– Tickets are $5 Door
Gumbo Nites! is a new artist series that stirs music of all genres into an unexpected/imaginative stew of eclectic sounds and soulful experiences. The evening begins with an Artist Meet-up hour, a special chance for all artists to share, connect, and collaborate. Next, two hours of a musical gumbo, featuring an "open mic" hour, feature artist hour, and jam session. International songwriter, singer, Vinx, and national bohemian folk, jazz, pop singer Doria Roberts headline the feature artist hour.
Atlanta based, internationally touring singer / songwriter and spoken word artist Doria Roberts has lived on the road since performing at the original Lilith Fair in 1999 where she was plucked from the side stage to perform solos with Sarah McLachlan and the Indigo Girls. She quit her day job the next morning and since then has performed nearly 150 shows a year, appearing in listening rooms, theaters and festivals across the US, France, Canada, Sweden and Australia.
She has shared the stage with folk and blues legends Odetta, The Holmes Brothers and Janis Ian, world music darling Angelique Kidjo, as well as pop favorites John Mayer, Me'shell N'degeocello and many others. She was a featured performer along with Jane Fonda and playwright Pearl Cleage in Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologue productions in Atlanta and New Orleans. Roberts was also recently chosen for an artist residency and tour tributing Black Femal Songwriters, The tour was curated by the Black Rock Coalition and sponsored by The Chateauvallon Artist Complex in Ollioules, France.
She has also received the International Orfeo Musica Humantarian Award, The Anderson Leadership Award and was nominated for the Colin Higgins Courage Award for lending her music and talent to fundraising and awareness efforts for communities in need around the globe.
International recording artist and Berklee College of Music educator Vinx is as close as you'll find to a 21st century Renaissance Man. Known to music fans mostly as a percussionist and vocalist, he has lived a big life and has shown immense talent in multiple areas.
In the late '70s, Vinx was an aspiring athlete at Kansas State University, where he overcame incidents of local racism and became an internationally renowned track star, recording the world's second longest triple jump and qualifying for the unfortunately boycotted 1980 Olympics in Moscow. He went on to coach at the University of Texas and was later inducted into the KSU Athletic Hall of Fame.
In college, Vinx was also a DJ and a member of the KSU Jazz Band. His passion for music turned into a career when he stayed in Los Angeles following the 1984 Olympics (an injury forced him out of competition) and found work as a percussionist for Ernie Watts and later as part of the traveling bands for Rickie Lee Jones, Teena Marie and others.
Forming an all drum band, Vinx went on his own and toured with various acts over the next several years, ultimately hooking up with Sting for his Soul Cages album. This led to Vinx being signed to Pangaea Records and to the release of Rooms in My Fatha's House, a tribute to Vinx's father (who was tragically murdered in 1989 in the Detroit suburb of Inkster) and a truly breakthrough album. Fatha's House treated the world to the dynamic voice, unusual beats and percussion arrangements and risk taking that would symbolize Vinx's work. Classified by some as jazz, by some as world music and by others as soul, it was one of the finest albums of 1990 and certainly among the most distinctive.
Over the next few years, Vinx released I Love My Job, The Storyteller, and Lips Stretched Out, all solid albums that displayed more fantastic percussion work as well as intelligent lyrics. He also continued writing songs with and for other major artists and performing session work, including work with Stevie Wonder. In the mid '90s he formed the dance band Jungle Funk and toured Europe for two years. He also had his first exhibition of his paintings.
Vinx entered the new century by releasing the independently recorded Christmas album (Little Drummer Boy), The Mood I'm In, an impressive album of Vinx-ified covers of standards, including great versions of "Georgia On My Mind," "Everyday" and "You Are My Sunshine" and Grits & Pate a 32 track compilation of the singer/percussionist’s favorite and most popular songs that feature both raw and more highly produced tracks, thus the appropriately named title.
2008 found Vinx continuing his work at Berklee School of Music in Boston as well as forming Dreamsicle Arts and Entertainment Group which would release what he calls his “best recording to date,” a 50 song journey covering 3 CDs entitled 50 Memoirs of a Hip Ole Black Man. Vinx thought of this project as a way to celebrate his “semi-centennial” birthday in December 2007 and now is touring in support of Volume 1.
Perhaps most importantly, Vinx is working on improving his hometown endeavors such as the Georgia Artists Exchange and Songwriter Soul Kitchen retreats that help both his rural community and independent musicians/songwriters through various collaborative and educational projects.