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The Blues: Hard Luck, Bad Times, and Lost Loves. Blues music addresses these issues and many others, and for this reason, blues music has been called a healer, much like a support group helps someone by listening to their problems. When someone who is experiencing the blues, in whatever form it may take, hears a blues song telling a story about someone experiencing the same problems, often times that person feels better from the connection.The Person singing them definately does.

Having said this, T.V. Blues has been through it, from reform school as a teenager to a few stays at the county lock-up as an adult, a stormy marriage and the death of two of his five children due to medical reasons. Growing up in a rowdy, middle-class neighborhood, T.V. Blues took to the streets to a world of drugs, alcohol, and violence. T.V. Blues was in clubs playing for free drinks by the age of thirteen. By fifteen T.V. Blues was in the department of corrections, for minor offenses. Soon after his release T.V. Blues joined the army, got married, and began a family. T.V. Blues then began drywalling and has been doing so now for more than thirty years. T.V. Blues continued to hone his skills as a musician, working all week and playing on the weekends. This was a steady source of unrest between him and his wife, and was one of the many things that led to a failed marriage after twenty-three years.

Shortly after his divorce in 2004, T.V. Blues cut his first album titled "That's Why They Call Me T.V. Blues." Needing a demo tape for a promo pack for the Riverfront Blues Fest in Peoria, crunched for time, inadequate funds, and without a band, T.V. Blues hired two musicians from Chicago, and two musicians from Peoria, and hiring Jack Empson from Peoria to record the show live in true blues fashion. T.V. Blues recorded the show with these four other musicians who had never been on the same stage together. There were no rehersals. It was totally off the cuff. Twenty three songs were recorded that night and came out so well a C.D. was cut with nine of the songs.

Being deemed pure and natural by local musicians in Peoria, Illinois because of his free-style lead playing, which are often savage and blistering, set T.V. Blues apart from other musicians in the mid-west. If asked T.V. Blues will say, "I am a blues man first, and a guitarist second, because there is a difference."Music is merely the tool that TV uses to testify to the Blues. There are many great young musicians out there from six years old on up who can only rely on other people's experiences of the blues as a reference. T.V. Blues often says, "There are a lot of these youngsters who can play circles around B.B. King, but they can't play better, if you can get your mind around that. They're gonna have to do some serious suffering to catch up." T.V. Blues attributes his strength as an adult to his three living children Christopher, Samantha, and Neil, his parents, James and Ruth Valentine, and his best friend and mentor, Dennis Schreck. Now that T.V. Blues children are all adults, he is devoting much more time and effort to making his mark in the blues world.

T.V. Blues has shared the stage with blues heavy-weights such as Larry McCray, Big James and the Chicago Playboys, Sonny Rhodes,LiL Ed and the blues imperials, members of the Savoy Brown Band, members of the Elvin Bishop Band,Jazz and Blues Great Carol Fran, two of Koko Taylor's long time guitarists, Eddie King and Maestro Saunders, and Bernard Allison. So get ready as T.V. Blues will be releasing a C.D. in 2008 titled "Here Come The Blues." So if you get the chance to see T.V. Blues live, you'll hear a balls to the wall, no holds barred blues show. Don't miss it, he'll wear you out. T.V. Blues sincerely hopes you all enjoy his brand of the blues.