Elvis T. Busboy & The Blues Butchers

Elvis T. Busboy (aka Stephen Shaw) started out a roadie for the P.J. Belly band and went with Belly in 1989 to the Arts & Crafts festival in Kerrville, where Belly asked Shaw if he wanted to get up on the stage and sing. "I didn't have time to think about it long enough to be nervous," Shaw says. He got up and sang the only tune he knew, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's 'That's All Right Mama' and it worked. The following year Belly opened up his own Lubbock club and Shaw became the singing cook there. Shaw would stop cooking, come out and sing, then go back and cook some more. Friends started calling him Elvis because of his unique voice and would holler "You wanna hear the busboy sing?" So he became "Elvis the Busboy" which was eventually shortened to Elvis T. Busboy....voila!

Shaw started to gain popularity and he found himself working with bands all over town. He eventually crossed paths with the Texas Blues Butchers. The Texas Blues Butchers were a side version of Lubbock's premiere '80's band, The Nelsons, which had 1 LP and 1 CD released. The Nelsons toured with Culture Club and played on Farm Aid, but were struggling and thus formed the Blues Butchers to get blues gigs. Shaw started singing with the band and before they knew it they were getting gigs all over town. Shaw recalls, "they were a terrific rock 'n' roll band trying to play the blues, and they literally were butchering it."

That's not the case anymore however. Jobs have been coming so steadily that they are booked several nights a week in blues bars from Dallas to New York, and when they play it is almost always to a packed house. Shaw says, "This is more than I'd ever hoped for...this band gets a good reaction faster than anything we've been involved with. The response has just been mind-boggling."

Information from the band's site

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  Stephen "Elvis T. Busboy" Shaw: lead vocals, vocals
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  John "Jake" Sprott: guitar
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  Tim "The Professor" Alexander: accordion, keyboards
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  Sean Frankhouser: bass
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  J.T. Paz: drums

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  Danny Cochran: drums

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