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Special Guests
Saturday, October 4, 3003
Born in Orange, Texas, to a piano-playing family, MARCIA BALL grew up in Vinton, Louisiana, just across the Texas border. She began taking piano lessons at age five and at thirteen discovered the blues. After college, Ball fell in love with Austin, TX, after her car broke down on a trip to San Francisco. She decided to make Austin her new home. Ball has produced nine albums, including Presumed Innocent, which won the W.C. Handy Blues Award for "Best Album of the Year." Her sound, a combination of raucous boogie and heart-melting ballad, has been featured on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air. Marcia and her band have also appeared in performance with B.B. King and Della Reese for PBS’s In Performance at the White House. Marcia’s newest album, So Many Rivers, was released by Alligator Records.
JEARLYN STEELE started singing with her siblings in the aptly named group The Steele Children. The children sang in churches, concert halls, and on radio and television across the state of Indiana. Jearlyn left the Hoosier state to attend the University of Minnesota and, one by one, the rest of her brothers and sisters followed. For fun, they started singing together again as The Steeles. The public wanted more, and so the family turned to singing full-time, which they've been doing for more than a decade. In 1983, the Steeles sang in Gospel at Colonus at the Guthrie Theater. The show toured and ended up on Broadway in 1988. Jearlyn has recorded many local and national commercials, and has been heard on various albums with top acts like George Clinton and Prince. In addition to her music career, in1998 Jearlyn began hosting her own radio show at The Good Neighbor, WCCO (830 AM); her show, "Steele Talkin'," airs Sundays 8 to 10 p.m. About her career in radio, she says that the best part is getting to talk to people about their lives. "Everyone has a story, and we're all entangled. Our country's melting pot makes an incredible soup. It's up to all of us to decide how that soup's going to taste."
PETER OSTROUSHKO's latest album is Coming Down from Red Lodge, featuring The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band. There are nine previous, all beautiful and most interspersed with wry humor, with song titles such as "Rumba de los Holsteins," "Whalebone Feathers," "B-O-R-S-C-H-T," "Sluz Blues," "Too Tight Polza," "Corny Dog Ramble," and "Puppy Belly Dance," The Pig's Eye Reel," and "Unknowingly She Walks with Grace Among Tall Men." Asked how many albums, besides his own 10, that he played on, he said: "Played on ... well .... Hard to say, exactly .... Five hundred is the number that comes to mind. It would be right around that ...."
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