Grammy-award winning blues artist Jimmie Vaughan to perform at The Lincoln

CHEYENNE — Jimmie Vaughan and his band, The Tilt-a-Whirl Band, are performing at The Lincoln this weekend along with opener Mathias Lattin.

Vaughan and his crew were originally supposed to perform at The Lincoln in March, but got rescheduled from their original date due to “unforeseen circumstances” with his health.

Vaughan is an American blues-rock guitarist and singer from Texas who started his musical journey in the 1960s. His late younger brother, Stevie Ray Vaughan, was also a renowned blues guitarist. He was a founding member of The Fabulous Thunderbirds in 1974, opened for Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan, collaborated with Bo Diddley, Eric Johnson and the Foo Fighters, and has won four Grammy awards according to the Grammy website, two in 1991, one in 1997 and one in 2002. He has also performed on TBS’s “Conan” and played with Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, BB King and more for the Crossroads Guitar Festival.

He officially left his band in 1990 and made a duo album called “Family Style” with his brother, who passed away later that same year. It wasn’t until 1994 that Vaughan released his first solo album, “Strange Pleasure,” with a song dedicated to his brother called “Six Strings Down.”

To date, Vaughan has 371,000 listeners on Spotify and 2 million views on YouTube. He has five albums in his discography including “Strange Pleasure” (1994), “Out There” (1998), “The Essential Jimmie Vaughan” (2002), “Baby, Please Come Home” (2019) and “The Pleasure’s All Mine” (2020). These don’t include the album he made with his brother in 1990 or any of the seven albums he made with The Fabulous Thunderbirds.

Since opening in 2020, The Lincoln has put on hundreds of shows including Ice Cube, Flatland Cavalry, UB40, Soulja Boy and more.

Renee Jelinek, the co-founder and “talent buyer” for The Lincoln, told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle they found Vaughan through an agent in Nashville they’ve worked with before.

“Last fall we sent out the offer for the spring date (to Jimmie), and a week later we saw him when he opened for Eric Clapton at Ball Arena (in Denver, Colorado). … It’s been on our books for a while and we’re excited that it’s happening finally,” said Jelinek.

Diversifying the portfolio of artists that come to The Lincoln is something that reigns important to Jelinek and her husband, Jon, who co-own The Lincoln with their son, Riley.

The Jelineks love concerts. They always found themselves driving to Denver and taking their son to see live music. In 2011, they started up the Alternative Arts Project to spread that love and passion of live music to Cheyenne and strive to have something different in the capital city.

“It’s important to us that we’re bringing a variety of different genres and different types of music here. Country music has a very important place here, but there’s a lot more than that (that we can add),” said Jelinek.

She also mentioned how the blues shows they’ve put on are usually ones people are very excited for and that Vaughan is one of the most anticipated ones yet.

“He has a pretty big history in the industry and comes from a very musical family. … He’s awesome. After seeing him live, we’re just super excited,” said Jelinek. “It’s also cool to discover someone new, too (with opening acts). We always encourage people to see the opener or supporting acts, because you never know, you could find your new favorite artist.

“This style of music is something we don’t get a lot of in Cheyenne and to have someone of this caliber coming to our smaller venue and get to see him in a space like this, it’s just really special.”