’ Texas Blues Challenge Final Event !
Wednesday, Nov 12th @ Antone's
Doors @ 6:30 pm, show 7:00-11:00 pm
$10 for the Public $7 for ABS members
6 awesome blues bands will compete at this event. The winner will represent Austin at the 25th International Blues Challenge in Memphis!
Hollie Holloway Band, The Ellison's Texas Adventure, Preacher Keen, Mike Milligan & The Altar Boyz, JT Coldfire Band, Daniel Conti and Drawing Back. With special guest performance by Jimi Lee winner of the solo/duo category...more info
