The Son Henry Band is what happens when you put a hyperactive lap steel guitarist in a room with a great bassist and drummer for a little too long- you get a fun revamp of traditional American music that’ll rattle the walls and shake the floor.

About the band

Three great musicians taking on a fun collection of songs that you can’t help but dance and sing along to- that’s the essence of this band. Songs by Chris Stapleton, the Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, the Wood Brothers, Alicia Keys, the Eagles and more. The band draws on the best elements of Americana music and infuses it with a reckless energy; familiar music, thoughtful originals and a sound that’s make it hard to sit still. It’s a killer bar band, plain and simple.

The band may be new to the Rochester music scene, but it’s not a new band by any stretch of the imagination. The Son Henry band started in the mid-90’s on the Alaskan frontier playing to the rough and tumble folks that worked in the oil fields. It’s founder (and international award-winning guitarist and vocalist) Karl ‘Son’ Henry Mann moved back home and rebuilt the band with the help of New York veterans Jim Lampert (Fender and upright bass and vocals) and Marty York (drums and vocals). This is the best incarnation of the band yet.

Reviews:

Friday night roared to life when the band took the stage.  Anchorage Daily News

The Son Henry Band is the best blues band in the world right now; Son himself is a master trailblazer in some of the dirtiest, skankiest, holiest hot rod of a lap-steel guitar anyone has a right to hear. Radio Enigma, Canada

You could have heard a pin drop in the room as the notes just dripped from the guitar and filled the room. . BluesMatters! Magazine

The new song “Sackcloth and Ashes” which was played on the lap steel and will be on their forthcoming new album brought the hall to a standstill.  Shetland Blues Festival

The deep notes about the band:

Karl ‘Son’ Henry Mann grew up listening to American Roots music back when you could still find it on the radio. At the start of the 1990’s he moved from Rochester to Dallas and found himself jamming alongside monster players like Mike Morgan, Tyrone Starks, Buddy Miles, and Sam Meyers.  He co-founded Blue Lisa and The Howling Dogs, a critically-acclaimed and painfully unsigned Dallas-based blues band that was a regular in the Texas clubs. When the band broke up he moved north and spent the next 10 years in Alaska, hosting a Thursday-night blues jam and playing the rough-and-tumble bars and festivals across the last frontier. Alaska, as it turns out, is critical to the story: It was here that he learned to play the lap steel by translating the licks he'd learned from Robert Johnson and early Muddy Waters records. He was a regular guest on Amy Van Singel's Atomic Mama radio hour (the same Atomic Mama that founded Living Blues Magazine, interviewed Jimmy Reed and crashed on Muddy Water's floor).

In 2005 he moved to Europe and shortly after arriving earned the coveted gig to open for Fleetwood Mac's founder Peter Green at the Orkney Islands Blues Festival. He became a favorite at the blues clubs and bars across the UK that had nurtured the original blues revival in the 1960’s- places like the Crawdaddy, Redcar and the Red Lion. He spent the next ten years headlining major music festivals all over Europe and the US, including the Orkney Blues Festival (UK), Gaastroblues (Hungary), Augustibluus (Estonia) and Burnley Mechanics (UK), Blues on the Green (US) and the Ft. Worth Blues Festival (US). He’s won a couple Aberdeen Music awards as best live act, won reader polls in Alaska and even won two prestigious British Blues Awards for his lap-style guitar playing. 

Jim Lampert (Fender and upright bassist, vocals) is a familiar face on the club circuits in western New York and northern Virginia. He got his start in the 1980’s with The Insiders, a very popular Rochester-based band in the 60s garage rock and “Scorgies” local music scene. During the 1990’s he played with the Avengers, a wildly successful ’60’s tribute band that packed the clubs in western NY. In the early 2000’s he toured with Still Surfin, a Virginia-based Beach Boys tribute. More recently he was a critical one-third of King Cadillac, a well known rockabilly outfit that the filled clubs and dance halls all over the Tidewater Basin.

His recording credits include the “Sessions at Sun” album with King Cadillac recorded at the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis 2006. King Cadillac also released the Beatnik Country Christmas album in 2018. Some of Jim’s notable original material can be heard on recordings by the Insiders including the WCMF Homegrown II album and bands’ two singles from the 1980s.

When not working with us he can be found playing upright bass with the GatesSwingers a well-known Rochester-based 16-piece big band. Or you may have recently seen him doing back up work on the Fender bass with Nightfall After Dark, the Brian Lindsay Band, JB and Co., the Kind Brothers Band and Silver Streak.

Marty York  (drums, vocals) has been Rochester’s first-call drummer for close to 35 years now, playing in a range of well-known bands across a range of styles and genres. He’s played with Watkins & the Rapiers for 25 years, and among others, the Badenovs (eclectic-rock originals), Chasen Powell (Original and Top-40 country) and the Dan Eaton Band (original American rock). He even intersected with Jim in the Insiders for a bit, and legend even has it that Marty gave them their name. You’ve seen him at the Lilac Festival, Food Truck Rodeos and countless other festivals along with openers for people like John Hyatt, Rick Danko, David Grissman, Duke Robillard and Molly Hatchett. 

Reviews

Southwest Blues Magazine
BluesMatters! Magazine Review
8 Magazine Live Performane Review
Anchorage Press
Heartache and Trouble
Assorted Reviews
Stirling Tollbooth Flyer

Poster Art

Press Photo (Adobe PDF)
Press Photo (Adobe PDF)
11x17 Poster (Adobe PDF)
Sample Table Card