Comments (0) Best Blues Band - 2009

The Butanes

This is the fifth consecutive year (and sixth total) that the Butanes have nabbed the title of Best Blues Band, and it's easy to see why: Their blues renditions are as solid as the hardwood floors in front of the stage at the Eagles Club in Minneapolis, where you can catch them live every Wednesday night. As the hipsters and punk-rock kids stream into nearby haunts like the Hexagon Bar and Memory Lanes, blues enthusiasts seek out the Eagles Club to see the Butanes work through a couple of sets of dextrous, gritty blues with special guests like Willie Walker and Jim Greenwell. After touring as the backing band for New Orleans blues giant Earl King in the '80s, gigging regularly at the Cabooze and the 400 Bar throughout the '90s, and earning accolades over the years for their Hammond organ-heavy, workmanlike mastership of the blues genre, the Butanes are the longstanding forerunners of a scene that found its unlikely roots in the West Bank of a river in the upper Midwest and continues to find new followers.