Before Joanna Connor was known for her ferocious slide guitar in Chicago blues clubs and stages around the world, plenty of people in Worcester knew her as something else entirely.
A saxophone player. Seems strange now, of course. It would be like hearing that Bonnie Raitt was a ripping tuba player back in the day.
“Most people I grew up with thought I was a saxophonist!” Connor told the Worcester Guardian.
They can consider themselves officially updated.
Connor returns to Worcester Friday, Aug. 28, to headline Mechanics Hall for the first time, bringing a career that began in local school music programs and Worcester-area clubs full circle on one of the city’s most storied stages.
The show, billed as “A Spectacular Night of Blues,” also features blues guitarist JC Smith and Worcester’s own The Metrons, with plans for all three acts to come together for a closing jam.
For Connor, the Mechanics Hall date isn’t simply another stop on a tour.
“It’s mind blowing; it feels like a very important moment in my life,” she said.
That feeling makes sense given where the story started.
Connor was an active saxophonist throughout school and played in the all-city jazz band. Friends Sue Scola and Dave Jacques eventually connected her with a band out of Grafton, prompting a switch to acoustic guitar and vocals.
Her first gigs came at the Sons of Italy on Shrewsbury Street.
From there, she worked with harmonica player Ron Sloane and later blues brothers Babe and Kenny Pino (harmonica and guitar, respectively), eventually landing a regular Friday gig at Ralph’s.
The Worcester music scene she remembers was busy, varied and considerably less concerned with genre boundaries than nostalgia sometimes makes old scenes seem.
“The music scene was popping,” Connor said. “The colleges always had great shows of national Bands and there was Ralph’s , Exit 13 , the Blue Plate, Sir Morgan’s Cove, the Red Barn and many others… all genres of music.”
It wasn’t just the clubs that shaped her.
Connor said Worcester shaped her as a musician well before she left for Chicago.
“My mom’s record collection, her bringing me to college shows, every Newport Jazz Fest, and the great early music education in the schools laid my foundation,” she said.
Then, in 1984, she left.
Not because she was finished with Worcester, but because Chicago offered something bigger and essential.
“I really wanted to be in Chicago and learn from the blues masters,” Connor said. “My long term goal was to learn as much as I could.”
That education turned into a career.
Connor built her reputation in Chicago’s blues scene and went on to become an internationally touring guitarist and vocalist. According to the concert announcement, she has shared stages with blues giants including Buddy Guy and B.B. King and earned a 2026 Blues Music Award nomination for Best Blues Rock Artist.
Her playing still rests firmly on a blues foundation, but decades of performing have widened the vocabulary.
“Well there is a lot of experimenting in rock and some jazz fusion, I would say my vocabulary on the guitar has grown,” Connor said.
That evolution should be on full display at Mechanics Hall. The combination should make for something more than three acts taking turns onstage. Connor said the musicians plan to come together at the end of the night.
“We will have a big jam at the end,” she said. “JC will bring his T-Bone Walker style, and I’ll bring my mash-up, and it will be a rollicking and interesting night of music.”
The homecoming aspect of the night is deliberate.
Promoter George Bisceglia has framed the concert as a chance not only to bring Connor back to Worcester, but to reconnect some of the musicians and fans who were part of the local blues scene that surrounded her early career.
Connor, meanwhile, returns to a city that is both familiar and plainly not the Worcester she left in 1984.
“Well seeing my friends feels like home….as does some of the great food,” she said. “But yes, it looks different and has grown and gentrified in many places.”
The biggest change may be the musician coming back to it.
When Connor was starting out, playing was partly about learning what she could do with an instrument. Decades later, she thinks more about what she can do for the people listening.
“I know now it’s about moving the people there,” Connor said. “That feels precious to me. I feel my role is more of a healer and a breaker of boundaries as a woman musician.”
On Aug. 28, that role brings her back to Worcester — past the clubs where she learned, past the friends who knew her with a saxophone and onto the Mechanics Hall stage for the first time.
Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show begins at 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 28, at Mechanics Hall, 321 Main St. Tickets start at $30. A post-show meet-and-greet is scheduled for 10:30-11:30 p.m.
