A Show To Benefit Why Hunger 3/20 At Club Cafe Ft. Norman Nardini, Slim Forsythe And His New Payday Loaners, The Damaged Pies

A Show to Benefit WhyHunger featuring Norman Nardini, Slim Forsythe and His New Payday Loaners, The Damaged Pies Direct Ticket Link: http://tktwb.tw/1wYZWxb Tickets on sale now! Tix: $8.00 adv/dos http://www.ticketweb.com/clubcafe 866-468-3401 Also in person at Club Cafe during any event Ages: 21+ http://www.whyhunger.org/ WhyHunger is a leader in building the movement to end hunger and poverty by connecting people to nutritious, affordable food and by supporting grassroots solutions that inspire self-reliance and community empowerment. WhyHunger brings its unique assets and history to building a broad-based social movement to end hunger. Our set of core values rests on the understanding that solutions and innovation are often found in the grassroots. WhyHunger's programs work to support these community-based organizations as they grow and develop, and bring new ideas and practices to creating a just food system that provides universal access to nutritious and affordable food. As a grassroots support organization WhyHunger provides capacity building services, technical support, and access to information and financial resources to community organizations implementing new ideas and developing groundbreaking projects to transform their communities. We build networks of grassroots organizations that share a vision of healthy, sustainable and self-reliant communities leading to greater mobilization and stronger advocacy to end poverty and hunger Artists Against Hunger & Poverty enlists performing artists to raise funds and awareness for the most innovative and effective community-based organizations fighting hunger and poverty on the frontlines in cities, towns and villages all across the world. WhyHunger offers artists, the artist community and the music industry an opportunity to take a stand by using their voices and resources effectively -doing what they already do so well. Through music we can all make a difference in the world. Click here to learn how artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Chicago, Marc Broussard and more work with WhyHunger to raise awareness and funds in the fight against hunger and what you can do to get involved. --------------------------- Norman Nardini As bass player for the 1970's Pittsburgh rock n' roll band, Diamond Reo, Norman Nardini got his career started. After a very brief stay at Berklee School Of Music and more than a few special moments...while still in high school he rented his Hammond B-3 organ and roadied for Billy Preston and Sly and the Family Stone when they came to town...was hired to play guitar and keys in fake versions of The Sonics and The Cherry People...backed up Little Anthony and the Imperials, The Detroit Emeralds, and The Manhattans in pickup bands...played guitar behind Big Mama Thorton and George Harmonica Smith at The Jazz Workshop in Boston Mass. At Fox studio he had the opportunity to play on recordings by Jimmy Beaumont and the Skyliners, Lou Christy, Terry Bradshaw...Nardini played bass on "The Pennsylvania Polka" Steeler fight song. After doing an arrangement of "Dancing In The Street" that got picked up by RCA he did an arrangement of Marvin Gaye's "Ain't That Peculiar" that brought an album deal with Big Tree Records that got Diamond Reo started. With a single on the charts The Diamonds appeared on Dick Clark's American Bandstand and did shows with Aerosmith, Rush, Ted Nugent, Kansas, Canned Heat, Blue Oyster Cult...they opened up for Kiss at Cobo Hall in Detroit the night they recorded Kiss Alive. Dirty Diamonds, they're second release was on the Buddah label and was produced by Adrian Barber who had done Aerosmith's first LP...although it didn't do so well at the time, Dirty Diamonds is currently being re-released on Rock Candy Records and is considered to be a classic piece of work...Nardini produced Ruff Cuts The Diamonds third and final LP. Norman Nardini and the Tigers started tearin' up rock n' roll shows in 1979 opening shows for bands like The Romantics, Joan Jett, and Beaver Brown. In the fall of 1980 The Tigers played Asbury Park's Fast Lane and opened the show for The Rest, one of Jon Bon Jovi's early bands, he and Jon remain friends to this day. Jon had Nardini open his 2011 performance at Pittsburgh's Consol Energy Center. Recorded at Cleveland's legendary Agora Nightclub, Eat n' Alive, which received a 4 star review from Rolling Stone Magazine