Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame

06/09/2026

BOB DYLAN’S BIRTHDAY BASH 2026 A SMASHING SUCCESS RAISING MORE THAN $500 FOR HALL OF FAME: The 27th Annual Bob Dylan Night Revival presented at Patrick's Pub on the evening of May 16 by the Dylan Night Committee was a great success raising $525.00 for the benefit of the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame (RIMHOF).

In addition to celebrating the 27th edition of Dylan Night, the presentation and performances made special note of the “many” sides of Bob Dylan. Through the years when people get Dylan tickets or are preparing to give the first spin to a new Dylan album they often wonder which Bob they’re going to get. For this year’s show, the audience got a taste of them all and was treated to a career-spanning set of some of his greatest and most beloved songs thanks to inspired performances by the 27th edition of the Dylan Revival Band and a host of acoustic performers.

The Board of Directors would like to express our deepest gratitude to all those who made this possible: our sponsors Jim McGetrick and the Dylan Night Committee and Patrick Griffin and the always wonderful folks at Patrick’s Pub, as well as musical director Richard Ribb who put together another fabulous lineup for the 2026 version of the Dylan Revival Band featuring John Larson, Rick Couto, Bill Jette, Scott Doggett and John Rufo plus special guests Brandon Catarina, Matt Mysliwicz, Pat Johnson and Charles Green.

05/12/2026

THIS SATURDAY NIGHT!!! THE ANNUAL BOB DYLAN NIGHT REVIVAL WILL BE HELD SATURDAY, MAY 16 AT PATRICK'S PUB: The theme for this 28th yearly gathering is "Bob Reinventing Bob" featuring a stellar lineup for this year's Dylan Revival Band featuring Rick Couto, Scott Doggett, Bill Jette, John Larson, Richard Ribb and John Rufo plus a host of acoustic performances. Cover is $10-Cash Only: 6:00 pm Cocktails, 6:30 Videos, and the live music starts at 7:00. Join us at Patrick's Pub, 381 Smith Street, Providence, RI 02908 as we celebrate the MANY sides of Bob Dylan on this special night. Proceeds will benefit the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame.

05/04/2026

ANNUAL BOB DYLAN NIGHT REVIVAL WILL BE HELD SATURDAY, MAY 16 AT PATRICK'S PUB: The theme for this 28th yearly gathering is "Bob Reinventing Bob" featuring The Dylan Night Band and acoustic performances by Brandon Catarina, Matt Mysliwicz, Pat Johnson & Charles Green. Cover is $10-Cash Only: 6:00 pm Cocktails, 6:30 Videos, and the live music starts at 7:00. Join us at Patrick's Pub, 381 Smith Street, Providence, RI 02908 as we celebrate the MANY sides of Bob Dylan on this special night. Proceeds will benefit the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame.

04/13/2026

DAVID GOLDSTEIN (1956-2026): It is with great sadness that the Board of Directors of the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame notes the passing of board member David M. Goldstein. He was a founding member of the board in 2011 and became the webmaster for the organization, a position he held until his passing. David was also a founding member of the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council and was a passionate advocate for all things Blackstone Valley. He was committed to promoting and preserving the music of Rhode Island and was active in community end hunger and musicians health awareness movements.

His family has asked that in lieu of flowers, memorial donations be made to Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame, Hope Artiste Village, 999 Main Street, Suite 100, Pawtucket, RI 02860.

Dave’s complete obituary may be seen at the link below:

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/providence-ri/david-goldstein-12828746

03/16/2026

PAUL GEREMIA (1944-2026): It is with deep sadness that the Board of Directors of the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame notes the passing of 2013 inductee Paul Geremia.

Paul's artistry was deeply rooted in all branches of American folk and popular music. He approached his career path in an incremental fashion as he developed his skills as a sensitive singer-songwriter, a master of the acoustic 12-string guitar, and one of the finest, purest and original performers of the classic folk-blues repertoire of his generation. Starting out in the early 1960s, he worked his way through the Rhode Island scene which revolved around the Tete-A-Tete coffeehouse on Thayer Street on the East Side of Providence, then it was onto the thriving Cambridge-Boston folk community, and then into the Greenwich Village melting pot still at its heights in the mid '60s. His five decade career as a touring performer and his extensive discography guarantee his place in the pantheon of American folk-blues greats.

His family will announce a celebration of his life at a later date.

For more information about this great artist, visit his official Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame page which features his biography based on a series of interviews with him and a complete discography:

Paul Geremia is a true original. He is a folk singer of the highest order incorporating all the textures and colors which make up the fabric of 20th century American popular music into his deeply rooted blues. His vocal style is lyrical, yet unique and powerful. His approach to the guitar is elegant...

12/08/2025

BOB ANGELL (1948-2025): It is with great sadness that the Board of Directors of the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame notes the passing of Robert C. “Bob” Angell. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2015 as a member of The Others, one of the most successful Rhode Island original bands of the 1960s. While growing up in the blue collar Olneyville section of Providence, Bob had taken up the guitar and discovered the blues. He was particulary drawn to Chicago style electric blues and in 1966, he formed Blues Outlet, arguably the first dedicated electric blues band in Rhode Island. He made special note of the British Invasion bands such as The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds as well as their stateside counterparts, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and The Siegel-Schwall Band, who achieved mainstream success in Rock ’n’ Roll playing electric blues. While attending URI, he became acquainted with The Others, a band right on the URI campus, who were enjoying major label success as early proponents of psychedelic rock on RCA Victor and Jubilee Records while continuing their education. When two of the members graduated, they recruited Bob and his drummer, Joe Parisi, to fill out the lineup and enjoyed another 18 months or so at the top of the New England scene. Blues Outlet was on hold, but this gave Bob a taste of what was happening with Cream in the UK and Canned Heat here at home which gave him a road map to navigate his band through the music business for the next fifty years. Over the decades, he remained dedicated to the blues releasing a series of well-received singles and albums on his Blues Outlet label utilizing dozens of sidemen and peers. In the 2000s, he was signed by British blues label RawTone which gained him an international fanbase. They released two albums, the latest being 2024’s partnering with Boston’s Kelly Knapp, Bob’s final release. In the late 1970s, he opened a record store in Pawtucket, also called Blues Outlet, where he mentored and assisted dozens of fans and musicians on their quests to collect hard-to-find blues records. Along the way, he befriended, and was befriended by, many of the blues legends who’d inspired him, most notably Humbert Sumlin and John Mayall, and had acquired the nickname “Snakeshaker.” Bob had also returned to URI, earned his master’s degree, and spent many years as an Assistant Professor of English at the Community College of Rhode Island. (Photo Credit: ©2015, Rick Farrell-Mojo Photography/Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame)

