GUITAR PHENOMS ALLY VENABLE, SOLOMON HICKS BRING YOUTH, FIRE TO READING BLUES FEST

Two of the hottest young blues guitarist/singer/songwriters, Texan Ally Venable and New Yorker Solomon Hicks, will bring their energy and multiple talents to the Reading Blues Fest on Saturday, Nov. 23, at 1 p.m., in the DoubleTree by Hilton Reading Grand Ballroom. 

It will not be the first time the two have shared a stage, and they have discovered that their mutual admiration for the blues has resulted in a friendship that transcends their very different backgrounds.

Solomon Hicks
Hicks may not have grown up in the Delta or rural Georgia, hearing the blues in his mother’s womb, but his childhood in Harlem gave him a buffet of musical genres that fed his soul. His mother’s collection of albums by Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson, Santana, George Benson and many others nourished him. When she bought him a guitar when he was 6, he took to it immediately, and by the time he was 13 he was performing professionally.

“Both my parents were very supportive,” Hicks said. “My dad worked three jobs, but he never discouraged me from pursuing music. And my mom took me to the clubs, the Apollo Theater, the Cotton Club, the Lenox Lounge.”

Growing up in New York, he was only a subway ride away from Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Blue Note, B.B. King’s Blues Club and Grill -- iconic venues for every kind of music. Hicks heard everyone from Ruthie Foster to Derek Trucks, Wynton Marsalis to Popa Chubby.

While he enjoyed the orchestras and smaller jazz ensembles at places like the Cotton Club, he said, “as I got older the blues fit me better than bow ties and suits.” He found himself listening to the blues-influenced early rockers like Chuck Berry and Johnny Rivers, and they struck a chord with him.

After studying at the Harlem School of the Arts, Billy Taylor’s Jazzmobile program, and the Harbor Conservatory for the Performing Arts, he graduated from Talent Unlimited High School in 2012 and immediately embarked on his first tour in Europe and on the KISS Kruise with Paul Stanely and Gene Simmons.

Hicks opened for blues legend Buddy Guy and blues/rock singer Beth Hart, Mavis Staples, Samantha Fish, Robert Cray and many others. Later, in 2017 and 2019, he performed on the Joe Bonamassa Blues Cruise.

In 2015, he met Grammy Award-winning producer and bassist Kirk Yano, who became a close friend and still plays bass in Hicks’ band. Yano produced his album, Harlem, in 2020, his first on a major label (Provogue Records). The album won the 2021 BMA Best Emerging Artist Award.

“It’s very special to me,” said Hicks, “because it showcased where I was at that time, and everything I was listening to.”

While the COVID pandemic stopped his momentum for a little while, Hicks has been going full-speed-ahead in the past three years, with a stint on the Rhythm & Blues Cruise last year, and plenty of touring.

Now, at 29, he is about to release a new album on the same label, with special guests.

“What I want to put out into the world is not just guitar riffs; I want to do storytelling, collaborating with other writers,” he said. “There are so many negative things in the world. We have to learn how to get up from hard times. You have to look problems straight in the eye and keep on walking.”

Ally Venable
Venable and Hicks have much in common.

Both started playing guitar at a very young age (she was 4); both started performing as blues artists at 13; both are close to releasing a new album (hers is being released in the spring); both are big fans of blues cruises.

But Venable was born and lives far from Harlem; she is a native of Kilgore in East Texas (between Dallas and Shreveport, La.).

“The people in my family weren’t musicians, but they were very creative people,” Venable said. “My grandmother (paternal) taught me to sing; the first song I learned was ‘Over the Rainbow,’ and we’d sing it together. I sang in church a bit. My parents were music lovers, and they exposed me to all kinds of genres.”

But then she discovered the music of the renowned Texas blues man, Stevie Ray Vaughan (1954-1990).

“I connected with the blues, because it’s so emotional,” she said. “I looked into what his influences were (Muddy Waters, Albert King, Otis Rush, Jimi Hendrix). I want to introduce people who don’t know the genre into it, like Stevie did me.

“I see younger people, and people bringing their daughters to my show. It’s cool to see someone who looks like you onstage. A lot of younger people are starting to play guitar. There’s a new wave of blues music, which is exciting.”

Venable started two bands in her teens; one, at 13, was a “kid band”; the other, at 15, included adults and was managed by her father, who helped her recruit more experienced people and taught her how to keep a project together.

“I had the audacity to write songs and expect people to like them,” she said, laughing, when asked how a 13-year-old could start a band. “It was a great way to express myself. I was a really independent kid, and I was pretty sure of myself. But sometimes I felt sad, and insecure with other girls in my middle school. Music helped me get through those experiences and gave me confidence to be myself when I felt that no one liked me, or I didn’t have a lot of friends.”

Venable volunteered for Peer Advocates for Special Students (PASS) while still in high school, teaching them basic guitar strums on guitars donated by her friend Ken Chinn, of Chinn Guitar Project in East Texas.

“It’s therapeutic for them,” she said. “We need music for survival; it can soothe people and change the mood.”

She and her band performed in local bars, and toured on weekends, and after she graduated from high school she embarked on her first European tour with the Ruf Records Blues Caravan in 2019, and again last year. She and her band have shared the stage with Buddy Guy and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and she released her first album, No Glass Shoes, in 2016. Her latest album, Real Gone, came out in 2023, and the newest, still untitled, will be her fifth.

Venable performed on her first cruise in 2020, just before the COVID lockdown; it was the Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea Cruise. She will be joining the Legendary Blues Cruise this winter.

Her current band, who will be with her in Reading, consists of Randy Wall on keyboards, Ej Bedford on bass/synth bass and Isaac Pullido on drums.

For tickets and complete information, including a full schedule and artist bios, visit www.readingbluesfest.com.