SC Blues Alliance

The S.C.  Blues Alliance is a Charlestom based blues collective, started by John Picard, Brian Widlowski, Eddie Phillps, and Ross Bon. The Alliance is made up of a dozen musicians in the Lowcountry of South Carolina with a common interest, and shared vocabulary in the blues. 

Drummer Brian Widllowski is from Charleston S.C., where he began performing professionally in the late 90s. As a student of recent Grammy award winning drummer Quentin Baxter, he graduated from The College of Charleston with a major in Jazz Performance. Over the past 25 years Widlowski has performed many styles and venues throughout the U.S. from local bars, to opening for Ray Charles at The Charleston Coliseum. Widlowski currently resides in Brevard.

 Guitarist, Eddie Phillips, is a native of Lancaster, SC. He relocated to the SC Low Country in 1977. He has performed professionally since he was 18 yrs old. His musical influences are from all over the music spectrum, but he has a particular fondness for traditional blues. Eddie has toured and performed extensively throughout the eastern US, numerous countries in Europe, Colombia and Macau (China); playing a wide variety of music festivals including the Chicago Blues Fest, Pocono Blues Fest, Lugano (CH) Blues to Bop Fest, Cognac (FR) Blues Fest, the Lionel Hampton Jazz Club (Paris) and the Maxwell Café (Paris) to name a few.

Ross Bon was part of the Chicago music scene beginning in 1992 as a harmonica player and vocalist. He recorded with artists such as Willie “Big” Smith, Buddy Scott, Pinetop Perkins, Junior Wells, Dave Specter, James Cotton and Kim Wilson.

In 1995, he joined with guitarist Gareth Best, bassist Jimmy Sutton, drummer Bob Carter, pianist Donny Nichilo and saxophonists Samuel Burckhardt and Jerry DeVivo to form the Mighty Blue Kings. They made their debut performance opening for the late Junior Wells at Buddy Guy’s legends in Chicago; and followed up with a weekly residence at Chicago jazz club The Green Mill. Later, the band toured the US.

The band’s lineup for their 1997 release, Come One, Come All, consisted of Bon, Best, DeVivo on drums, bassist Brett Simons, keyboardist Simon Sweet and saxophonists Jonathan Doyle and Mark Colby.

The band released two studio albums, Meet Me In Uptown (1995), and Come One, Come All (R-Jay Records). Together, they sold over 100,000 copies, with the latter having debuted in the top ten on Billboard’s Blues Album chart. They subsequently released three additional albums, Live From Chicago, (reaching #14 on Billboard’s Blues Album charts), the holiday record, The Christmas Album and Alive In The City.

The Mighty Blue Kings disbanded around 2001. In early 2010 Ross Bon formed a new band under the name, Ross Bon & The Mighty Blue Kings.