Here's the printside review, on roanoke.com.

What's up with Roanoke not showing up for New Orleans music? Only 230 came to the Jefferson Center, capacity about 940, for the Henry Butler Trio.

Before the show, I spoke to a couple of concert-goers who had gone to 202 Market on Friday to hear Bonearama, a New Orleans horn act. They said that attendance was light, as it had been at 202 when Porter, Batiste Stoltz played there a few months back.

Sure, Southwest Virginia is Scots-Irish roots country, so people show up for big bluegrass shows, and for some reason it's a good-enough blues town to support acts that come through. But if you don't dig New Orleans, you're missing out.

Butler, as I wrote in the deadwood version, is more than simply a New Orleans-style player. He has deep jazz knowlege, and played a lot of stuff outside the norm of what conventional soloists would try. He's obviously studied at the church of Thelonius Monk and Herbie Hancock. He mixes in classical stylings too, and his timing is impeccable -- a trait his sidemen, Tony Gullege (bass) and Kindler Carto (drums), share with him.

But he also studied with Professor Longhair and Allen Toussaint, paragons of the New Orleans style, so he's well locked in to the Storyville style of piano, and can drop it into practically anything he's playing at a second's notice, it seemed.

Butler also has a good sense of humor. Early on, he told the audience that some numbers just stick with players throughout their lives. Those songs might not be players' favorites, but they like to pull them out every now and then. He said he was about to play one of those songs.

"The first one who recognized this tune and raises your hand so that I can see, you will win a prize," Butler, who of course, is blind, told the laughing audience.

Then he did his genre-bending version of what some audience members soon figured was "Tom Dooley." When he finished, a woman called out the name of the song.

"Since I didn't see your hands, you don't win," he said.

The woman replied: "I was waving it!"

"Wow," Butler said. "Sorry I didn't see that."

Here are a few notes from the pre-show question-and-answer period that was part of the Jeff Center's "The Blind Leading ..." series, events funded by a National Endowment for the Arts grant.

Butler said that as a young child, he was reluctant to play piano.

"There was a stigma for boys who took piano lessons," he said. "Girls could do it. And I didn't wanna go through that with my peers."

But he had a "big, mean" teacher with a "reputation for spanking" at Louisiana State School for the Blind, in Baton Rouge. And that teacher insisted he take up piano. Later, Butler said, he was "volunteered" for many other musical projects, including arranging a number for piano and two trombones.

"I didn't know what I was going to do with that," he said. "But I did do something. And the girls liked it so much that I said, 'Wow! Maybe this is my calling.'"

His bachelor's and master's degrees -- from Southern University and Michigan State, respectively, were in voice. He said it was an easier major for a blind person, because the difficult piano pieces that one had to memorize also had to be read, in Braille, with one hand.

Butler also discussed his work as a photographer. Hear more about that on our podcast with Butler. He said he has had several exhibitions of his work, but never one in Virginia.

Jefferson Center artistic director Dylan Locke, who was moderating the conversation, jumped in: "That might be something we need to think about."

So, don't be surprised if the Jeff exhibits Butler's work sometime soon.

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