Is it really May already? We’ve been keeping our noses to the grindstone for so long I’m surprised we can still smell anything. Luckily, Aaron, Z, and myself, Shack, can all still smell just fine. It was proven to us when we opened up the van last weekend. Wooooweeeee, I think it’s finally time for it’s spring cleaning!

What have we been up to? Here’s a little roundup of our latest goings on. The band is up for 9 Madison Area Music Awards this year, (Rock Song “Devil’s Playground”, Blues Song (“10:49″), Blues Album, Blues Artist, Drummer, Bassist, Guitarist, and Vocalist of the year, and the big one, Artist of the Year). And guess what? You can still vote! It’s a $5 dollar donation, which all goes towards donating instruments to schools with music programs in need. Please, vote here:

Vote for the HOODOO HERE!

Speaking of awards, Aaron went to Appleton for the Wisconsin Area Music Industry (WAMI) Awards and came home with the award for Blues Artist of the year! The whole band was honored to be recognized, especially since we have such respect and have played alongside almost all of the other nominees in the same category (Jimmy V. from “The Jimmys” played organ and piano on “10:49″ even!). Thank you!

If you have never studied Carl Jung, or if you are not a fan of The Police, you might not have heard of the term “Synchronicity”. A good example of synchronicity would be the events of a few weekends ago. At the same time that the Wisconsin Film Festival was going on in Madison, WI (our hometown), we were in Dubuque, IA playing the opening night at the Juliene Film Festival, while on that same weekend at the Nashville, TN film festival there was a premiere of a movie titled, “Hell or High Water: The Story of the Nashville Roller Girls” in which the Hoodoo tunes “Boom, Boom” and “Devil’s Playground” are included! We felt like Hollywood Stars! Z and I started practicing speaking like celebrities, “Where’s my limo?”, “Only brown M&M’s!”, and “My contract says Fiji, NOT Dasani!!” I think we’re ready for the big time!

What else is new? We’ve got some new items for sale online and at our shows, and in case you missed it, we dropped the price of our first CD “It Ain’t Easy” to only $5. It’s at least twice as nutritious as a Subway footlong with half the calories! If you’ve seen us live lately, you know we’re already road testing a few new tunes, so keep an ear out. Z, Aaron, and myself all have new tunes in rotation that we are singing and we have many more on the way.

We always love your responses, especially when we hear you want us to play in your town! Keep spreading the word of the Hoodoo, Thank you Hoodoo Nation.

Our question is:

All 3 of members of Aaron Williams & The Hoodoo are animal lovers, but only 2 of us have pets. Which two, and what are the pets?

A) Z and Shack – birds

B) Aaron and Z – dogs

C) Shack and Aaron – cats

D) Z and Shack – horny toads

Eric “Chicken Shack” Shackelford

Thanks to Lance for taking care of us and bringing in the Hoodoo boys to town. We’ll see you soon!

How to win at the CLAW MACHINE Video; By Eric “Chicken Shack” Shackelford

Now a bit of a rant:

We here at the Hoodoo take pride in eating the worst food after a gig. We’ve found a home like many other bands at a place called Dennys. “Moons of my Hami” or something like that was the driving force for our decision making skills.

Shack will find the absolute worse thing on the menu and order seconds. We’re talking country fried steak and all the gravy you can top on that thing. It looks like someone (Aaron’s) cat just puked up a hairball and Shack decides to eat it. To each there own. Aaron, he’s more of burger or french toast kind of guy. He always gets stares when ordering a burger at 3am and asking for a chocolate milk. That kid ain’t right. Z, well Z is the healthy one on the bunch. Or rabbit food as we call it. Z, will either order some kind of salad or some kind of fish. Fish from Dennys at 3am, what could go wrong.

But that is not what this rant is about, see the Hoodoo have mastered the claw game that sits outside of most Dennys lobby’s. At every stop, in every town that has a Dennys the Hoodoo have taken home a prize. We can’t divulge our secret see, but we can offer this piece of advice. Such as in life, it goes the same in the claw game….choose your target wisely and go after it….even if it takes a little force.

In the past two road trips the Hoodoo have come away with a Minnesota Twins foam hand, a “Nemo” stuffed Clownfish, an engagement ring (I’m sure it’s real) and a Three Stooges basketball. All this while only spending $2.50. That my friends, this is skill. We are offering the secret for a one time payment of $199.99…but if you act now we’ll add in those sweat pants that look like jeans (what the hell are those about, anyway?)

Best request of the weekend: Salt n peppa “Push it”
Best advice from a bar patron: I’m drunnkkk…can uuuu playyy a song for mmyyy dogggg.
Best Tshirt saying: Loud is Good.

We’ll see you on the road….

Aaron, Z and Shack

We hope to hear when it will be playing at a city near you. We’ll be sure to keep you updated on our Facebook page. Check back for details.

Kick ass news to start the day out!

Click here for some rollergirl action!

Nashville Rollergirls

It’s with great pleasure to announce that we won Blues Artist of the Year, at this years WAMI awards! This is the highest honor in the state of Wisconsin for a musician. It’s great to be recognized by your peers and a wonderful surprise to be with such great company. I guess you could call it a Wisconsin Grammy!

It was a fun night filled with great performances by all genres including the Gufs and Shaker and the Egg. It was a great time seeing our good friends The Jimmys, Alex Wilson, Tweed Funk, Mojo Perry and Mean tooth Grin. Great bunch of raga muffins all in one place. The awards show was in Appleton, WI at the Performing Arts Center, a beautiful venue.

