Rockin' Johnny Burgin at the Knuckle Down Saloon

Johnny Burgin is a Chicago based blues musican. Madison, WI is a short drive from the Windy City, so we're fortunate to be able to catch a lot of great Chicago blues players in our local clubs. Johnny played the Knuckle Down Saloon on Mar 7th, 2013. Bundled up my equipment, a Nikon D800 for the vids and 7000 for the stills, and headed to the club a little early to set up. 

I covered a gig of Johnny's at the Locker Room in Madison a couple of years ago. He remembered me and gave me a nice greeting when he saw me setting up. Very nice guy, and a great blues player. Joining him on stage were Madison musicians A.J. Love on 2nd guitar, Joey B. Banks on drums, and Beloit native Eric Sheffield on bass.

Lighting at the Knuckle Down was pretty dim. I set the D800 at 3200 iso and the 24 - 70/f2.8 Nikkor lens at f/3.5. Recording quality was 1080P at 30 frames/sec. Shot the stills with the D7000, 18-200 lens, set at iso 1600 on manual f/5.6 at 30th sec.

After Johnny's first set he invited local blues players to join him on stage for a jam session. One of my favorite local players, Paul Filipowicz, was first to get on stage. Paul is a Texas style blues player, like Stevie Ray Vaughn, and works really hard on stage. He and Rockin' Johnny were a great match. 

After Paul, Kyle Henderson sat in on vocals. After that Cadillac Rob took the stage, and was joined by Chicago native Hannah John Taylor on sax. It was a rockin blues night!

Rockin' Johnny Burgin "Chicago Jump"

A Snowy Day at the Capitol

Heard the snow plows working the street early this am as I lay in bed trying to catch a few extra zzz's. Heard on the news last night there was going to be a winter weather watch today, so it wasn't surprising to me when I peeked out the window and saw the snow flakes falling. Noticed most of the cars normally gone to work were still parked on the street, so I decided to call it a snow day at the shop and worked from home. But I did get out later on in the  day and got some grab shots around town ...

Later on I stopped by the shop to check on things and grabbed another shot of the snow still coming down on Atwood Ave.

Maria was supposed to fly in from Jamaica tonight and I was going to pick her up at Madison International at 10pm. She called a bit ago to let me know her connection out of Chicago was canceled and she'd be grabbing a Van Galder bus instead, arriving at the Union at 10:30. Not  bad, the bus always gets through. Welcome back to the land of snow white Maria!