Joan Jett interview in the Jackson Free Press

The Jackson Free Press’ Neola Young talks to Joan Jett about her place in the rock ‘n’ roll business and her trip to Jackson this weekend.

So how did rock ‘n’ roll happen?
It just so happened, I asked my parents for a guitar for Christmas. It had to be an electric guitar—it couldn’t be a folk guitar; it had to be electric. And I thought they weren’t going to do it and they did. So they got me a little … guitar, a little Silvertone, I think it was, and a little amp, and I made a lot of noise the first few days, and then I went to take a guitar lesson with a guitar teacher. And as a kid, you think you’re going to learn it all in one day, and I remember going in and (being) very exuberant and saying: “Teach me how to play rock ‘n’ roll.” And the guy looked at me like I was from another planet, you know? I just think the whole thing with the electric guitar and maybe, he didn’t care at all. My take was that he did care, that he didn’t want to teach me rock ‘n’ roll because I was a girl, and so he tried to teach me “On Top of Old Smokey.” Read the full interview HERE

Actress Kristen Stewart to play Joan Jett in upcoming Hollywood movie “The Runaways”

From MTV NEWS By Brian Warmoth
All that vampire romance in “Twilight” and “New Moon” has evidently pushed Kristen Stewart over the edge. She’s shredded up and dyed her hair to star in the new Joan Jett biopic “The Runaways” and seems to be slipping comfortably into the dark and dangerous look.

Stewart is currently filming “The Runaways” in Los Angeles with co-star Dakota Fanning, who will hopefully also go off the fashionable deep end to come out to the world as an adolescent. The movie, tagged for a 2010 release, features the pair of actresses as Jett and Cherie Currie, who formed their landmark all-girl band in the 1970s and went on to inspire bands from Blondie and Garbage to Bikini Kill and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

She definitely has the look right, but moving from heartbroken vampire lover to an onstage pre-“Cherry Bomb” Joan Jett should be quite a leap. Stewart and Fanning will reportedly be backed up by Stella Maeve as Sandy West and Alessandra Torresani as Lita Ford. Floria Sigismondi, who has music video credits working for David Bowie and Marilyn Manson, will direct.

5 Questions with Carolina Liar

Check out 5 questions with Carolina Liar on VH1.com now!

Eddie Cotton joins Jubilee!JAM lineup

Mississippi’s own bluesman Eddie Cotton will be taking the late Koko Taylor’s place in the Jubilee!JAM lineup. His performance will also feature a special tribute to Taylor, including a rendition of her signature hit, Wang Dang Doodle. Taylor died June 4 while recovering from surgery to repair gastrointestinal bleeding. Both Cotton’s performance and the tribute begin at 8 p.m. June 20 at the VisitJackson.com/ItsDowntown.com Stage. Clarion Ledger article HERE

Charm City Devils in SPIN Magazine Video

JAM performers Charm City Devils share the spotlight with LA girl group Darling Stilettos in JVC Entertainment’s latest Turn Me On video.

Carolina Liar #1 Download at VH1.com

Carolina Liar continues to make a big splash in the USA with their hit song “Show Me What I’m Looking For”. The single is currently the most downloaded song at Rhapsody / VH1.com and is also the #10 song on Billboard Magazine’s Adult Top 40 Chart. Their success is spreading overseas too where they are in the Top 5 position in the UK and Ireland. Jubilee!JAM is proud to welcome Carolina Liar for their first performance in Mississippi.

Blues legend Koko Taylor dies at 80

The Jackson Arts and Music Foundation is saddened by the news that scheduled Jubilee!JAM performer and Chicago blues icon Koko Taylor died Wednesday afternoon at age 80, after surgery May 19 to correct a gastrointestinal bleed.

  “She was recovering slowly but surely, and then she had a real bad night,” said Marc Lipkin, a spokesman for Taylor’s longtime Chicago-based label, Alligator Records. Taylor was recovering from her surgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital when she died.
She had performed only weeks earlier at the Blues Music Awards ceremony in Memphis, Tenn., where she received her record 29th Blues Music Award .

  Born Cora Walton in 1928 in Memphis, Tenn., she was orphaned by the time she was 11, and had to work the cotton fields to support herself. She came to Chicago in 1952 with her future husband, Robert “Pops” Taylor, to escape the plantation life and “look for work, start a new life, get married and have a family.”

    She had no intention of becoming a singer. But she was inspired by the blues songs of Memphis Minnie and Big Mama Thornton at an early age, and had sung gospel in church. When she came to Chicago, she was thrilled by the music she encountered in the South Side clubs, amplified and raucous, a harder incarnation of the backporch brand of blues she had heard in the South. It was the heyday of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, and “Pops” Taylor persuaded them to let Koko sing. “I closed my eyes and I got started,” she once told the Tribune. “There were no other women on the scene.”

    But her big voice won her a following, and she was instantly accepted. Dixon in particular became a mentor, and persuaded her to record what would become her signature song, “Wang Dang Doodle,” in the mid-‘60s for Chess Records. Taylor was sheepish about the risqué subject matter because of her gospel background, but it soon came to define her feisty style.

  “All music derives from blues and gospel,” she said. “When you seek a higher power, that gives you the gospel. When you want to share your experience so that you can move on and go on, that’s the blues. It doesn’t have to be depressing. It’s life itself.”
- Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune

Drowning Pool’s Biggest Hit Of Their Career

“37 Stitches” Goes To #4 At Active Rock
Drowning Pool, the hard working Texas rockers, have moved into the #4 spot on the Mediabase and Billboard Active Rock charts this week with “37 Stitches.” This marks the bands biggest hit of their career so far, edging out their 2001 anthem, “Bodies” and “Step Up” in 2004, both of which peaked at #5 on the Active Rock chart. On the heels of the band’s release of their first live album, “Loudest Common Denominator,” this single follows two successive Top 15 Active Rock staples, “Soldiers” and “Enemy.” Read More Here

Carolina Liar Makes An Appearance on Ellen

Jubilee!JAM performers Carolina Liar stopped by The Ellen DeGeneres Show last week to perform their hit song “Show Me What I’m Looking For”. The song is currently on Billboard’s Top 10 Heatseekers chart and is the number 4 video on VH1.

Jubilee!JAM 2009 Line-up announced

The Jackson Arts and Music Foundation’s Jubilee!JAM festival presented by Budweiser welcomes the following performers to this year’s event:
Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Drowning Pool, Carolina Liar, David Banner, Medeski Martin & Wood, Koko Taylor & Her Blues Machine, Tantric, Guster, Dickey Betts & Great Southern, JJ Grey & Mofro, Cyril Neville & Tribe 13, Charm City Devils, Blue Mountain, Dead Confederate, Daddy (feat. Will Kimbrough & Tommy Womack) plus others to be announced….
The 2009 festival will feature 3 outdoor stages of live entertainment on Friday and Saturday, June 19 and June 20. Additional local and regional entertainment will be announced in coming weeks. Stay tuned!