John’s Blues Picks is the monthly album review column originally launched by the late Toronto-based blues historian and broadcaster, John Valenteyn. Submission can be sent to the TBS office for consideration and will be circulated to a pool of journalists and others for review in the monthly Maple Blues newsletter and placed at the Spotify playlist.
Manitoba Hal (Brolund) plays his blues on the ukelele; playing several different models through FX pedals and using ‘looping’, he can easily overcome any limitations that instrument might have. He has some 17 albums in his discography, many of them solo, one-man-band efforts but this time he went to Calgary to work with the legendary Tim Williams as producer and accompanist.
Mike Elliott hails from Waterloo, where for several years he fronted a band called Daddy Long Legs that won an MBA for New Artist. He has now retired that band and this is the second album for the new one. The Audio Kings are Jonny Sauder on drums and Scott Fitzpatrick on doghouse bass and they describe this album as ’12 tracks of grit, swagger and fun’.
The birth of her son, Johnny Lee Copeland, led Shemekia Copeland to take a fresh look at the world he would grow up in. Never one to shy away from telling it like it is, she has assembled a hugely talented, genre-crossing guest list led by Americana producer/instrumentalist Will Kimbrough, who plays guitar throughout.
Europe sure loves the blues, many blues artists, especially Canadian ones, have toured there to great success and Cliff Stevens, from Montreal, is no exception. This album, recorded over two nights at Die Halle in Reichenbach an der Fils and the Laboratorium in Stuttgart, Germany, proves that live albums can be much more than just archival documents. He performs as a power trio, with Serge Dionne on bass and Dan Dyson on drums and all the songs are from his two previous studio albums.
After six albums that were tributes to the ‘rediscovered’ bluesmen that she had met personally, Rory Block’s new series is entitled ‘Power Women Of The Blues’. In her perceptive and well-written liner note she points out how difficult it must have been for women to pursue a career in blues along with all the other obstacles they would face in the Jim Crow South.
Dan Doiron becomes the third Canadian bluesman to sign with Chicago’s Earwig Music, after BC’s Les Copeland and Hamilton-born, Mississippi residing Guitar Mikey. Doiron calls Halifax home now being originally from Cape Breton and after several years as a sideman releases his fourth solo album.
This is a veteran Montreal trio led by a man who calls himself Riot. He plays guitar and sings while Big Papa Mike handles bass and Mark Di Claudio drums. André Chrétien adds keyboards for the CD. They play some fine rocking blues as those who were at the Aurora Winter Blues Festival will attest.
A sophomore album is always difficult but Spencer MacKenzie, now 18, has met that challenge and then some: his voice has matured and his songwriting has blossomed. Working with producer Dean Malton and on one track none other than Eddie Kramer, he has moved into the big leagues.
Set the time machine for 1981, Richard Newell’s then current LP, King Biscuit Boy, produced by Allen Toussaint in New Orleans, had been released in 1974. It was well received but there were frustratingly few recording opportunities after that. Enter Bob “Georgie Fab” Johnston and Darcy Hepner who wanted to get started in the music recording business and who approached Richard.
Conor Gains won the Cobalt Songwriting Prize for “Leave It On The Line” from Run Away with the Night. The prize is for innovation and creativity in songwriting and he has taken that to heart in the songwriting for this new one. The first single and the opening track, “I Know” opens with classical strings tuning before a choir comes in. With Gains vocal we are in a very contemporary R&B setting.
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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.
