Though his career began over a decade ago with genuine rock n’ roll honky-tonk, Wainwright has broadened his artistic scope over the years to include music representing virtually every corner of the roots music world. His insatiable interest in music discovery, sheer love for entertaining and curiosity have led him all around the world, and the resulting perspective is a reflection of his passion for entertaining and creating progressive roots music in an effort to move the art-form forward. Composer, producer, vocalist, and award wining entertainer and piano player; Victor Wainwright is a raucous high-octane, dynamic performer and crowd pleaser with soul to spare.
The name of Victor Wainwright's band - and the sleeve image of their albums - is also the most fitting of metaphors. In music folklore, the train might have associations with the freight-hopping bluesmen of yore, but with this restless boogie-woogie innovator stoking the furnace, Wainwright is a charging locomotive - surging forward, crashing through boundaries of genre, sweeping up fresh sounds and clattering headlong past the doubters.
As the man himself hollers in the ivory-pounding track, The Train: "If you wanna boogie get aboard the train/Get yourself a ticket or get out of the way..." At a sweet-spot in his career, where most established stars would rest on their laurels, Victor Wainwright & The Train instead rips up all that has gone before, pricking up ears in a sterile music industry and stretching the concept of roots in bold directions.
Internationally recognized as a singer/songwriter and producer, Diane Durrett is always rocking the house with her distinctive vibrato, she can belt gut-bucket blues with the best of them. She proves it, again with her 2022 American Roots release ‘Put A Lid On It’. The album soared to
#2 on the Soul Blues International Roots Music Report.
“Flirts with perfection, while remaining full of feeling and spontaneity” (F. Delforge, France)
“The smoldering B3 and stark crisp piano (Yoel Yehuda ) back Diane’s heavenly rising vocals” (Blues in The South, UK) In 2019 her album ‘Diane Durrett & Soul Suga LIVE’ was reviewed as “Killer, high octane soul throughout" and rose to #5. In 2017 she was a Global Peace Song Award winner for ‘The River Sings’ co-produced and written with Soul Suga drummer Melissa Junebug. Durrett was the winner of the 2015 ‘Peoples Choice Award’ by Atlanta Blues Society, as well as awarded the ‘Best Self-Produced Album’ for “Soul Suga’ & Diane Durrett' ' which charted in the Top 10 of the RMR Contemporary Blues chart. Her song catalog includes co-writes with William Bell, Jerry Ragovoy, Oliver Wood, Emily Sailers and Bonnie Bramlett.
Durrett is in her seventh year as an elected board member of the Atlanta Chapter of the Recording Academy, best known for the GRAMMYs and currently is co-chair of the Producer & Engineer Wing ATL and serves on the National Blues Advisory board. She continues to host the highly successful Women In Blues event sponsored by the Atlanta Blues Society highlighting female blues musicians in Georgia. In 2023 she was awarded an honorary lifetime membership for her career and her with work with women in the blues.
