Odds and sods from the Toronto blues community and beyond.
Shuffle Honoured: The Southside Shuffle has just received the 2023 Creative City Business Award from the Mississauga Board of Trade. Nice to see that kind of community support for a blues festival.
Radio News: CIUT has just opened a Podcasting Studio, a space to train University of Toronto students and community members in creating podcasts. This is the latest effort by the station to update and upgrade their facilities to support the changing demands in how people create and consume audio content. CIUT-FM is about to launch their own Podcast network with about 10+ programs, making everything available on-demand on your favorite podcasting platforms. The station has also launched a new “Music Committee” to help with the programming.
Festival Season: The Blues Festival Guide is now up on the website and TBS staff is keeping busy updating it as hardly a day passes without a festival announcement. Two new festivals just appeared at the front end of the festival season:
And the Winner is… This year’s Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album was Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder – Get on Board and Best Contemporary Blues Album was Edgar Winter for Brother Johnny.
MonkeyJunk 15th Anniversary Video Series! MonkeyJunk is celebrating 15 years as a band in 2023. To commemorate this milestone, they are releasing 15 live videos throughout the year. Future videos will include guest artists – people the band has collaborated with and/or has been inspired by over their 15 years as a band!
Goin’ to Memphis: On Sunday January 15 at 8pm at the Function Bar, 2291 Yonge Street, the TBS presents the IBC “Road To Memphis” Fundraiser Concert with Heather Luckhart, Garnetta & Dagroovmasters and special guest Kenny ‘Blues Boss” Wayne. Tickets are $15 ($10 – TBS Members).
REVIVAL 69: The Concert That Rocked the World, showcases never-seen footage and behind-the-scenes stories about a life-altering 1969 one-day music festival at Varsity Stadium where John Lennon performed for the first time without the Beatles, doing an impromptu concert with the Plastic Ono Band, featuring Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton, Alan White and Klaus Voormann.
Amy Louie Grossmans Music Scholarship: Congratulations to The Five And Tens (Ray Vidal, Anthony Vidal, Nick Vidal and Sean Jackson), recipients of this year’s Amy Louie Grossmans Music Scholarship in the amount of $2000. The runner-up was Wayling James (Tim Wayling, Darrell James, Chris Bender, Rob Pelletier and Larry Gould) who received $1000.
Congratulations to Josephine Matyas & Craig Jones: Their book Chasing the Blues: A Traveler’s Guide to America’s Music won Bronze in the 2022 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition from the Society of American Travel Writers!
Festival season Shuffles to an end: The Southside Shuffle takes over Port Credit September 8-11 with some fine blues from the Legendary Downchild Blues Band, Wide Mouth Mason, Steve Marriner, Ghost Town Blues Band, Lance Anderson Pianorama, Zoom with Shawn Kellerman, Sean Pinchin, Erin McCallum, Jim Dan Dee, Blue Moon Marquee, Rick Taylor, Chuckie Zehr and many more great blues acts. German buzz-act Wellbad will make their Shuffle debut.
©2023 Toronto Blues Society. Design by Janine Stoll Media.
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.