was released in '81 and kept The Tigers on the road constantly. CBS released Norman Nardini and the Tigers in '83, ole buddy Jon Bon sang BG vocals. With the Tigers broken up, Nardini did one more release with CBS, Love Dog, which featured Rick Derringer, Dr John, and Paul Shaffer and hit in '86 and was followed by a tour with The Radiators. A tour of Germany as opening act for The Blues Brothers came about because "Smoke Two Joints", the single off the Circumstantial LP, This Ole Train was hitting the airways just after the Berlin wall came down and folks were exercising their freedom to rock and smoke. Two more LP's on Circumstantial followed, 1993's Breakdown In Paradise and 95's It's Alive. A highly talented, underground group from Wheeling West Virginia, The Brett Cain Band, worked with Nardini to create some legendary music in the late 90's that resulted in their LP, Rise. As leader of The Pittsburgh Blues Allstars, Nardini has led their performance at the Pittsburgh Blues Festival for the last 13 years, shows that have featured the best of the burg Shari Richards, Billy Price, Gary Beloma, Kenny Blake Mark Stutso, and Jill West. The late great Glenn Pavone played his last show with The Allstars at the Blues Fest. The Redemption LP, which featured new arrangements of his older tunes kept Nardini and his band busy playing week in and week out just like they always had done. Opening slots in front of acts like Johnny Winter, Peter Wolf, Pete Best, Jimmy Thackery and the Drivers, Tommy Castro, and Bernard Allison, John Eddy, and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes helped to keep the Pittsburgh rocker at the top of his game. The Nardini written and produced Rock My Soul LP in 2007 by singer-drummer Mark Stutso came as the result of Nardini hearing this West Virginian sing with Jimmy Thackery's Drivers. In 2010 Stutso sang lead on the Nardini produced JJ Burner LP, Roll On that also featured monster player Warren King on lead guitar. Bone A Fide was 2011's Norman Nardini release that reached a new hi level for this relentless musical force. Most artist's that have been around as long as Nardini have long since done their best work, not so in the case of Pittsburgh's uncrowned king of rock n' roll. In 2012 The Nighthawks, Washington DC's best known and longest running blues band included 3 of Nardini's songs on their Damn Good Time Release. As 2013 is coming to an end, Norman Nardini says that he's just getting started. With a seemingly endless string of exciting new songs and a guitar style that gets stronger as the years roll by Nardini says, "bring out the rest n' let me put 'em to the test n' we'll see who's good rockin' n' who's just talking". --------------------------- Slim Forsythe By Andy Mulkerin / Pittsburgh City Paper At a crossroads in his life, Kevin Forsythe asked his father, Frank, for advice. "He said, 'Kevi, you're nothing but a frustrated musician, and you're never gonna be happy until you do what you want to do,'" Forsythe recalls. He didn't immediately heed his dad's advice. But that moment in 1988 foretold the day Kevin Forsythe, a lawyer, would become Slim Forsythe, "the singin', school bus-drivin' cowboy" of Lawrenceville. His father had performed on Duquesne Showtime, a variety show on KDKA-TV in the early '50s, where he sang with local legends including Dormont country singer Slim Bryant. More than 50 years later, Kevin would adopt that name and start his own country band. Though "Slim" began as just a stage name, it's really someone he's become. Forsythe -- tall and lanky, with a sly, dry sense of humor -- calls it "this 'Slim' thing [that] happened to me." Coworkers and acquaintances only know him as Slim; few call him by his real name. "When it started out, it was kind of a shtick," he says in his characteristic drawl. "I didn't talk like this before, but now it'd be hard not to." A writer, Forsythe dates his written output according to whether it was created before or after he started dropping the "g" in words that end in "-ing." In 2005, he'd just finished writing his fourth novel, Four Brothers, which he figured as a follow-up to Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. "I asked myself, 'Now, what does a man do after he writes the sequel to The Brothers Karamazov?' The answer: I was gonna front an all-woman Hank Williams cover band," Forsythe says. Slim Forsythe and The Parklane Drifters began as just that, but soon added guitarist and old friend Evan "Big Rock" Knauer; the band now includes bassist