AustinTalks | Bonni McKeown

Bonni McKeown

Bonni McKeown co-authored Stepson of the Blues: A Chicago Song of Survival, the autobiography of Chicago blues singer and drummer Larry Hill Taylor. Her writings on African-American music history have been published in Metro Valley magazine, Charleston WV; and in Big City Rhythm and Blues Magazine in Detroit where she is also a copyeditor. With Gallery Communications she wrote and helped design a tourism map brochure for the Potomac Highlands of West Virginia in 1999. Bonni has long been active as a citizen on arts, environmental and transportation issues. She is the author of the Vietnam War biography Peaceful Patriot: the Story of Tom Bennett (Mountain State Press 1980). Her poems appear in the 2004 West Virginia anthology Wild Sweet Notes and she was a contributing writer to the West Virginia Encyclopedia, published by West Virginia Humanities Council in 2006. She is also a blues piano player.

Opinion

Blues can help black Chicago revive, relate

By Bonni McKeown | April 11, 2019

West Side resident Bonni McKeown says Chicago’s world-famous blues music can be a powerful cultural symbol to encourage appreciation of African-American culture. The city would greatly benefit from a blues revival, she says.