Learn to play from Chicago Blues Masters
Learn to play Chicago Blues from the best. Our instructors are professional musicians who work, live and breathe the Blues. Most of our instructors and guest artists are Chicago Blues Hall of Fame Artists. We are honored to introduce to you the instructors and staff of Chicago Blues Network.
Sign Up for LessonsChicago Blues Masters are staying home.
You’re staying home.
How ‘bout some
At Home Chicago Blues?
The Faculty of Chicago Blues Bootcamp are offering online lessons of our entire Blues Network fakebook for you while taking shelter. For $23.95 per month, you will receive up to over 45 video lessons taught by Chicago Blues Masters, plus LIVE weekly Zoom meetings with the Instructor and fellow students. Each lesson shows techniques, riffs, chord changes and other insights which Faculty members use in Blues Clubs and Festivals around the country. Chicago Blues Bootcamp will donate 20% of each order to the Blues Foundation’s COVID-19 Blues Musicians Emergency Relief Fund. If you act now, the first four months are $71.85.
About Chicago Blues Network
Who we are
July 2nd - Jimmy Johnson, Dave Specter, Johnny Burgin & friends. Chicago Blues Bootcamp/Delmark Trading 4s
The Chicago Blues Network is an inclusive, social impact organization building community around the art form of Chicago Blues. We connect Chicago Blues musicians with those who have a passion for the Chicago Blues style of music to further the study and appreciation of this urban music discipline worldwide.
Education: Chicago Blues Bootcamp (immersive Blues music workshop) and At Home Chicago Blues (individual lessons with Chicago Blues Masters).
Entertainment: Presenting Trading 4s Concerts (livestream and pre-recorded concerts featuring Chicago Blues Masters), and supporting Blues podcasts “Blues From the Inside Out” and “No Border Blues”.
Social Impact: Contributing to The Firehouse Community Arts Center in Chicago, and The Blues Foundation’s COVID-19 Blues Musician Emergency Relief Fund.
Our goal is to become the destination for all things Chicago Blues, actively supporting musicians, record labels, clubs, festivals, foundations, neighborhoods and individuals. Through our bootcamps, our web-based training, our live Chicago Blues shows, our blues letter, our podcasts, and our social media we seek to bring together women and men of all ages in Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, and The Americas.
We stand up for the dignity, respect and human rights of the global Chicago Blues community.
Brother Brett Champlin, Founder
(1947 – 2020)
When Brett was 13, he began to teach himself to play guitar on a used acoustic guitar that had only three strings. While in high school in Oakland, California, he played saxophone in a rock band but he switched to guitar when he was at Southern Illinois University, where he played in both a folk music duo and in a blues rock band. The band, originally named “OM”, moved to San Francisco in 1968 and changed it’s name to “Devil’s Kitchen.” Devil’s Kitchen Band played all of the major venues on the West Coast and especially the Bay Area, eventually becoming the “house band” at Chet Helms’ Family Dog Ballroom. They opened for and jammed with the Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Taj Mahal, Santana, Creedance Clearwater Revival, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Allman Brothers, Elvin Bishop, Charlie Musselwhite, Savoy Brown, Ten Years After, Lightning Hopkins, Big Mama Thornton, Magic Sam and many others. When that band broke up, Brett traveled around the world and eventually settled in Chicago, went back to school for his MBA, and worked as an IT Manager and Management Consultant in large corporations for the next 35 years before retiring to play music again. After retiring, Brett could be found at blues jams in the Chicago area or listening to his favorite blues players three to four nights a week. He also started going to harmonica and guitar camps that were fun but none that taught Chicago style electric urban blues. So he decided to start one and that is how the Chicago Blues Network was born.
Learn to play blues from the best
Meet the Chicago Blues Masters
Our faculty are professional musicians who work, live and breathe the Blues. Most of our faculty and guest artists are Chicago Blues Hall of Fame Artists. We are honored to introduce to you the instructors and staff of Chicago Blues Network. Many of these Chicago Blues Masters have taught at the 5-Day immersive Chicago Blues Bootcamp, and some are currently teaching with "At Home Chicago Blues" Lessons.
Click right or left to view more Chicago Blues Masters
Events
You can view the special NYE Trading 4s show, Get your ticket here.
By Adam Lukach
Aug 05, 2020 at 1:34 PM
“Like virtually every other physical event in 2020, the Chicago Blues Boot Camp had to make a digital pivot due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The modest, four-year-old operation typically piggybacked on the international audience of the Chicago Blues Festival, and 14 of its 28 students in 2019 were visiting from outside the US.
The move to digital space has allowed for some expansion, however, with this summer’s launch of the “At Home Chicago Blues” series, including the Trading 4s concert series. Since late May, owner and manager Scott Weil has been organizing “pay what you can” bi-weekly shows on the first and third Thursdays of the month featuring Chicago blues musicians.”