Craig Roberts and fiddle player Erin "Scratchy" Hutter. "We were embarrassed to be in a Hank Williams cover band, so we took stage names," Knauer says of himself and fiddle player Erin Snyder. "Big Rock and Candy Mountain, like the song" by Harry McClintock. Nowadays, the band plays plenty of what Forsythe calls "classic country," from the '40s and '50s, alongside his own originals. Straightforward and personal, Forsythe's tunes are full of nods to his past, his environs and people who mean a lot to him, including a song he wrote for his son, Sam, on his 17th birthday. (Forsythe's older son, Scotty, is raising a family in Seattle.) But music wasn't Forsythe's focus as a younger man. Born in Pittsburgh in 1956 and raised in Bradford, Pa., he attended law school at Pitt in the early 1980s while dabbling in activism. "I first worked with Slim when he was working with the Catholic Workers in the early '80s," says Knauer. (Forsythe would later manage Knauer's punk band, ATS.) Moving furniture together all day, "you get to talking a lot," Knauer says. "And I found that he was one of the most interesting people I'd ever met." Parts of Forsythe's story sound like fodder for Hank Sr. While he's happy to open up on plenty of subjects -- his self-published novels, his many jobs (Zippo factory worker, assistant to former City Controller Tom Flaherty) -- others elicit a more recalcitrant response. Forsythe bristles when Jimmy Nied, proprietor of Nied's Hotel in Lawrenceville, mentions Forsythe's time working with Mother Teresa at her House of the Dying in Calcutta. "Aw, Jimmy, we don't need to bring that up!" Forsythe's affectionate but protective when speaking of his current girlfriend, and makes only fleeting references to his three ex-wives. He mentions moving in with his "favorite second ex-wife" from 2002-08 to be with his son; when Sam went to Penn State, Slim moved in above Nied's. "It had always been my dream to live above a bar," he says. Forsythe will occasionally croon a tune with Nied's house band; he plays with many configurations of musicians nowadays, including The Stillhouse Pickers (bluegrass), The Beagle Brothers (country) and surf-rockers The Surf Zombies. Nied recalls story after story in which Forsythe has come through with a set when no one else could do it, or do it as well; once, he sang gospel tunes at the wake for a friend of the bar whose wife couldn't afford a proper funeral. "Yeah, you've gotten me into some tight spots," Forsythe says, teasing Nied. "And you always sing your way out of them," Nied replies. In 2008 Forsythe, the lawyer who had just two years prior held a respectable position in city government, took his current job driving a school bus -- which he calls one of the best jobs he's had. Besides the bus and his family, music is Slim's life. He released his first full-length, Bury Me Up on That Northern Tier, in 2009, and is currently recording the follow-up. "He worked for the government for a while, he went through some tough times," Knauer says, "and now he's turned his heartsickness and pain into a record. "Kevin does this thing where he works for Satan for a while, then he works for God," Knauer adds, summing up Forsythe's lifetime of oscillations and contradictions. "Then he works for Satan again, then for God." --------------------------- Damaged Pies Established 1987 Pittsburgh, Pa. http://thedamagedpies.bandcamp.com/ Since its' inception, Damaged Pies has played and recorded at some of the most legendary venues in world. From CBGB's in New York City to the Whisky a-go-go in L.A., from Liverpool's Cavern to Sun Studio in Memphis to Trident Studios in London, from Farm Aid Eve in Hershey to The Surf Ballroom in Iowa, from Damaged Pies Day in Pittsburgh to Toronto to Philly, from Athens to Boston, from Wrigley Field to Three Rivers Stadium from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco to the Wheeling Jamboree to Nashville and all points in between, Damaged Pies has been one of rock and roll's most durable and well traveled acts. Damaged Pies has also been honored with the Jefferson Award for Public Service. Damaged Pies has opened for former Beatle Pete Best, Marshall Crenshaw, Alejandro Escovedo, Pegi Young (Neil's wife) The Atomic Punks, Peter Case, former Eagle Don Felder, and Peter Mulvey. Damaged Pies and Jen Chapin are both members of WhyHunger's Artists Against Hunger & Poverty program. Damaged Pies new CD, Rock and Roll Zelig, is available worldwide on I-Tunes, Amazon, CD Baby and Napster just to name a few.