Thank you to all our Hoodooians for spreading the word of us far and wide. We’ll keep trying to thank you one show at a time. See you soon, y’all!

Aaron, Shack and Z

Our friends at Blues Rock Review are giving away two copies of our award winning album, “10:49.” Go to the following link and click to enter. It’s easy to win some Hoodoo loot for free!

Click Here

Thank you for putting the Hoodoo on the map! Thank you for voting for Aaron Williams and the Hoodoo in this years 2012 MAMA award voting process. We are up against some of our great friends that we love and cherish. We are just honored to be among them, we respect you all! Congrats to all the other nominee’s, it will be a great night of music!

Check out the mission of the MAMA Association, a great cause of putting instruments in the hands of children across the area.

Click Here

We got nominations in the following categories:

Artist of the Year
Blues Artist of the Year
Blues Album of the Year (10:49)
Blues Song of the Year
Rock Song of the Year
Drummer of the Year (Eric Shackelford)
Bass Player of the Year (Z)
Guitar Player of the Year (Aaron)
Male Vocalist of the Year (Aaron)

It’s been a great year for the Hoodoo and we owe it to the best friends in the world! Thank you ALL!

We hope you’re all doing well! We have some exciting news to share with you. We’ve been nominated for 2 WAMI awards for Blues Band of the Year and a HUGE surprise for us, Album of the Year for 2012. We had so much fun making “10:49″ we are very honored for it to be recognized by our peers. We’d like to thank our producers Jack and Geoff, they were a blast to work with and really helped the CD come alive! We also have to thank our awesome manager, Shirley, she helped spread the word far and wide about the CD.

The awards show will be on Sunday, April 15th in Appleton, WI. It’s our 3rd nomination for Blues Artist of the Year and first nomination for an album of year. We’re up against the great band Bon Iver in that category. They beat us out for the Grammy this year for Best New Artist but we think they deserve it, they’ve worked pretty hard:)

And last but certainly not least, we’d like to thank all of YOU for the great support you’ve given us with this album. It’s been a great ride promoting this album and getting a chance to meet all of you that have used your hard earned money to purchase…sometime several copies! We love you all..until next time!

Aaron, Z and Shack

Welcome to the Hoodoo newsletter: the Love Edition. We all know that February is the month for lovers, but the band thinks it shouldn’t be limited to just couples. The month of February, Valentine’s Day in particular, should be a celebration of love in any form, whether it’s love for family, love for friends, love of music, movies, whatever. If you love, celebrate it.

Did you know that in December the Hoodoo had their first fill weekend off in 11 months? No one in the band even noticed until someone’s (who shall remain nameless) girlfriend mentioned it. She had been counting… We all took a little time to finish some home projects, write some new tunes, and do some real slacking for once! Listen for Aaron’s new boogie we call “Ramblin’”, and a deep groove rocker from Z named “Into The Fire”. We have more on the way so keep those ears up!

Now, the Hoodoo don’t normally play New Year’s Eve because we like to party with the rest of the crowd. But this year we made an exception, and only for a place near and dear to us, the Tyranena Brewing Company in Lake Mills, WI. If you have the opportunity to try a Tyranena Brew, we highly recommend it. It was a wild time, with hats on! See for yourself:

The best part of the early year is looking ahead at what’s coming up and what the new year has in store. Some new venue’s we’ve enjoyed or are looking forward to in 2012 – Chicago St. Pub in Joliet, IL; The Gas Lamp in Des Moines, IA; Illinois Brewing Company in Bloomington, IL just to name a few. Of course, we’ll be back to the old haunts too, Intermission and Nicks in WI, Mother Duncan’s in KY, Lamasco’s in IN, and so many more…

Everyone in the band is excited about what 2012 has to offer. We’ll be coming round to your neighborhood as soon as we can get there, and as long as you bring your booty to shake, we’ll bring the good times and booty shaking Blues and Roll. New year, new tunes, new places, new things, we wish all of you a great new year and all good things in 2012. We look forward to seeing all of you face to face. If you don’t see your hometown on the schedule and you know somewhere in town with live music, let us know and we’ll do what we can do bring the party to you. Have a happy 2012 everyone and we’ll see you down the road.

Ahhh, what a year 2011 was and we can’t thank you all enough. We owe it to all our friends that helped spread the word of the Hoodoo!

Please stop by our Hoodoo Store in the next few weeks, we have new tshirt designs for sale at all our shows and we’ll be putting the new designs up at the Hoodoo Store, so all our friends nationwide can pick one up. Two new designs and V-Necks for the ladies!

We also have the exclusive “Hoodoo U Love” stickers available at all our shows for FREE and if you place any order online, we’ll send you a sticker with the order.

Let us know what you guy’s want- we are here for you. Feedback is what we love, want a new tee design, new club or a cool song you heard…let us know!

See you at the next show!

Aaron, Eric and Z

Hello Hoodooians!

It’s with great pleasure we get to report our CD “10:49″ has made it to the 2nd round in the annual International Blues Challenge for Best Blues Album of 2011. The great news keeps rolling in and we are so proud of this album. It’s a great honor when our CD is recognized by the largest Blues Foundation in the world. We’ve made it to the top 30!

Many thanks goes out to our Producers; Jack and Geoff, the Grafton Blues Association for submitting us and of course our manager Shirley. They do all the dirty work and we take all the credit! Above all we’d like to thank YOU our Hoodoo family for spreading the word, buying our albums, telling your friends and coming to our shows…time and time again. Without you, there would be no Hoodooo train rolling. We love you all!

Click Here for the List