Bonni's Writing Bio…and how she can help you
Born in Philadelphia, Bonni McKeown grew up in West Virginia working in her family's tourism business. As a toddler, her first words were “Read-a-book.” She began writing storybooks, poems and songs at age 5--the same year she figured out “Twinkle Little Star” on a toy xylophone. She hasn't stopped since.
Bonni's half-century of writings and presentations conveys a lifetime of grassroots citizenship and ongoing knowledge of civics, environment, transportation, bridges to African American culture, and generational perspectives. She offers her services as editor for those writing short stories, novels, memoirs, business promotions, and journalistic works. Contact her for a quote on your project--roughly $25-35/hour for developmental or line/copyediting based on word count. Read here to learn What's an Editor Do? .
She offers an organizing service to assist you in decluttering and sorting through papers to sift out your buried treasures-- your significant family and community history.
--"I’m grateful to Bonni, who helped me to focus and polish my short story called 'Contagious', recently published in an anthology called Shades of Positively Pandemic by Write Volumes.
Thank you, Bonni, for your good work! " --Nasrin Menalagha
BONNI’s EXPERIENCE
Graduating from the WVU School of Journalism in 1971, Bonni McKeown worked as a reporter and copyeditor for daily newspapers: the News-Times in Danbury, CT, Southwest Times in Pulaski, Virginia and the Beckley Post-Herald and Charleston Gazette in West Virginia.
In the 1990s she organized the archives of Capon Springs and Farms, spa with 200 year old buildings in Hampshire County, eastern W.Va., and co-wrote the book on these buildings sold at the resort today
Bonni is a contributing writer for the West Virginia Encyclopedia. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/authors/529 Two of her poems were published in the year 2000 West Virginia anthology Wild Sweet Notes.
In Chicagoland her blog "West Side Blues" plus freelance articles on neighborhood business and culture, appeared in the Austin Weekly News https://www.austinweeklynews.com/author/bonni-mckeown/ in Chicago's farthest-west West Side neighborhood.
In 2014 she wrote the "Music" webpage for the Maxwell Street Foundation. https://maxwellstreetfoundation.org/about-us/ She wrote the cover story on Chicago West Side musicians for Big City Rhythm and Blues magazine in August 2006.
Bonni is the author of two biographies. Peaceful Patriot: The Story of Tom Bennett, is the 1980 biography of a West Virginia conscientious objector and Army medic killed in Vietnam. It's officially out of print, but through the small-batch reprint efforts of retired Morgantown High School teacher Jenny Secreto, she has a few copies to sell by mail for $20.
In 2010 she co-wrote and published the limited edition autobiography of West Side Chicago blues singer/drummer Larry Hill Taylor, Stepson of the Blues. Getting his story on paper led to her drafting a script for a feature movie. The Rhythm and the Blues.
As a senior during the 2020s, she's had the chance to return to community journalism in Chicago, serving as a Documenter for the news service City Bureau.
She and Larry Taylor occasionally give talks for libraries, schools and community groups about blues history and heritage. Please contact her by email to order a book or engage her as an editor or a speaker.
Educational blues workshops
Through blues, students discover the history of African Americans and America's popular music. Blues is at the root of rock, hiphop, R&B jazz, and even country. Bonni supports blues for economic development to benefit the people and communities who created this historic art form.
During the early 2000s, Bonni taught blues history and music with elementary students at Chicago West Side's Austin Town Hall, Donoghue Elementary, South Side Chicago; Piedmont School in Charleston WV; with seniors at Charleston’s FestivALL Elderhostel; and on the road in Morgan County, WV with West Virginia singer-songwriter and First Lady of Soul “Lady D,” Doris Fields. Lady D helped create the first "Sing Your Own Blues Tune" programs with Bonni .In 2006-07 she helped organize the Charleston WV Blues Society and arranged for a Humanities lecture by WVU jazz professor Dr. Christopher Wilkinson about the history of African-American swing bands traveling through West Virginia.
Since 2009, Bonni has helped reconnect generations through a traveling educational workshop called Chicago School of Blues, with the nontprofit FOUR Blues. Students learn to compose their own blues tunes, and a band of South and West Side musicians introduces them to musical instruments. She also given history talks and demonstrations focused on Chicago's West Side, and promoted the blues for economic development to benefit the Black communities it came from.
Bonni's Blues Films
Working with videographer Chris Wilkinson in July of 2013, Bonni produced a concert video of bluesmen in action at BBF, a West Side social service agency. You can hear up close and personal blues and soul performed by singers Willie D and Larry Taylor. Working with Wilkinson using footage shot by Darryl Pitts, she produced videos of Larry Taylor "On Drums" and "On the Blues."
In 2015, Bonni began producing her own feature film about a family of Chicago blues musicians in the 1960s-70s, based on part of Larry Taylor's life story. The Rhythm and the Blues , with Darryl Pitts (producer of the documentary Reel Black Love.) Features the actor Leon as Larry's stepfather Eddie Taylor and bluesman/actor/storyteller Guy Davis as Eddie's road partner Jimmy Reed. Pitts is finishing the film.
Barrelhouse Piano Vocal
"Barrelhouse Bonni" McKeown is a journalist, blues piano player, teaching artist, and citizen activist who presents and supports heritage musicians upholding the blues and soul tradition. Her motto: PRAY FOR PEACE; WORK FOR JUSTICE; BOOGIE FOR SURVIVAL.
Bonni's blues piano, singing and songwriting style echoes back to the upright pianos in the juke joints and barrelhouses of the South, and the Bessie Smith era of vintage 1930s blues. From Chicago to her home state of West Virginia and beyond, she takes the blues to concerts, classes, parties, senior homes, and festivals. True to the tradition of this community music, Bonni involves the audience. For seniors, she leads a campfire-style sing-along of early 20th century favorites.
Bonni has performed in a series of duos with distinguished senior blues musicians including Chicago singers Gloria Shannon and Larry Taylor, guitarist Eddie Taylor Jr. and sax player Abb Locke, and fine West Virginia horn players like Bob Redd, Marshall Petty and Dugan Carter. From tastefully naughty ragtime era tunes to goodtime dances and beautiful ballads, fans learn that good music never fades away!
Bonni’s music sounds best on a traditional acoustic stringed piano, as in this VIDEO:with Michael Hasty on harp in Winchester, VA.
But she also has piano, will travel: a sound system, microphones and an electric keyboard if needed. Financial arrangements for concerts, classroom workshops, and book talks are negotiated depending on time, effort, travel, and causes. An advocate of sustainable transportation, she often carpools or takes trains and public transportation to her gigs.
On Bonni's own 2003 CD, Barbershop Blues, three of Washington DC’s finest acoustic bluesmen—Jay Summerour, Mike Baytop and NJ Warren—play as guests, recording several songs at the landmark Archie Edwards barbershop.