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.
Three Rivers, or Trois Rivières, is Jordan Officer’s hometown and a trip to the Mississippi Delta led him to realize the importance of one’s roots and perhaps more importantly the value of family. The opening “Your Body’s My Home” tells of starting a family with a childhood sweetheart after many years apart.
Those of us with fond memories of the Kendall-Wall jams at the Black Swan may recall Judy Brown’s name. The singer/songwriter/guitarist played there often and released a cassette or two of original songs. She stopped performing to raise a family but didn’t stop writing songs.
Even though he tries to record ‘live off the floor’ for each of his solo albums, there remains the excitement and energy of live performance in front of an enthusiastic audience and that’s exactly what Montreal’s Steve Hill has captured here in a concert recorded at La Chapelle in Quebec City last November.
All-instrumental albums are entering the mainstream as players move beyond merely accompanying vocalists to looking for ways to bring their virtuosity more to the fore. Steve Dawson is not only a master of all things stringed, he also wants to push the boundaries of composition for these instruments. Lucky Hand is the latest manifestation of that search. He’s joined here by several guest artists, most notably a string quartet, led by old friend and duo partner Jesse Zubot as one of the violinists and the arranger.
One often hears Matt Andersen live performing solo and indeed the opening song does start with his trademark acoustic guitar strumming but The Mellotones quickly join in, telling us that this is a major big band concert event. The song is “Weightless” and what a performance it is: with piano, electric guitar, bass & drums, four horns and harmony vocals, this is about as far from a solo show as you can get.
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.
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