Mark Naftalin with 2120 South Michigan Avenue: A Tribute to the Paul Butterfield Blues Band

Mark Naftalin, the original keyboard player for The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, will perform with Charlie Sawyer’s 2120 South Michigan Avenue in a tribute
to the great Butterfield band. The powerful sound of Butterfield’s integrated band brought real urban blues to mainstream audiences across the country in the mid-1960’s, and changed the lives of countless listeners and musicians, who wore the grooves off Butterfield’s land-mark first album. Read the Allmusic biography of Mark Naftalin here.

This show will be the first Butterfield tribute for Mark and 2120 at the Firehouse, and their first appearance together in ten years.

Mark will open the show with a solo set of blues and jazz piano, including some of his own compositions, and will then join 2120 for some hard-driving Chicago Blues.

2120 South Michigan Avenue harp player Charlie Sawyer started 2120 South Michigan Avenue in 1998 to showcase the repertoire he loves. The band has since opened for blues legends, B.B. King (twice) and Koko Taylor, as well as Eric Burdon and the Animals. Charlie and the band have hosted some of New England’s most celebrated blues stars in concerts at Harvard University and in Boston. A video of one, a tribute to BB King, may be viewed here. 2120 performs in the regular rotation at Glenn’s in Newburyport, and Strange Brew in Manchester, NH, appears at other venues north of Boston, and plays private events. For more information about Charlie and the band, click here.

2120 South Michigan Avenue gets its name from the Chicago address of Chess Records, a 1950’s and 60’s record label that released many of the Chicago blues greats, including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Etta James and Little Walter Jacobs, originator of the amplified blues harmonica.