12/07/2025

RORY MacLEOD (1955-2025): It is with great sadness that the Board of Directors of the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame notes the passing of 2012 inductee Rory MacLeod. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame as a member of Roomful of Blues. In addition to his time as bassist with Roomful, Rory enjoyed a career of more than fifty years in a wide varitey of settings including his work as the original bassist for the first solo outings of Duke Robillard (class of 2014); extensive recording credits with Paul Geremia (class of 2013); as a member and producer of Jack Smith & The Rockabilly Planet; and many others. He also released one single in 1993 and an album in 1995 as a solo artist. Along the way he taught guitar and banjo in addition to upright bass. In recent years, MacLeod had become a guiding light in the roots music community as a performer and educator alongside his wife and musical partner, fiddler Sandol Astrausky, serving as Teaching Associates at Brown University and directors of Old-Time String Band.

12/01/2025

ANTONE “CHUBBY” TAVARES (1944-2025): It is with deep sadness that the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame (RIMHOF) notes the passing of 2014 inductee Chubby Tavares of the Grammy-winning family group Tavares. He began performing with his brothers John, Ralph and Arthur “Pooch” and their cousin Peter “Boo” Nicholaus in the late 1950s as The Del Rios who recorded for Sue Records on the Crackerjack imprint. When John retired, they became Chubby & The Realities and rose to the top of the local scene in the early ’60s. As Chubby & The Turnpikes, they were signed to Capitol Records in 1968 and began to attract national attention. Over the next four years, the act grew to include their other brothers Feliciano “Butch” Jr., Perry “Tiny” and Victor. After one final name change to simply Tavares, they returned to Capitol in 1973 and scored their first big hit, “Check It Out.” Victor dropped out at that time leaving the five remaining brothers to embark on a decade-long run at the top unparalleled in Rhode Island music history. They became international stars with massive hits such as “She’s Gone,” “Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel,” and “Whodunit.” The group was recognized as pioneers in the evolution of R&B from the Soul era into the modernized Funk and Disco movements of the ’70s and ’80s. They became Grammy winners for “More Than A Woman,” their contribution to the soundtrack of “Saturday Night Fever,” one of the best-selling albums of all time. While he remained active with the group until 2023, Chubby also embarked on a solo career with producer Carla Olson (singer-songwriter of The Textones) which began in 2011 with his perennial holiday favorite “It’s Christmas.” The pairing continued on to his first solo album, the critically acclaimed “Jealousy” in 2012. This was followed by “Can’t Knock Me Down” with producer-songwriter Preston Glass in 2015. Their title track, written along with Fred Pittman, has became a peace and brotherhood anthem for the ages, as poignant - perhaps even more so today - with Chubby’s passing as it was when it was released a decade ago. He released two more albums, “Amazing Ride” in 2018 and “Unlikely Hero” in 2022. (Photo Credit: Fuel Records ©2012)

08/21/2025

MICHAEL “TUNES” ANTUNES (1940-2025): It is with profound sadness that the Board of Directors of the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame notes the passing of 2012 inductee Michael “Tunes” Antunes at age 85. Tunes was born in Dartmouth, Massachusetts and was a fixture on the northeast music scene for more than 60 years. He studied saxophone early on, but was self-taught as far as the R&B and Rock ‘n’ Roll influences which formed his style. He released his first records in the early 1960s with his own band, The Blazers, and established himself on the Ithica-Syracuse upstate New York scene of the mid-late ’60s working with Ronnie James Dio & The Prophets and Bobby Comstock & The Counts. In the late ’60s, Tunes gained extensive touring experience as part of the house band for Richard Nader’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival shows backing up a “who’s who” of stars including Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Gary U.S. Bonds, The Coasters and The Shirelles. By the early ’70s, he was back in New England and fronting a nine-piece “show band” with his wife Gina called The New Bedfords, later downsized in 1975 to the six-piece band Triumph. They continued on as one of the top bands in New England until Tunes was offered the saxophone chair in Beaver Brown in 1977. Tunes remained with John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band until his passing appearing on all of their hit singles and albums and sharing in their national and international successes. He had an important supporting role in the two “Eddie and The Cruisers” movies, for which Cafferty and the band provided the soundtracks, as Wendell Newton, the band’s saxophonist. Along the way, he recorded "Tunes from the Cape Verdean Homeland" a solo album of modern interpretations of traditional Cape Verdean folk melodies in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution for their 1995 series Festival of American Folklife and he also recorded and toured with Ernie Boch, Jr.’s blues-rock band, Ernie & The Automatics, appearing on their national hit album “Low Expectations.” Michael's funeral service will be held Thursday, August 28 4-8 p.m. at the Saunders-Dwyer Home For Funerals, 495 Park Street, New Bedford, MA 02740.