J. Geils
J. Geils was born in New York City in 1946. In 1967, Geils organized the J. Geils Blues Band, an acoustic trio, while studying mechanical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The J. Geils Blues Band toured Cambridge, MA folk music clubs with Geils playing guitar, Danny “D.K.” Klein as bassist, and Richard “Magic Dick” Salwitz on harmonica. Joined by frontman Peter Wolf and keyboardist Seth Justman, the renamed J. Geils Band signed to Atlantic Records in 1970 and produced 14 albums for Atlantic and EMI over the next 15 years.

In the early 1980's, Geils's band attained commercial success with Billboard Top 40 singles Love Stinks and Freeze Frame. The group disbanded in 1985, and for the next seven years Geils says he “didn't even touch a guitar,” instead devoting himself to restoring sports cars. Geils released two records as half of the duo Bluestime in the early 1990's and released a solo album in 2003. The J. Geils Band reunited periodically since 1985, most recently for a string of concerts in the spring and summer of 2009.  

Geils died at home in Groton, MA on April 11, 2017.

Monster Mike Welch
Monster Mike Welch began playing the guitar at age 8; by the time he was 13 years old, he was performing at Boston's House of Blues. A musical prodigy, Welch was nicknamed “Monster” for his powerful playing and virtuosic technique.

Welch formed the Monster Mike Welch band and released his debut album, These Blues are Mine, in 1996 when Welch was 16. Since then, Welch has released several CDs and played with many blues and jazz greats, including Johnny Clyde Copeland, James Cotton, Johnny Winter, Hubert Sumlin, Junior Wells, and Sugar Ray and the Bluetones. Welch has been featured in USA Today, People, Ohne Filter Extra, Entertainment Tonight, and in many Boston-area broadcast programs and newspapers. Welch tours frequently, playing in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Charles Sawyer
Charles Sawyer cut his teeth on the blues of Slim Gaillard, and Fats Waller and Charlie Christian played on the 78rpm turntable in the Sawyer house in Woodsville, NH. Sawyer formed his first blues band in 1966 with drummer John Hoik. During the 1970's Sawyer became friends with B.B. King and wrote a biography of the blues legend that was published in in 1980, and later translated to German.

Sawyer has written articles on a variety of topics for Harper's Magazine, The Nation, and The Christian Science Monitor. In 1984, Sawyer was awarded a Writers Guild of America fellowship for most promising unproduced screenwriters. Sawyer is also an avid photographer. His photographic subjects have included intellectual life of Eastern Europe, life at all levels in Israel, Yankee culture, African American music, the tanning vats in Fez, Morroco, and the rodeo chutes of the Calgary Stampede.

Sawyer turned to software engineering in the 1980's, and began teaching classes in computer science courses at Harvard's Extension School in 1991. Sawyer first taught his “History of Urban Blues” for the Extension School in 2003; at the final meeting of that class, Sawyer realized a life-long ambition by playing with B.B. King when B.B. appeared as a guest lecturer on stage at Lowell Hall.

Sweet Willie D.
Sweet Willie D. grew up in New Jersey singing in Baptist church choirs. In 1975, Sweet Willie was living in Austin, Texas when he got his first taste of the blues at local juke joints. Since then, he has been a Baptist Deacon, a farmer, a martial arts instructor, a barbeque gourmet, a military man and a special education instructor. He performs in the greater Boston area with the band Continental Walk.

2120 South Michigan Avenue
2120 South Michigan Avenue is a 5-piece blues band in the tradition of the great Chicago bands of the 1950's and '60's. The band takes its name from the Chicago address of Chess Records, the studio where Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter Jacobs and other music legends recorded the songs that form the backbone of the band's repertoire. The band also plays Texas and Memphis blues, R&B classics, and bluesy ballads.