With her soaring vocals and riveting guitar work, Ivy Ford is one of the musicians that makes the Chicago blues scene so strong.
And given the impact that Ford and other female musicians have made, it was fitting that Ford came to perform on March 8 at The Venue in Aurora, which happened to be International Women's Day.
Along with playing original songs, she also paid homage to those musicians who have influenced her.
Chicago area musician Ivy Ford performs her song "Time to Shine" March 8 at The Venue in Aurora.
Chicago area musician Ivy Ford performs her song "Tell Me You're Sorry" March 8 at The Venue in Aurora.
Chicago area musician Ivy Ford performs the Jimmy Reed song "Baby What You Want Me to Do" March 8 at The Venue in Aurora.
Those in the audience had the chance to hear one of her songs that she hasn't recorded yet, "Love Shouldn't Hurt."
The evening also was a family affair as Ford's daughter, Vivian, joined her on stage to close out the evening, a lovely end to a captivating night of music.
Nashville musician Sarah Clanton is the type of musician who likes to connect with her audience as she performs.
Clanton will perform at The Venue in Aurora on March 6 along with Christina Eltrevoog. Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8 p.m.
Tickets range from $12 to $15, available at themusicvenue.org. The Venue is located at 21 S. Broadway Ave. in downtown Aurora.
On March 7, Clanton will perform at the Friendly Tap, 6733 Roosevelt Road, Berwyn, with Robinlee Garber. The free show starts at 8 p.m.
I had the chance to talk to Clanton about her current projects.
Q – It’s interesting. I saw you perform at The Venue in March 2023 and you of course will be performing March 6 at The Venue. I guess it shows that when people come to see you perform at The Venue, they can count on spring being just around the corner.
It is kind of funny. I'm not really sure what keepsbringing me back the same week in March.
Q – When I last saw you at The Venue, you were talking to the audience about what inspired you to write a certain song and was just generally interacting with the crowd a lot. Is that important to you, to connect with the audience?
I'm classically trained and when you're in orchestra, you don't look at the audience. Connecting with the audience definitely took some work.
It is interesting how it's involved into this conversation with the audience. I do tend to really like a listening environment.
I have toured solo for a long time and I do a ton of house concerts. And it does feel really good to connect with the audience and kind of see what comes of it.
There's a lot of circumstantial hilarity that occurs, depending on how much people want to interact.
Now, I've got to get good at creating a sing-along or something.
Q – It does seem like there are more cello musicians out there these days. I understand that seeing Ben Sollee at Bonnaroo in 2008 provided a spark for you on what you could do with a cello.
It never occurredto me to sing with a cello. I just hadn't seen it.
Sometimes you have to see somebody do it to be like, "Oh, I guess this could be something to try out." So I started doing that and it felt like the puzzle pieces finally clicked.
Q – You started Tunedough®, an educational platform for independent songwriters seeking to own the rights to their work outright. You must have seen the need for such a platform.
So I had a record deal and the daythe album came out, the FBI raided the offices of the parent companythat owned the company that I was signed to because the owner was convicted of a $200 million Ponzi scheme.
I knew I needed to lawyer up to get my intellectual property back, which I did. And in the process, I found a website to log into where my royalties hadn't been collecting.
It just fired me up. I wanted to create a self guided course that music makers could take at their own pace so they could learn what there is actually to collect in a song.
Q – And have artists in turn thanked you for doing this?
Yeah. I have a friend who is a singer-songwriter. She went through my course and she just realized she hadn't signed up for one platform called SoundExchange and she found like $1,000 that was just sitting there.
Q – You released a new song, “Looks Like Love,” last June. Are you working on any new songs these days?
I am. And I am so glad you asked, becauseI definitely feel like in building my company, that's taken some attention away from my writing and this year, I'm trying to focus more on fewer things.
A couple of years ago, I had the idea to do this album "Shadow Work." And I thought maybe I would do this companion album called "Light Work."
