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Uptown Music Collective’s 3rd Street Blues band is Memphis bound in 2018

The Uptown Music Collective is gearing up to take their Community Performance Group, the 3rd Street Blues Band, to participate in the in the International Blues Challenge’s Youth Showcase in Memphis, Tennessee. The International Blues Challenge (IBC) is a yearly event organized by the Blues Foundation, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Memphis Tennessee, which is dedicated to preserving the history of the Blues. Held over a five day period, the yearly competition attracts Blues bands and solo artists from all around the world who compete for recognition, awards and prizes. This year’s event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 20, 2018.

Since 1997, the Billtown Blues Association, a local affiliate of the Blues Foundation, has chosen one band and one solo artist each year to represent our area. Many local artists and bands have made the trip over the past 20 plus years. This year they have agreed to sponsor the application for a group of students from the Uptown Music Collective to represent the Billtown Blues Association in the IBC Youth Showcase. The Youth Showcase, a part of the International Blues Challenge, is a showcase for young people under the age of 21 which gives them the opportunity to showcase their talents in a Blues club on the world famous Beale Street in Memphis for blues fans from all over the world.

In January of 2018 the Uptown Music Collective proposes to load seven students with an average age of 15, and four members of the staff, into the Uptown Music Collective van for a highly educational musical journey into the Deep South. Departing on Jan. 17, 2018, the van will travel to Nashville for an evening of touring, hanging out, and a possible gig in Music City, before continuing on to its primary destination of Memphis. There the students will perform on historic Beale Stree and watch the preliminary rounds and finals of the Blues Challenge. After a few days in Memphis, the Collective van will head down Highway 61 into the Mississippi Delta where the students will stay at the historic Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale Mississippi. There they will soak up the sights and sounds of the cradle of the Blues, searching for Robert Johnson’s grave and touring the Delta Blues Museum, before making the trip home.

The Collective’s 3rd Street Blues Band is comprised of Alexis Carnevale (vocals), Cade Palmatier (guitar), Justin Warrender (guitar), Shayne Williams bass and vocals), Izzy Brumbaugh (keys), and Tate Berkey (drums). Formed in the summer of 2016, the group has performed at festivals and venues throughout North Central Pennsylvania specializing in traditional and modern female fronted Blues music, including opening up the highly respected 2017 Billtown Blues Festival. Since their start, the 3rd Street Blues Band has carved a powerful reputation for themselves as a soul stealing, high energy, and hard driving Blues band. This will be the third Collective blues performance group to make the trip to the IBC Youth Showcase. The first, The Young Blood Blues Band in 2013, and the second, The Black Strat Blues Company in 2015.

3rd Street has been raising money to fund this trip for the past couple months and will be putting on two final fundraising concerts in the coming weeks. The first will take place 7 p.m. Thursday in Jeremiah’s Listening Room above the Bullfrog Brewery, 229 W. Fourth St.

The performance will feature sets from 3rd Street as well as special guests and UMC alumni, Gabe Stillman and the Billtown Giants. At 7 p.m. Jan. 5, 2018, the band will be hosting a “sendoff” concert at the Community Arts Center, 220 W. Fourth St.

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