John Derado and Anne McIntyre

Originally from East of Gary, John Derado plays fingerstyle guitar and bottleneck slide. His roots are firmly planted in traditional pre-war blues with a strong inclination towards the Americana singer/songwriter. He has played throughout the contiguous 48 states, Canada and Mexico. In 1991 along with Paul Schriener he took time out to open Front Porch Music in Valparaiso, a retail and performance venue that has hosted such acts as John Hartford, Paul Geremia, Donovan, James Lee Stanley and Jim Post to name but a few. John has opened for many internationally touring acts including Little Feat, Duke Tumatoe, Rodney Crowell, Leon Redbone and Corky Siegel. After performing a few numbers on his own, Mr. Siegel called John back on stage to play out the rest of the evening with him, according to John, “One of the highlights of my career indeed.” Another highlight was being selected by Pinetop Perkins himself to open a star studded 88th birthday party for him in his then hometown of LaPorte, Indiana.

Anne McIntyre plays keyboards and is originally from Michigan. Her father was a jazz musician who taught her to play the blues when she was just a little girl and she has been playing them ever since. She was a teaching artist at Homespun Music in Kalamazoo, Michigan and has performed in Michigan and the Chicagoland area. In Chicago, she co-led blues jams as part of the Americana Back Porch Jam at the Old Town School of Folk Music’s First Friday program with Chicago Bob Longmire. She and Bob played in the blues band Midnight Train in venues around Chicago for several years.

Then she and Lance Brown, a Chicago singer-songwriter, formed a duo and performed as Last Ditch Effort for the following five years. They competed in the International Blues Competition (IBC) and were selected by the Windy City Blues Society to represent Chicago in the international competition in Memphis, Tennessee. Anne has her roots in folk music and has the blues in her bones. Together these two perform songs from much of the broad genre known as Americana Contemporary. Musical influences include Paul Geremia, Mose Allison, Darrell Scott Ry Cooder and Guy Clark to name but a few.