Blues find a home at Fat Fish Pub

When Burl Varner and Jeff Moore opened Fat Fish Pub in January, one of their goals was to make the Broad Street blues bar a regional destination for live music.

Several months later, the bar’s first nationally known act has sold out well in advance of the show.

Award-winning blues and soul vocalist Janiva Magness, touring in support of her CD “What Love Will Do,” will perform Sunday at Fat Fish Pub.

Magness won the Blues Music Award for Best Contemporary Female artists in 2006 and 2007. Born in Detroit and a survivor of an impossibly rough childhood, she found her voice — and a way to heal — in blues music.

Orphaned by 16, Magness spent her teen years in chaos, jumping from foster home to foster home and city to city. She got pregnant as a teenager and gave the baby up for adoption.

But an Otis Rush concert in Minneapolis inspired a path out of hopelessness and desperation. After that show, Magness soaked as much blues music as she could, eventually finding work as a background singer before breaking into a successful solo career.

“We were big fans so we got on the Web, found her agent and contacted him,” Varner said.

Local and regional bands and solo artists play at Fat Fish every weekend, a tradition that started in January when blues singer Sally Weisenberg performed.

But snagging Magness for a show was a breakthrough for the bar whose mascot is a fish named Morty who holds a guitar named Bluegill, a take on B.B. King’s guitar named Lucille.

“This show is going to be a big starting point for us,” Varner said. “It looks like Galesburg is willing to support these kind of shows.”

All 120 seats for the show have been sold, with attendees coming in from as far as Bloomington, Varner said. The bar will close to those without tickets for the performance Sunday.