The Durham-based Bulltown Strutters bring the party and shift it into high gear with their colorful mix of old-school New Orleans jazz and new-school New Orleans funk, fronted by several talented vocalists, powered by a massive horn section, and stirred into a gumbo with a heaping dose of crowd participation. Whether leading a street parade or filling a stage with joy, they will get you dancing and singing! From the Palm Court Strut to the Hokey Pokey – they know what it is all about!
A street band? You got it. A stage show? Sure. Parading inspired by the finest in New Orleans Second Line traditions? Absolutely! With an extra dose of Durham craziness.
Over the years, this community band has built up a loyal following of fans who don their feather boas, wacky hats and sequins (or maybe just jeans and t-shirt) and come out to dance, get happy, make a toast and maybe make themselves hoarse singing those old tunes that you didn’t even know you knew all the words to.
Bulltown Strutters on Facebook
Our Shows
Background
Bulltown Strutters co-founder
Cathy Kielar
The first glimmer of the Bulltown Strutters was from the June 2010 Beaver Queen Pageant, when Blaise was asked to gather a group of musicians to play a mock funeral for the loss of lives in the Gulf Oil Spill in April of that year. About 12 musicians did a procession to the “coffin”, playing “Amazing Grace.” After gathering at the blue tarp-covered coffin for a brief honoring of the dead, we played the upbeat “Saints Go Marching In” up onto the stage, as the audience joined us in the celebration of live. Many of the original musicians came from that group.
Bulltown Strutters, as it is today, was born in September of 2010 when Mark Donelly of the Hillsborough Arts Council asked Music Explorium’s Cathy Kielar if she could get a percussion band together for the Oct 2010 Hillsborough Handmade Parade. Cathy responded with “I think I can do better than that” and enlisted Blaise Kielar, her clarinet-playing husband. Blaise reached out to his horn-playing friends, Katherine O’Brien broadcast the call for musicians to the Beaver Queen Pageant participants, Cathy invited folks through the Music Explorium enewsletter and Strutters-To-Be came out to PLAY! Meeting over Durham-local beers at Broad Street Cafe, we named ourselves, selected tunes, gathered colorful costumes and started to JAM! The gigs are flowing in – our community is ripe for butt-shaking, smile-making, boogie-raising music.
Our Music Director
Blaise Kielar opened Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s first violin shop in 1978 and later started Music Explorium and Electric Violin Shop. He retired from a music retail career by transitioning Electric Violin Shop to become America’s first worker-owned co-op music store in 2016. He is an improvising violin and clarinet player as well as a poet and writer of non-fiction, currently working on the memoir, Be Heard: The Quiet Kid Who Started the World’s Loudest Violin Shop. His essay “Violin Shop: Behind the Velvet Counter” won Honorable Mention in the 2022 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize. After publication in the North Carolina Literary Review, the essay was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, which is kind of like a musician being nominated for a Grammy! Find more details at https://blaisekielar.com/writing/ He has posted a Joke of the Day in his front yard since April 2020, also available online at https://blaisekielar.com/jokes/