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Baker, Rigney headline Feb. 4 CAB Concert
By Cab Concerts
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 PITTSBURG – The Creative Arts Building on the Pittsburg High School campus will offer a taste of New Orleans on Saturday, Feb. 4 when local blues guitar legend Layce Baker and Tom Rigney perform at ‘Mardi Gras Blues Night.’
Tickets for the concert, part of the 2006 CAB Concerts series, are $20 orchestra and $10 balcony. For information, call (925) 432-6838. Dancing is allowed on the orchestra pit during the concert.
The concert is a homecoming for Baker, who has been performing the blues nearly 50 years since forming his first band at age 12. Baker, known in blues circles as the ‘Iceman,’ learned to play guitar while watching his father perform.
At age 14, he and another legendary Pittsburg performer, Rosie Gaines, were performing in Bay Area clubs together.
Baker remembers his teachers at Pittsburg’s Central Junior High School and at Pittsburg High School helping him set up his equipment for lunchtime concerts on both campuses, and he fondly recalls playing in the Creative Arts Building Little Theatre while attending Pittsburg High School.
Baker and his Black Diamond Band were voted the Bay Area Blues Society’s Blues Band of the Year in 2004. He was voted the Central Valley Blues Musician of the Year for 2005, and has been a feature performer for the Sacramento Blue Society, including its 25th Anniversary celebration with an unforgettable performance that stole the show that night.
Baker has performed with legends such as Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, Little Johnny Taylor, Lenny Williams, Lowell Fulsom, the Whispers and California Malibus. He performed with the Caravan All-Stars, Elvin Bishop, Santana and Huey Lewis and the News at the 2000 Bay Area Music awards.
He has headlined at the House of Blues at DisneyWorld, Terra Blues in New York, Biscuits & Blues in San Francisco, Warm Daddy’s in Philadelphia and Ziggy’s in Denver as well as the Monterey Blues Festival, Portland River Festival.
Check his website at www.geocities.com/laycenet.pacbell.net.
An accomplished artist with a Masters degree in Fine Arts from Harvard, Rigney has developed a wide following in his nearly 30 years as a major voice in the Bay Area music scene.
Rigney, an electrifying violinist and composer, has performed with groups such as 1981 Bammie-winning Back in the Saddle, Queen Ida’s Bon Temps Zydeco Band, where he his love of Cajun and zydeco music was formed, and for 15 years the Sundogs before putting together his current band Flambeau. He can turn his violin into a passionate gypsy for one tune, an energetic Cajun from the Bayou the next to a high-spirited Celtic dancer to a wistful waltzer to a soul-stirring blues instrument.
Flambeau, voted the best Cajun/Zydeco band of 2004 by the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame, is an “American roots” band that masters all styles of music with its original and eclectic repertoire of Cajun, zydeco, western swing and blues. Rigney’s own songs and renditions of American pop classics quickly get people out of their seats and onto the dance floor.
To find out more about the son of Bill Rigney, the original manager of the San Francisco Giants, go to his website at www.rigomania.com.
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