The All Tore Up

Guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter, Steve Brewer, originally hails from Little Rock, Arkansas. He got a cheap electric guitar for Christmas when he was 15 and has been playing off and on ever since. He was first attracted to British blues rock guitarists, Eric Clapton and Alvin Lee, but then sought out their influences, including BB King, Big Bill Broonzy, Howling Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, and others. He also became a big fan of Lightning Hopkins, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. In college and graduate school in the 1980s and early 90s, he got interested in punk rock and alternative rock. Some of his favorite bands of that genre, however, had connections to the blues and rockabilly, including The Gun Club, X, the Flat Duo Jets, and later the White Stripes. Steve thus expanded his interest to rockabilly players such as Scottie Moore and Carl Perkins. He also became interested in finding the roots of electric guitar. This search led him to discover Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, Tiny Grimes, Bill Jennings, Junior Banard, and Eldon Shamblin. His current playing combines blues, country, rockabilly, jazz, and alternative rock. He has lived in Oxford, Mississippi since 1996, where he is a professor of biology at the University of Mississippi, studying plant ecology.

Mike Stokes first got his hands on an upright bass around 2001, taking gigs playing everything from bluegrass to rockabilly. For many years, he was a member of the Hattiesburg rock and roll trio, the Molotov Bros, with drummer Brad Newton and guitarist David Minchew and regards this experience as fundamental to his development as a musician. He’s played with acts such as the bluesman Tommie ‘T-Bone’ Pruitt and the internationally recognized Hillbilly Hellcats. In recent years he has recorded with Afton Wolfe and Cary Hudson. He is currently based in Oxford, Mississippi.