Aussie blueswoman Kara Grainger and American wild music man Kurt Strifle

Kara Grainger is an Australian-born, US-based blues woman who has played around the world.  She started her music career in a suburb of Sydney Australia when, at 16, as an accomplished blues guitarist and singer,  she and her brother Mitch Grainger formed the band "Papa Lips". They toured Australia and produced two studio albums heavily influenced by the sounds of Stax records and funky blues and soul from New Orleans. In 2008 she signed to Australian label and came to the US to record her debut solo album, "Grand and Green River “which stayed in the top 30 of the Americana Charts for 38 straight weeks. The rest is history – tours of Europe, Asia, the US, appearances on “Austin City Limits”, opening for Peter Frampton, Buddy Guy, Taj Mahal and Jonny Lang. Her fourth album, Living with Your Ghost,  will be released this Friday and we will preview it.

Mad. Insane. Crazy. Brilliant. Weird.  There are a lot of ways to describe Kurt Stifle and his various musician incarnations. Co-founder/writer for 80s punkers The Nip Drivers, he appeared in the notorious underground film “Desperate Teenage Lovedolls,” recorded  Destroy Whitey and Oh Blessed Freak Show. Three decades, multiple musical incarnations and billions of creatively firing neurons later, he is the leader of Kurt Stifle and the Swing Shift and has just released another album, The Pilgrim’s Guide to The River of Salvation, a 16-track rock opera that’s the latest twist of zany but laser focused inspiration from the composer, producer and guitarist’s freewheeling ever-evolving collective Labor Camp. The album is all about the journey, so we will hear songs from the  past 60 years of pop, from Dylan to Cheap Trick  and Black Flag. We will have Kurt. We will have the album. And we will have fun this Friday.