Ravinia 2025 Issue 3

That band went on to dominate roots music. It has earned the third most Grammys by a band. In 2000, during a Union Station hiatus, Tyminski released Carry Me Across the Mountain , his first solo album. It features colleagues from Lonesome River and Union Station. His sec- ond solo album, Wheels , earned the Grammy for Best Blue- grass Album in 2009. The stylistically diverse Southern Gothic was released in 2017, followed by the chart-topping God-Fear- ing Heathen in 2023 and the Grammy-nominated Live from the Ryman in 2024. In 2022, he released “One More Time Before You Go,” a five- track independent EP that paid tribute to legendary bluegrass guitarist Tony Rice, who died in 2020, and whom Tyminski cites as a major musical influence. Tyminski is a four-time International Bluegrass Music Asso- ciation Male Vocalist of the Year He has also collaborated with country legends Charlie Daniels, Willie Nelson, Reba McEn- tire, Dolly Parton, as well as jazz bassist Charlie Haden and rocker Joan Osborne, to name just some. “ Should I do something, is not a good question,” he told Ranchlands . “ How do I do something, now that is a beautiful question. Should implies uncertainty. When it came to music for me, there was never a choice. I was going to play music, that was it.” RONNIE BAKER BROOKS (July 17) is a second-genera- tion Chicago blues man. His father was the legendary Lonnie Brooks, a Blues Hall of Fame inductee, and who the Chicago Tribune called “one of the genre’s fiercest guitarists.” Lonnie Brooks died in 2017 at the age of 83. His son is carrying on his father’s legacy, not just as a bluesman, but as a recording artist for the premier blues label Alligator Records, for whom his father made seven albums. Last year, Brooks made his Alligator debut with the aptly titled Blues in My DNA . “I always include a little something of my father on all my albums,” Brooks told Chicago Blues Guide . On DNA , he includes “Lonnie Brooks’ Blessing,” a 14-second spoken-word clip from his song “Make Them Blues Survive.” Blues in My DNA is Brooks’s fifth album. It earned five out of five stars from the Kansas City Blues Society. Blues Road- house called it “A powerful contemporary blues album … just plain great listening.” Brooks’s origin story falls under the heading “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” In other words, true or not, it’s too good not to pass along. As Brooks tells it, his father was babysitting Brooks and his siblings one morning while his mother was at work. “Dad had played a gig the night before and it had been a late one,” he said. “Soon enough, he had fall- en asleep with his guitar in his hands. As kids will do, my sister and brother began to pull and yank on the strings just to make noise. Now, according to my dad’s story—since I don’t remem- ber—when I touched the strings, my intent was to get a good musical sound from them. And I plucked them just so, with something natural finding a melody. My dad woke up when he heard the notes I was playing and I took to running, thinking he would scold me for messing with his instrument. But Dad said, ‘No, no, Ronnie, come back. You’re really interested in playing this thing, aren’t you?’ From then on, he set me aside and taught me. By the time I reached the age of nine, I was playing on stage with him.” Brooks had the best music teachers growing up. After high school, he joined his father on the road as a roadie and eventu- ally joined his band, first as a bassist and then second guitarist. Each gig was a master class. One night, blues icon Koko Taylor urged him, “You learn from your daddy everything you can. One day, it’ll be up to you to carry the blues forward.” He received similar advice from B.B. King, whom he watched night after night when his father joined the B.B. King Blues Festival with Taylor and Junior Wells. King told him, “Son, I’m watching you watch me. You learn everything you can from all of us.” Brooks was an apt pupil. He performed with his father for 12 years, and shared the stage with the likes of Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, and Taj Mahal (who appeared at Ravinia earlier this summer). The most indelible lessons his father taught him, Brooks shares on his website, was to develop his own style and “to put the time in, study, practice, get better. He wouldn’t let me play onstage with him until I earned it, and until he was certain playing music was what I truly wanted to do.” Brooks knew when he was 18 that’s what he wanted to do after he witnessed a galvanizing gig at Chicago’s legendary blues club Kingston Mines. Albert Collins came to see Lonnie perform and sit in with him. “Albert had a lot of buzz after winning a Grammy for the Showdown album, and he also had a popular Seagrams wine cooler TV commercial with Bruce Willis, so he was hot!” Brooks recalled in an interview with Alan Paul for his Low Down and Dirty Substack newsletter de- voted to rock and blues. “Lonnie and Albert were vibing hard in this incredible jam in front of a packed house. I’m standing on the side … and the hair on my arms stood up and I got goosebumps! My dad was on fire and Albert was, too … and at that moment I knew I wanted to play the blues. It was just like the ‘I’ve seen the light’ scene in the Blues Brothers movie! True story! Right there I asked God, if he would keep me healthy that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.” D onald Liebenson is a Chicago-based entertainment writer. His work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune , Chicago Sun-Times , Los Angeles Times , and on RogerEbert.com. The first Ravinia concert he attended without his parents was Procol Harum in 1970. RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 17 JIMSUMMARIA