Charlie Musselwhite	Nick Moss	Guy Davis

Leading the list of BMI blues giants was harp player Charlie Musselwhite, who took home an impressive five nominations that included Album of the Year and Traditional Blues Album of the Year for his acclaimed Delta Hardware, as well as Song of the Year for "Church Is Out."

Irma Thomas	Big George Brock	Bobby Rush

Guitarist Nick Moss and his band the Flip Flops earned four nods, including Band of the Year and an individual mention for Moss in the instrumentalist catagory. Coming in with three nominations apiece were Guy Davis, Lil' Ed, Janiva Magness, Irma Thomas and Big George Brock, who is up for Traditional Blues Male Artist of the Year.

James Hunter	Marcia Ball	Kim Wilson

Double nominees included acoustic blues artist Rory Block, veteran harpist Bobby Rush, British newcomer James Hunter (PRS), singer/pianist Marcia Ball and harmonica master Kim Wilson.

R&B pioneer Ruth Brown, who died Nov. 17, 2006, was posthumously nominated for Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year, along with singing legend Etta James and Chicago blues vocalist Zora Young.

BMI's 2007 Blues Music Award Nominees

Acoustic Album of the Year
Bob Brozman - Blues Reflex
Guy Davis - Skunkmello
Rory Block - The Lady and Mr. Johnson

Acoustic Artist of the Year
David "Honeyboy" Edwards
Paul Oscher
Rory Block
Guy Davis

Album of the Year
Charlie - Delta Hardware
Irma Thomas - After the Rain
Janiva Magness - Do I Move You?
Nick Moss & the Flip Tops - Live at Chan's

B.B. King Entertainer of the Year
Bobby Rush
Tab Benoit
Lil' Ed

Band of the Year
Lil' Ed & the Blues Imperials
Nick Moss & the Flip Tops
Magic Slim & the Teardrops

Best New Artist Debut
James Hunter (PRS) - People Gonna Talk
Slick Ballinger - Mississippi Soul

Comeback Album of the Year
Chicago Bob Nelson - Flyin' Too High
Jeremy Spencer - Precious Little
Jerry Lee Lewis - Last Man Standing

Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year
Marcia Ball
EG Kight
Barbara Blue
Janiva Magness
Shemekia Copeland

Contemporary Blues Album of the Year
Janiva Magness - Do I Move You?
Guitar Shorty - We the People
John Mooney - Big Ol' Fiya

Contemporary Blues Male Artist of the Year
Kim Wilson
Tab Benoit
Guitar Shorty
Ronnie Baker Brooks

Historical Album of the Year
Junior Wells - Live at Theresa's 1975
Hollywood Fats Band - Larger Than Life
Otis Rush - All Your Love I Miss Loving (Live at the Wise Fools Pub
Chicago)
Freddie King - Live at the Electric Ballroom 1974
John Lee Hooker - Hooker

Instrumentalist-Bass
Bob Stroger
Bill Stuve

Instrumentalist-Drums
Willie "Big Eyes" Smith
Richard Innes

Instrumentalist-Guitar
Duke Robillard
Kid Ramos
Lurrie Bell
Nick Moss
Guitar Shorty
Hubert Sumlin

Instrumentalist-Harmonica
Charlie Musselwhite
Kim Wilson
Mark Hummel
Billy Branch
Big George Brock
James Harman
Mitch Kashmar

Instrumentalist-Horn
Deanna Bogart
Kaz Kazanoff
Calvin Owens
Eddie Shaw
Doug James
Greg Piccolo

Instrumentalist-Other
Robert Randolph - Steel Guitar
Otis Taylor - Banjo
Guy Davis - Banjo

Pinetop Perkins Piano Player of the Year
Mitch Woods
Marcia Ball
Floyd Dixon
Henry Butler
Dr. John
Honey Piazza

Song of the Year
"Icicles in My Meat Loaf" - Ed Williams, Lil' Ed & the Blues Imperials
"Church is Out" - Charlie Musselwhite, Charlie Musselwhite
"Baptized in Dirty Water" - Chris Thomas King, Chris Thomas King

