50th ANNIVERSARY OF BLIND WILLIE'S DEATH

As you may know, 2009 is the 50th anniversary year of Blind Willie McTell's death. He died in the early morning of August the 19th (1959) in Milledgeville State Hospital. He was 56 years old.

More by chance than good planning, the North American edition of my biography of him (Hand Me My Travelin Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell) will be published on September 1. Chicago Review Press hardback, ISBN

I shall be doing a promotional stomp round a few bits of the USA - mainly in Willie's home state of Georgia - in October. I'm organising this now, and so far these are the firm dates:

OCT 8, 11am - Farmingdale State College, Long Island NY
Ward Hall Great Room, 2350 Broadhollow Road, Farmingdale NY 11735-1021
free admission, general public welcome

OCT 15, 7pm - The Douglass Theatre, Macon GA
355 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Macon GA. 31201
www.douglasstheatre.org/index.htm
tickets $15 (seniors & students $12) from box office / phone: (478) 742-2000

OCT 23, 7pm - Averitt Arts Center, Statesboro GA
33 East Main Street, Statesboro GA 30458
www.averittcenterforthearts.org/
tickets $18 from the box office or by phone: (912) 212-2787

I'm hoping that between Oct 8 and Oct 22 I can arrange a further sequence of talks in Georgia, in the other places that were significant for Willie - Atlanta, Athens, Thomson, Milledgeville and maybe Augusta. The talk will include playing records and slideshows of both vintage photos and photos I took while researching the book. If anyone has contacts at, or good suggestions for, best venues in any of these places, please let me know by posting a comment to this blog. All blog comments get moderated - ie I read them before deciding either to publish them or not - so any information you send me this way can be sent privately and in confidence if you'd like it to be. Many thanks.

PS. I'm also doing two final performances of Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues in the autumn: one at a book festival in Cumbria, England in late September and the other at the university in Statesboro the night before the McTell talk at the Averitt:

SEP 25, 7.45pm - Sedbergh Book Town Book Festival, Cumbria
details tba

OCT 22, 7pm - Georgia Southern University, Statesboro GA
details tba