Liz Mandeville offers fun and informative workshops on blues music history, the contributions of women, an introduction to blues music, and songwriting. She has a BA in Music from Columbia College Chicago and experience touring and performing blues music. Her workshops draw from her academic study of blues history as well as her experience as a performer and songwriter to engage and educate attendees.

1. Liz Mandeville Gives Fun
Workshops!
Four Great Topics:
1. History of the Blues
2. Women’s Contributions to the Blues
3. Blues Music 101
4. Songwriting for Fun and Profit

3. Liz has a BA in Music from Chicago’s Columbia College.
After eight years of touring with her band, Liz decided that although she was a good
entertainer, she wanted to be a better musician. She enrolled at fine arts focused
Columbia College in Chicago where she graduated with honors in 1996.
At Columbia Liz was unbelievably lucky to work with Music Department Chair, William
Russo, who had been an arranger for Duke Ellington and Stan Getz.
Composer Kimo Williams, vocalist Bobbi Wilsyn and arranger Orbert Davis were among
Liz’s professors.
In Columbia’s English Department, performer and historian, George Bailey, was most
influential. He encouraged Liz’s research and guided her writing on the world of blues,
her place in it and giving an historical perspective.
During her college years, Liz was Artist in Residence at the Blue Chicago clubs from
1994-99. She performed with many great blues artists and recorded two tracks for the
Blue Chicago Label’s “Red Hot Mamas” CD. While getting her college degree by day,
she was getting her “PhD in the Streets,” (as her fellow musicians teased her) singing
blues in the clubs at night.

5. Liz Mandeville Loves Blues History! She Makes It Fun!
While Liz was a College student in the 1990’s, she spent hours in Columbia’s
extensive library and their Center for Black Music Research as well as the City
of Chicago’s Harold Washington Library, combing the stacks, reading
historical data, back issues of the Chicago Defender (America’s first Black
owned newspaper) and with the help of blues historian Suzanne Flandereau,
building her knowledge of America’s Roots Music.
She uses those resources paired with her enthusiasm, her talent as an
entertainer and her handy guitar in presenting these four fun, informative
workshops:
• History of the Blues, from field hollers to funk…
• Women’s Contributions to the Blues, what , why and who…
• Blues Music 101, or what is this music & how do I clap to it?
• Songwriting, for Fun and Profit
Here’s a summary of what you’ll get in each workshop….

7. History of the Blues: From Field Hollers to Funk…
Today it feels as if The Blues has always been part of America’s cultural tapestry.
It’s actually a blend of many threads. Work Songs, Spirituals, Toasts, Minstrelsy,
Vaudeville, and Politics all had a hand in that blend which continues to morph and
grow even today. In fact today’s Blues has incorporated rock, funk and heavy metal!
In this fun, fact filled workshop:
• Liz starts at the beginning, demonstrates the work song, its beginnings and uses.
• She talks about the Revivalist movement, the traveling tent show, its music and
Biblical message and how it influenced the popular music of the day.
• Liz will take you on a tour of the minstrel show contrasting it with vaudeville and
how the two art forms came together and the Classic Blues Period bloomed.
• Next, the Classic Blues Period, a decade that changed the world! Who was
responsible, who were the major players and what happened to end it?
• The rise of the guitar, country blues, Northern Migrations, Memphis and Chicago.
• Chess Records, from the birth of Electric Blues to the Birth of Rock & Roll.
• Chicago’s Delmark , Alligator, Blind Pig, and Earwig Records: Who, what & why?
• Enter the Funk! Johnny Guitar Watson, James Brown & disco touch the blues.
• Hip Hop: a direct descendant of the Toast, what was that, who toasted and why?
• The Blues - NOW and in the Future…

9. Women’s Contribution to the Blues
Since its inception, women have been instrumental in building, improving and adding
to the great mystery that is American Blues Music. Consider these facts:
• A woman named the blues and created the template for all Blues Singers that
followed her. She kept her seminal act going for 50 years!
• 3 female Vaudeville stars incited the Classic Blues period. One of them also
discovered Eubie Blake!
• A woman took blues guitar from country pickin’ to urban electric, paving the way
for the Chicago masters of Chess Records fame!
• At the height of the 60’s Civil Rights Movement, a beauty queen took her winnings
and used them to reignite the career of her favorite artist, Lightnin’ Hopkins!
You’ll hear intimate details of these stories and many more. Join Liz Mandeville in an
interactive, music-filled journey that traces the political climate in the US that would
lead any woman to sing the blues, important periods in blues and the women who
helped form them, the songs, the players and their juicy inside stories.

11. Blues 101: How to Listen, Where to Clap!
Geared toward the non-musician, great for introducing the blues to kids,
this fun interactive One Hour Workshop will get you clapping, singing,
and swinging along to the blues of all periods.
Questions addressed include:
• What is the Blues? A short history, where it started and what were
the songs like? You’ll learn a field holler, line-out and hear a classic
blues song, a boogie and a lump de lump.
• How do you recognize blues when you hear it? Explaining timing,
tempo, the importance of the rhythm, the blues scale, and blue
notes. The room will become a rhythm machine!
• Types of blues; What’s the difference between Blues and Jazz; Blues
& Rock; Blues & Hip-Hop? As an ever changing art form, blues has
grown from Field Hollers to the 12-bar. What makes these different?
What is a LUMP? We’ll follow one lick thru 40 years of morphing!

13. Songwriting for Fun & Profit!
Liz Mandeville has written hundreds of songs . More than 80 of her songs
have been recorded and internationally distributed. She’s produced five
radio commercials. She won the 2005 International Songwriting Contest,
and was a finalist in the USA Songwriting Contest. In 2008 Liz was
nominated Songwriter of the Year by the American Roots Music
Association.
Join Liz for a fascinating class on the mechanics of songwriting from idea
to completion and beyond.
• Liz will talk about song form, what are the parts of a song and how do
they function?
• Types of songs, ballad, boogie, 12-bar, rock song, what are they really?
• Developing an idea, giving yourself a writing assignment, collecting
hooks, some famous songs and how they got written.
• We’ll look at some popular songs and figure out what makes them tick.
• The class will write a song together and play it.
Liz will also cover areas of business such as copywriting & publishing.