I'm writing this record about the paradox. You can't have the bitter without the sweet and vice versa.
I think a lot about what I want to get up on stage and sing about every night.
Q – What would you like for people to get out of your music?
Songs, I feel like, take on their own life. I had one of my most magical musical memories happen at The Venue.
The first time I came and played there, this woman came up to me at the merchandise table after my show and said to me, "I looked up your music before we came to see if we wanted to come to the show tonight and I found this song of yours called 'Silver Lining' and we used to call my sister the queen of silver linings. And she passed away four years ago and the song has really helped me."
And I couldn't help but tear up. I had no idea my song was out there doing this.
I had no idea my song was helping this person in this way. It's kind of a leap of faith sometimes when you're writing music.
My heart just explodes at the thought that something I write is out there having it's own little life in someone else's life and helping them in some way.
Q – I was just thinking about your story about how you were inspired to play the cello on stage. Has anyone been inspired to start playing the cello because of you?
I hope so. I do hope so.
I have had a few women come up to me and tell me they play cello too but that they can't sing and play.
And I tell them to just give it a try and that singing and playing a cello is not that different from singing and playing a guitar. There are fewer strings on a cello.
Anyone who has ever seen Chicago singer and guitarist Melody Angel perform live knows the energy that she creates on stage.
I witnessed it for myself when I saw her perform last August at The Venue in Aurora. She most certainly will bring that same energy when she performs March 8 at SPACE, 1245 Chicago Ave, Evanston.
Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are available at ticketweb.com.
I had the chance to talk to Angel about her upcoming show.
Q – It is great to talk to you. I saw you at The Venue in Aurora last August and you and your band put on an amazing show. You are such an energetic force on stage.
I posted a video of you covering the Albert Collins song "If Trouble Was Money” at that show and it has to date more than 41,000 views on my YouTube channel and it is the most popular video on my YouTube channel.
Oh, that's cool. That's cool.
Q – As far as doing that song, was there something in particular that you wanted to add to that song?
Well, it's just one of the first blues songs that I learned and listened to on YouTube, actually. I listened to Gary Clarke Jr.'s version and that led me back to Albert Collins.
I've been playing it for years in my live shows. It's one of my favorite songs to do live.
It just resonates with me, as an artist trying to make ends meet. So yeah, I just connected with the song and started playing it.
Q – The night also was a family affair as your mom was singing backup vocals and playing the tambourine. I understand that when your mom first heard you singing, that gave you the confidence to pursue a career in music.
Yes. My mom, she sang in church and she was involved in musical theatre and she did commercial jingles.
I was still in a walker when I was in the studio with her as she was doing Pepsi commercials. I was one or two years old.
When I finally sang in front of her, it was a big deal for me. And so her reaction was going to mean a lot for me.
And it was just a really positive reaction and it gave me a ton of confidence because she had done so much. So that kind of changed it for me.
Any time we have a show where she can, she does sing background vocals for me. And so we travel the world together and it's great, because she's my best friend.
Q – But is she your manager as well?
Yes. You got to go with people who believe in you.
I just needed somebody who was going to stick with me, no matter how things were looking.
Q – In the 2017 documentary on you, “Black Girl Rock,” you talk about the importance of being true to yourself. Eight years later, hopefully the journey has become a little easier for you.
Not really. The industry hasn't changed, so what you have to do is just navigate it.
I still struggle to get gigs. It is what it is because the industry hasn't changed.
The way the industry looks at a black woman who plays guitar and leads her band is very different from how men are looked at and how white women are looked at for doing the same thing.
That's the industry. And they will tell you to your face that they can make more money with other people than they could with you.
And that's just the reality. And in eight years, that hasn't changed.
So that's why I'm kind of always on the outskirts just trying to make ends meet and get as many gigs as I can to keep going. It's very unfortunate, but that's how the industry is set up.
Q – That's depressing.
Yeah. But I'm no longer trying to pretend like everything's all good.
People ask me all the time, "Why aren't you on this tour?" or "Why aren't you at this festival?"
Because they say no. It's not because I don't ask.
And I think more people, especially fans of mine, need to know that. I do everything that I can possibly do.
But at the end of the day, if they don't value me as an artist, I'm not going to be hired. That's just the way it is.
Q – Well, I guess that kind of answers my next question. I was going to ask if performing at the Byron Bay Blues Festival in Australia was a turning point in your career?
It was fun, but no. I got great reviews and I always get a great reception from the crowd, but that's a pretty constant thing that happens when I perform.
I still have to struggle to get the next gig. It's the mentality of the industry.
And that's what you have to fight against and find some way through. And I haven't figured how to get around the gatekeepers yet.
Whenever I can figure that out, then maybe I can have a full career.
Q – You will be at the festival for the third time in April. It looks like a pretty impressive lineup, with Chaka Khan and Gary Clark Jr. among the other artists that will play there.
Yeah, it's always a good time. I always enjoy myself there.
Peter Noble, who is the promoter of it, he believes in me 100%. He's always been extremely supportive of me and my career.
It's just an honor to be invited back and to be able to, at least for a few days, pretend like I made it. I get to be on big stages, so I can run around and have fun with my band.
I'm going to enjoy every day of it.
Q – Of course, one of your influences is Prince. In a video about the history of Chicago blues, you talk about how you watched the movie “Purple Rain" when you were 7 years old. How has he influenced your music?
Well, he's the reason why I wanted a guitar. The movie was on because my uncle brought it over.
I just sat down and started watching it. I probably wasn't even supposed to, but they didn't notice I was there.
But I saw the guitar and saw how it sounded. It was just the most beautiful sounds I ever heard.
And I just wanted to make those sounds. That's what I remember.
So I asked for a guitar back then. But I wouldn't get it until I was 15, just due to money issues and having that extra expense.
Once I got it though, I was obsessed with it and I taught myself how to play. And I was doing shows at age 16 with my band.
And I never stopped after that.
Q – You grew up on the south side of Chicago. Coincidentally enough, I recently interviewed another person who grew up on Chicago’s south side, Meagan McNeal. She performed at The Venue in Aurora a few weeks ago.
Your cousin on your mom’s side is Otis Rush. Do you feel in a way that you were born to play the blues?
I think when I was younger, when they would talk about Otis, I don't think I really put two and two together. I was listening to R&B and hip-hop and rock and everything but the blues.
When I really started to pay attention to the blues was when I got my guitar. It's just a natural process.
But by the time that happened, he was really sick. So it was really hard to see him and talk to him.
When I finally was performing, he never got to see me play because of his health issues. So that's a sad part of it.
But I do believe if he could see me now, that he's proud of me. I'm really close to his sons and they tell me about him all the time.
Q – During that same video about the history of Chicago blues, you talk about the importance of teaching about the history of black history as it pertains to music. It does seems like the general population doesn’t realize the history of black female guitarists. Sister Rosetta Tharpe influenced musicians like Little Richard and Johnny Cash. And then there’s Elizabeth Cotten and Memphis Minnie.
And I understand Peggy Jones co-wrote many of Bo Diddley’s early songs.
Maybe that's part of the reason the industry is the way it is.
Of course that's a huge part of it. Sister Rosetta Tharpe created rock 'n roll. Chuck Berry even said it.
And so did Bo Diddley and Little Richard. The rhythm, the guitar rhythm that she created is the skeleton key for rock 'n roll music.
They all admitted that, but it still got lost in history because the men were put forth as the creators of it. Instead of being looked at as pioneers, we're looked at as the odd one out and that is insane.
I just want to make music. I really didn't want to have to fight for every little scrap to get the opportunity to get a gig and most of the time, you're paid less than everyone else any way.
We just have to keep navigating. I've survived this long, so I'll just keep doing what I do.
I also act and I also do voice-over work. I do whatever I can do to keep going.
