Smiley Tillmon Featured in Blues Blast Magazine

Read a feature about Smiley Tillmon and his current band, published in online zine BluesBlast.com, written by Blues historian Bill Dahl, with photos by Roman Sobus.

"It’s a reasonably safe bet that if you live anywhere in the Chicagoland area—the Loop, outlying neighborhoods, far-flung suburbs, any side of town—the Smiley Tillmon Band will find its way to your neck of the woods for a gig before too many weeks pass. They’re that busy.

“A couple of weeks ago, I did five in a row, but I can’t do that,” says Tillmon. “At my age, I can’t hack it because it takes too long to recuperate. But we do very well. We do about two or three nights a week. It’s good.”

There’s an obvious reason why the guitarist’s booking schedule is so jam-packed. As his nickname indicates, Smiley knows how to have a good time and makes sure his audience does too. After 55 years of playing the local blues scene, he remains happy to serve up the blues and soul standards that people never seem to stop craving. Tillmon does them his way, and his band—guitarist Kate Moss, bassist Tom Rezetko, and drummer George Baumann—provides just the right grooves to make Smiley smile... READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE