Jesse Cotton Stone Band Live at Martin’s Downtown

Jesse Cotton Stone weaves together the stylistic threads of definitive regional traditions of Blues Music ranging from North Mississippi Hill Country Blues, Delta Blues, and Cotton Patch Soul Blues to the Urban Chicago Blues Roots of R&B, Soul, Funk, and Psychedelic Rock & Roll, bringing listeners through the doors of a Heart-Wrenching Boutique of Vintage-Toned American Blues Music with the relentless showmanship of a True Entertainer. He is a Colorado-born, American Highway-raised, Blues Man. A 3rd generation “Carny”, he spent the earliest of his years on the Carnival circuit training as a traveling entertainer from his parents and grandfather, who was a balloon clown. In 1994, at the age of 11 he began teaching himself to play blues guitar by ear.

“Though Colorado born, my Blues influence was rooted on the banks of the Missouri River, where my father’s side of our family had migrated from Texas during the Great Depression. We lived many years there throughout my upbringing and spent most summers going to Blues clubs, BBQs, juke joints, Blues festivals, and National Gospel Choir competitions, throughout the midwest while on the road with the carnival circuit.”

While working on the Midwestern carnival circuit with his father, Jesse heard the music of Jimi Hendrix and learned of the influence Blues music had on his hero. This experience inspired him to sell his childhood Matchbox Car collection for money to purchase his first electric guitar. Jesse began cutting his teeth on the live stage playing Blues jams and sitting in with anyone who would let him throughout the midwest and Rocky Mountain regions.

In formative years he had the honor of learning from and sharing greenrooms, jam sessions and concert stages with the likes of B.B. King, Lonnie Brooks, Magic Slim, Honeyboy Edwards, Russell Jackson, Kim Simmons, Jerry Ricks, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, John Cephas, Phil Wiggins, Link Wray, John Jackson, Koko Taylor, Derek Trucks, and the Junior Wells Blues Band, to name a few. Before forming the Jesse Cotton Stone Band, at the age of 14, he performed at Kansas City’s Grand Emporium, the Kansas City Spirit Festival, Kansas City Blues and Jazz Festival, and the Memorial Benefit Concert for the late Junior Wells held at Chicago’s House of Blues in ’98. The Jesse Cotton Stone Band played 5 nights a week headlining clubs, theaters, festivals, and motorcycle rallies all over the Rocky Mountains and the Midwest from ’98 to 2001.

After years of focusing primarily on Blues and acid rock, Jesse began studying new styles of music and branching out beyond his roots. “I had a friend named Dug Grow who would speak often about the amazing master musicians he’d made records with who would later migrate to my home town for years to come. Upon their arrival I began jamming, recording, and studying under Poly-Free Jazz Guitarist, Barry Wedgle, and Fusion Bassist, Kim Stone, on a constant basis. This was the beginning of my interest in Jazz and World Music studies. I learned about a more universal application to what I had already been exposed to by the Blues Culture. This is what lead me to a path of enriching my own musicology through disciplinary studies.” After formal Theory, Harmony, and Ear training in College, Jesse Traveled the World for about a decade, studying different musical traditions including the Classical Music of Northern India under one of the greatest musicians of all time, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. “I realized that, in the 1960s, an evolutionary process of musical expression had begun in America and was continuing through the expansion of modern music with reference to the most traditional form of American music – the Blues.”

In 2013, Jesse started his own multi-faceted record label and production company, Gypsy Magik Productions, in his hometown of Manitou Springs, CO, where he currently resides and actively continues writing, developing and producing a catalogue of new original music by the Jesse Cotton Stone Band, collaborative projects, a Blues Remix series, and his post-modern Electro-Industrial Blues Masterpiece, ALGODON – A Multi-Sensory Concept Project based on the musicological evolution of Jesse’s influences.

In the Summer of 2015, Jesse visited Clarksdale, MS – the Birthplace of American Blues Music – for the first time during production of the “Blue Dream Documentary”, directed by Charlie Smith of AWEN Productions, which entails the premise of a retrogressive chronological history of the Blues, paralleled with Jesse’s own journey of musical evolution.

Since that experience, Jesse has made the Southern U.S. a second home and has toured from Colorado to the Bayous of Southern Louisiana several times.

His “Juke Spree” tours have included performances at the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, AR., the Juke Joint Festival and Deep Blues Festival in Clarksdale, MS., not to mention the historic Red’s Lounge in Clarksdale, MS. and Teddy’s Juke Joint in Zachary, LA. Along the way he has jammed with, learned from, and shared stages with the likes of Cedric Burnside, Tab Benoit, R.L. Boyce, Deak Harp, Mark “Mule Man” Massey, Watermelon Slim, Robert Kimbrough Sr., Lightning Malcolm, Cameron Kimbrough, David Kimbrough,Trenton Ayers, Bill “Howlin’ Madd” Perry, and Mickey Rogers. All of which, have deeply impacted and influenced Jesse in his most current musical direction featured on his debut self-release “Fires & Floods” and follow-up live in the studio record, “…cupcakes and go f#ck yourself”.