Calumet City Blues & Music Projects

See the full VIDEO of “Calumet City Blues’ Northside Kenny & Mississippi Rab on YOU TUBE at http://youtu.be/Jkhu2MifJfE

CALUMET CITY BLUES is a new Film Theme song I  have written then recorded with Rab Howat and Davie Paton. ‘Calumet City Blues’ inspired by Charlies Newtons words in the book.

“I love the video, the song, and the band…and the girl.  My only criticism is the first line of the song about the restaurant and seventeen years sounds forced, like you coerced them into writing it into the song because Mrs. Murphy does that.  If they could change that first line to reflect the mood and location where the girl’s at in the video, on a 1 to 10, I’d have to give it a 10.  Of course, you’re at a 9.9 now…Nah, fuck it, I’ll give it a 10 now.  I really like the band, the song and the video… and the girl”

Chicago PD street legend Denny Banahan

CALUMET CITY is the debut novel from my friend from Chicago Charlie Newton….this a truly absorbing crime thriller that makes you believe you are there on that sidewalk and gives a real insight of how hard life can be sometimes in the Chicago Police Dept. I am doing some work with Charlie and have demoed ‘Calumet City Blues’ which hopefully you will be able to hear on a bigger stage in 2012…watch this space!

Meet Patti Black, the most decorated cop in Chicago. Solitary, stoic, loveless—her steel-plated exterior belies the wrenching legacy of an orphan childhood. Plagued by the horrifying abuse suffered at the hands of her foster parents, Black sublimates past torments into a meticulously maintained ghetto-tough persona.

When a series of unrelated cases—a drug bust gone bad, a mayoral assassination attempt, the murder of a state’s attorney; and ultimately, the exhumation of a long-concealed body from a tenement basement wall—all point in Patti Black’s direction, she finds herself facing the dark truth of a dusty old chestnut: You can’t hide from your history, no matter how far into the fog you run. For Patti Black, that history didn’t die in the tenement wall; it’s alive—and riding her down.

CALUMET CITY, Newton’s absorbing debut novel is a galloping ride from first page to last.”— Kirkus Reviews
“In Newton’s searing debut, confrontational and uncompromising Patti Black, Chicago’s most decorated cop, gets caught in a web of murder and betrayal. Newton, who based his heroine’s character on a real Chicago police officer, creates a netherworld full of violent and duplicitous people.” — Publishers Weekly
“Raw, heart-pounding, adrenalin-producing fiction doesn’t get much better than this. Highly recommended for all fiction collections.” —Michele Leber, Library Journal
“The literary equivalent of speeding down an amusement park water slide only to find an industrial strength meat grinder awaiting you at the bottom: By the time you realize what’s happening, it’s already much too late to turn back… an intense and explosive read destined to become a cult classic.”  —Paul Goat Allen, The Chicago Tribune “Machine-gun street-demotic, high octane, adrenalin drenched and breathless.”—Cath Staincliffe, The Tangled Web, UK

Previewed on my home page is a New Song ‘Nobody but you’ which is now on iTunes –  This is a heartfelt love song I have recently written and available to download on iTunes, http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/nobody-but-you/id397582742?i=397582747