Ted Horowitz — Popa Chubby — has been building toward a show like this for the better part of three decades. The Bronx blues-rocker headlined the Jimi Hendrix music festival in Holland in 1998, recorded a 22-song tribute live album at a New York club in 2006, and on September 18 arrives at Colony Woodstock with a three-hour Hendrix set and a room that holds 150 people.
About the Show
Popa Chubby (born Ted Horowitz in the Bronx, 1960) came up through the New York punk scene before the blues took permanent hold. He played guitar for performance artist Screaming Mad George at CBGB’s, joined Richard Hell’s band the Voidoids, and built a solo career that his own booking materials bill as “30 YEARS OF BLUES ROCK & SOUL.” He describes the style as “the Stooges meets Buddy Guy, Motörhead meets Muddy Waters, and Jimi Hendrix meets Robert Johnson.” That lineage explains why a Hendrix tribute from this particular guitarist is something other than a novelty booking.
The September 18 show is “Popa Plays Hendrix,” with Chubby and friends working through the Hendrix catalog. The project has documented roots: after headlining the Holland Hendrix festival in 1998, fan demand pushed him toward an all-Hendrix set. That demand eventually produced Electric Chubbyland: Popa Chubby Plays Jimi Hendrix (Blind Pig Records, 2006), a two-disc, 22-song tribute recorded live over two nights at a New York club. A reviewer described the set as a “relentless wah-wah pedal assault” from “a first-rate blues man, capable of making a guitar cry.” The Colony show draws from that same body of work.
His solo catalog runs from Booty and the Beast (1995) through The Good, the Bad and the Chubby (2002) and a long list of releases on Blind Pig, Mascot Records, and Ear Music. He earned a Blues Music Award nomination for Best New Artist in 1995, won the French Grand Prix du Disque in 1998, and took the Mons International Jazz Festival Award in 2006. The fall Northeast run surrounding the Woodstock date also hits the Iridium in Manhattan (August 29), Stage One in Fairfield, Connecticut (September 12), and Chan’s in Woonsocket, Rhode Island (September 25).
Venue & Logistics
Colony Woodstock, at 22 Rock City Road, is a bar and music venue in the Hudson Valley with a 150-person capacity, the kind of room where a guitar-forward, three-hour set lands the way it’s supposed to. Doors at 6 p.m., show at 7 p.m. Attendees under 18 are admitted with a parent or legal guardian.
Tickets
Tickets are $29–$50. The event listing notes no refunds. Buy tickets