Soul Blues Album of the Year
Frankie Lee - Standing at the Crossroads
Irma Thomas - After the Rain
Jackie Payne & Steve Edmonson Band - Master of the Game
Johnny Rawls - Heart & Soul
Calvin Owens Blues Orchestra - I Ain't Gonna Be Your Dog No More
James Hunter (PRS) - People Gonna Talk
Trudy Lynn - I'm Still Here

Soul Blues Female Artist of the Year
Irma Thomas
Trudy Lynn
Sugar Pie DeSanto

Soul Blues Male Artist of the Year
Bobby Rush
Frankie Lee
Mighty Sam McClain
Solomon Burke
Jackie Payne

Traditional Blues Album of the Year
Charlie Musselwhite - Delta Hardware
Nick Moss & the Flip Tops - Live at Chan's
Big George Brock - Round Two

Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year
Zora Young
Etta James
Ruth Brown

Traditional Blues Male Artist of the Year
Charlie Musselwhite
Robert Lockwood, Jr.
Big George Brock

With the hard-driving single “Bring Me to Life” — whose music video has become nearly ubiquitous on channels throughout North America — many have classified the group as one of the crunching nu-metal breed; on the accompanying album, Fallen (Wind-Up), Evanescence reveals its roots in the Goth-rock genre blazed by the likes of The Cure. Add in 20-year-old Amy Lee’s vocals, and the sometimes epically dramatic arrangements, and the skewed pop visions of both Tori Amos and Meat Loaf become readily apparent.

Then, too, there’s the whole “Christian rock” tag, which the band has viewed with some bewilderment. In fact, after some puzzled remarks on the subject by lead guitarist/co-founder Ben Moody in Entertainment Weekly — complete with a certain four-letter word — the album was yanked from Christian retailers and charts.

“We’re definitely a rock band,” says Lee, “but the twist is that the band’s music is epic, dramatic, dark rock.”

Lee and Moody met as teenagers at a youth camp and clicked immediately, with Mr. Loaf again providing a kind of glue. “During some sort of recreational period held in a gymnasium, I heard Amy playing Meat Loaf’s ‘I’d Do Anything for Love’ at the piano,” Moody recalls. “So I went over to meet her, and she started singing for me. I was pretty much blown away, so I suckered her into joining a band with me.

“We have the same exact vision regarding what we love about music,” Moody says. “When it comes to songwriting, we finish each other’s thoughts.”

That loyalty to each other stood Moody and Lee in good stead as they began making their way through the Little Rock, Arkansas music scene in the late 1990s. “It’s typically death metal or really soft, older-people music there,” says Lee. “I don’t even know of any local bands that have female singers.”

The pair eschewed live shows in favor of releasing their own EPs — an odd strategy that slowly built them a following. “A lot of it developed by being elusive,” Moody remembers. “The second song we ever wrote was this seven-minute, ridiculous Goth anthem called ‘Understanding.’ And for some reason, the local rock station decided to play it a lot. We gained this popularity around town, even though no one knew who we were or where to find us. It was because we could never afford to play a show. It was just Amy and I —- and we couldn’t pay any musicians.”

Once the buzz was sufficient to garner label attention, guitarist John LeCompt and drummer Rocky Gray were added to flesh out the group’s sound. The band recently added touring bassist William Boyd as an official member. Recording of Fallen took place in Los Angeles, where they were “able to carry out the intricate harmonies and orchestrations of the memorable material on Fallen ,” Moody enthuses.

The vividly emotive “Bring Me to Life,” powered by its appearance in the blockbuster film Daredevil , that highly theatrical video, and the addition of fellow Wind-Up act 12 Stones’ singer Paul McCoy helped Fallen move almost effortlessly into the Top 10. Moody says the song “is about discovering something or someone that awakens a feeling inside them that they’ve never had before. You discover there is a world that is bigger than just your safe bubble.”

Evanescence has spent most of the year on the road, currently touring in Europe after wrapping up a long U.S. trek in September. With follow-up singles “Going Under” and “My Immortal” the group remains committed to making sure its vision and aims remain intact.

