SONNY MOORMAN

"Power blues" is how Ohio-based bluesman Sonny Moorman describes the music he creates with his trio, the Dogs. Moorman and his band have extended the 1960's blues and blues-rock revival into the new millennium, borrowing from their prime influences, black and white: Eric Clapton, early Fleetwood Mac, Rory Gallagher, Roy Buchanan, Jimi Hendrix and B.B. King. Moorman, raised by parents who ran nightclubs in the Cincinnati area, was exposed to guitar maestro Lonnie Mack, up close and personal, at an impressionable age. Moorman didn't begin playing out professionally until he was into his junior year in college at Michigan State University. After getting out of college, he spent 15 years playing in bands in the Detroit and Los Angeles areas before coming back home to Hamilton, Ohio, near Cincinnati. Highlights of his time in Los Angeles included tenures with the Tomcats, which included members of Sly and the Family Stone, as well as with Warren Zevon's touring band. After a show at Memphis' Crossroads festival in 1994, the group signed with Sun Records' 706 label. Moorman and the Dogs have two releases on 706 Records, Sun Studios' house label in Memphis. [The '706' refers to the studio's address on Union Avenue in Memphis.] Moorman and the Dogs' releases include "Live," and "Telegraph Road." "Telegraph Road" was recorded at Sun Studios, in the same room where Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Howlin' Wolf, Big Walter "Shakey" Horton and Jerry Lee Lewis made their first recordings. Moorman and the Dogs continue to perform regionally around southern Ohio, Kentucky, Memphis and parts of the south.