John’s Blues Picks is the monthly album review column by Toronto-based blues columnist, John Valenteyn. John Valenteyn is co-founder of the Toronto Blues Society, radio host on CIUT.FM and the Toronto Blues Society’s resident album reviewer. John’s Blues Picks (JBP) are collected monthly in the Toronto Blues Society’s monthly print newsletter, Maple Blues.
Jay Sewall is a Quebec City-based harmonica player, the first bluesman to play the Montreal International Jazz Festival, in 1983, and the recipient of the Lys Blues Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. With his seventh album, he’s celebrating 50 years of performing with songs he’s performed over the years but never recorded along with some vintage tunes from the archive.
Toronto native Dan McKinnon won our Talent Search last summer and has been very busy ever since, being the winner of the artist development prize, the Amy Louis Grossman Music Scholarship, as well. He was also one of the runners up for our IBC nominee and introduced a couple of the new songs at that memorable playoff evening at Hugh’s Room. His new disc will raise his profile much further.
Something New is a very appropriate title as Michael Kaeshammer shows himself to be a very good practitioner and composer of New Orleans pop & jazz but he has a number of guests that you know and enough blues to include it here. The opening “Scenic Route” surprises with a boogie piano break among its jazzy sections.
Carlos del Junco says that it’s seven years since his last Mongrels album, where does the time go. A gorgeous acoustic album is what we get here, with Eric St. Laurent on guitar and Henry Heilig on bass, both longtime accompanists. He calls the program ‘an eclectic potpourri of styles’ with five vocals followed by five instrumentals.
Veteran piano man David Vest recorded his last two albums here with the Willing Victims, Teddy Leonard, Gary Kendall and Mike Fitzpatrick. This time he decided to record on Vancouver Island with a West Coast band: Peter Dammann was the guitarist in the late Paul deLay’s Band when Vest was its pianist.
To quote the press release, James Harman’s last one on Electro-Fi, Bonetime, hit #1 on the Living Blues magazine’s radio chart and received 5 BMA nominations. I see no reason why this one should not do even better. But then I’m biased, I think Harman is one of the best blues songwriters around and Fineprint has thirteen more treasures.
Port Colborne-based documentary maker Christopher Darton has already produced the excellent The Way We Was: The Story of The Kendall Wall Blues Band and a new video for the Mighty Duck Blues Band’s video for “Hammered and Nailed” featuring John Dickie. His choice of Danny Brooks’ epic journey is a most welcome one. Many are now aware of his horrible descent into addiction and the miraculous recovery he attributes to his newfound faith and his wife Deb.
A blues traditionalist and proud of it is Sugar Brown aka Ken Kawashima, who is also a Professor of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto and who comes to us from Bowling Green OH via Chicago, where he played in several blues bands. For his third album, he again shows us that there is no need to stray outside the tradition to come up with contemporary blues songs.
Myles Goodwyn, the lead singer and principal songwriter for April Wine (20 million albums sold), has apparently been a staunch blues fan all along. He has found the time to write songs and stockpile tracks for a possible album. He has also given a lot of thought to who might be suitable ‘Friends’ to help.
One of the big stories last fall was the forthcoming album from Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar, the critical success of Send The Nightingale serving to heighten the anticipation. The TBS selected the newly enlarged group after a competition at Hugh’s Room with Dan McKinnon and Raoul & The Big Time to be its representative at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis. Alas, that trip proved to be unsuccessful but a major record label reached a much different conclusion and the album will soon be here for us all to enjoy – the Release Party is at The Horseshoe on April 28th.
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TBS logo and WBR artwork by Barbara Klunder
The Toronto Blues Society acknowledges the annual support of the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council and the Department of Canadian Heritage, and project support from FACTOR< and the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage (Canada Music Fund) and of Canada’s Private Broadcasters, The Canada Council for the Arts, the SOCAN Foundation, SOCAN, the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport.