“We’re very sincere about what we do,” Moody says. “There’s so much pre-packaged teen angst these days in music. That’s not us. We’re not trying to sell an angle; we’re just here writing from our heart.”]]> 2004-12-01T17:00:00-05:00 http://www.bmi.com/musicworld/entry/233233 Artists, Beatles, The, Carey, Mariah, Cerf, Christopher, Jacobs, Paul, Lopez, Jennifer, Meat Loaf, Musical Styles, Film-TV, Musicworld, Feature As any parent knows, when a child gets a favorite song stuck in his/her head, the family better prepare to hear it requested, played, sung and repeated. Over and over and over and . . . Ever been trapped in a car with a kid on the hundredth reprise of "The Wheels on the Bus"?

That's when you need to turn to people like Christopher Cerf and the musical team at Between the Lions. They're composers and producers of kid-friendly music that adults dig, too, as can be heard in the new series seen daily on 300 PBS stations nationwide. Aimed at Sesame Street "graduates" who know their alphabet and seek to conquer the basics of reading, the series, now in its second season, is a hit with both kids and critics. The show's been endorsed by the National Education Association, won a TV Critics Award, and recently received three Emmy awards (out of seven nominations) for outstanding children's programming. Books and toys featuring the series' characters are available, and an album of music from the show is being planned. And here in cyberspace, an action-packed web site from WGBH, the show's co-producers, is filled with educational games and downloadable music videos (www.pbs.org/lions).

As described by Cerf, who spent years developing the series with his partners at Sirious Thinking Ltd., it's a concerted - and concerned - effort to create material that adults can enjoy with their kids for greater learning potential. The BTL team, he says, "involves really top talent, people who could write for adults or kids but have a kids point of view, and love - love! - being silly and writing good music."

Among the contributors to the musical mayhem are Sarah Durkee (she's written for the l National Lampoon and Roger Daltrey) and Paul Jacobs (whose credits range from Meat Loaf's touring band to the Van Cliburn competition), both of whom, with Cerf, created classic kid tunes for Sesame Street. Also on board is Thomas Z. Shepard, multiple Grammy Award-winning producer of original Broadway cast albums, classical works, and the very first Sesame Street album, in 1970.

As Shepard relates, it's especially gratifying to be composing for this new educational project. "As much as I love producing - and I do love it - generally it's polishing and refining the creative efforts of someone else. And it's very refreshing at this age and stage to be polishing and refining my own creative work." Now, he's the man behind "Monkey Pop-Up Theatre," songs and scenarios written around specific phonic sounds, to great comic effect.

If the visuals sometimes grab the viewers' attention, anyone who listens closely to the songs will quickly realize just how much care and expertise goes into them. "What amazes me about some of the music," Cerf asserts, "is that the musicians on it are absolutely world-class musicians and singers who are very well known in the industry, so that makes it lots more fun for us, too."

As an example, he cites the gospel-style group Martha Reader and The Vowelles who, true to their name, can only sing vowel sounds. "The women who sing the Vowelles's songs have sung with Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez and Whitney Houston," Cerf says. "They're able to sing anything really well - and so the music comes out really authentic."

In the course of watching Between the Lions you might hear a Motown-styled song called "Double-O, Oo" ("If you learn the title of that song," Cerf explains, "you've learned the phonic lesson"), a blues tune from B.B. The King of Beasts, or c&w diva Tammy Lionette going over the top with grief about how some letters don't sound like their name. "That's where parody works for adults and, at the kids level, it's just silliness," Cerf explains. "She's singing about the W sound but it's like the end of the world. And that's a good joke."

For the generation raised on Sesame Street, the Beatles and Doctors Seuss and Spock, the importance of sharing music, humor and warmth with their kids is not taken lightly. The musical team at Between the Lions makes that magic happen on a daily basis - a pretty neat job, Cerf agrees. "It's hard work," he admits, "but we're having an incredibly good time. Any complaints are not accepted."