“There would be no Blues Brothers if it weren’t for Downchild” – Dan Aykroyd

Downchild, one of the planet’s foremost, most feted, longest-running blues outfits with quite possibly the best back story ever told.

Roaring through bracing, high-octane performances since 1969, the band founded and continuously steered by harmonica and guitar ace Donnie “Mr. Downchild” Walsh is as vibrant today as when Dan Aykroyd and the late John Belushi went sniffing around for inspiration for their brilliant Blues Brothers venture back in the 1970s. The pair elevated Downchild’s “Shotgun Blues” and Walsh’s “(I Got Everything I Need) Almost” to smash status on their 1978 Briefcase Full of Blues record.

Tickets : SOLD OUT

The Perpetrators front-man and founding member Jay Nowicki is rated one of Canada’s tastiest guitar players. Together with the “meat-and-mashed-potatoes” rhythm section of Emmet VanEtten & John Scoles they deliver a tight, raw and intense blues experience that is sure to make you get up and shake it.

The Perpetrators’ albums have garnered WCMA awards and Juno nominations. Their ability to stay grounded to their Winnipeg roots, coupled with the raw energy and extreme talent makes this one of the best groups to come out of Canada.

Once a not-so-well-kept-secret in their hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada – where they acted as house band for such visiting blues legends as Hubert Sumlin, Louisiana Red, Paul “Wine” Jones and others – The Perpetrators kicked things up a notch in 2006. A European Tour capped off a Juno Nomination and a win at the Western Canadian Music Awards. That decade, The Perps released two more albums, garnering various award nominations.

In late 2009, Jay Nowicki teamed up with Romi Mayes for extensive touring that saw them travel across the US, Canada, and Europe, and recorded the critically acclaimed live album “Lucky Tonight” in 2011.

2013 had Jay and The Perpetrators back in the studio to record their latest release, the long awaited “Stick ‘Em Up”, which Dr. Boogie (Classic 21 – Belgium) described as: “The dirtiest stuff you made [sic] so far, and the more accessible for my greasy ears…” Accompanying the release, The Perps returned to Belgium and Holland for the first time since 2009.

“Stick ‘Em Up” has been met with rave reviews, as well as a Western Canadian Music Award for Blues Album of the Year. The festival season of 2015 will take The Perpetrators across Canada, and overseas once again.

Excerpt taken from : http://www.timemachinemusic.org

TICKETS : CLICK HERE

GUITARIST, SONGWRITER, PRODUCER

Colin Linden’s tale is the stuff of legend, the kind told in the Coen brothers’ O Brother Where Art Thou or Inside Llewyn Davis, both of which featured his guitar playing on the soundtracks. That film would begin with an 11-year-old meeting his musical idol Howlin’ Wolf at a matinee show in his native Toronto, accompanied by his mom, who took a picture of the two during a nearly two-hour long conversation before the gig, the legendary bluesman idling over coffee and cigarettes.

“I’m an old man now, and I won’t be around much longer,” Wolf told him. “It’s up to you to carry it on.”

Linden still carries that frayed photograph in his wallet, along with a Sears 5/8” socket wrench in his pocket to play slide guitar. He has taken Wolf’s plea seriously, performing since he was 12 years old, leaving home as a teenager to travel the south at the invitation of Mississippi Sheiks delta blues guitarist Sam Chatmon which took him to Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Memphis and Hollandale, Mississippi, meeting and visiting the sites of his heroes – Brownie McGhee, Muddy Waters, Sippie Wallace, Tampa Red, Blind John Davis, the Rev. Robert Wilkins, Sleepy John Estes and Son House, visiting the landmarks and juke joints, many of which he’s played in during the course of a 45-year career producing and playing blues and roots music. As a singer/guitarist, he’s accompanied everyone from Bruce Cockburn (as his producer and touring musician) to Bob Dylan, Greg Allman, Rihannon Giddens, Pistol Annies, John Prine and more.

He was the main contributor to the music for the Nashville TV show and subsequent live tours. Along the way, Linden played on over 500 albums and produced 140, including his first-ever actual Grammy in 2020 for producing Keb Mo’s Oklahoma, winner for Best Americana Album. He has also nabbed a staggering 25 Juno Award nominations and nine wins.

Linden’s latest solo album, bLOW, the first outside artist on longtime friend Lucinda Williams’ Highway 20 label distributed by Nashville-based Thirty Tigers, is his 14th in 40 years, but first electric blues release. The title song comes from being stuck inside a flimsy motel after a casino gig somewhere in Oklahoma or Texas as a tornado was about to hit, waiting for the walls to cave in, with his wife, the novelist Janice Powers, providing not only the opening verse quoted above, but the gurgling Hammond B3 organ left to him by his former bandmate, the late Richard Bell, played, in her own words, “like a deranged church lady.”

Linden came up with six of the tracks while creating instrumental production music for a TV show that was set on the Texas-Louisiana border in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Although these weren’t initially intended to be full songs, after they were recorded, Linden felt they were actual tracks that inspired the lyrics.

Indeed, bLOW offers a blues travelogue much like the odyssey he took in his youth, with Bo Diddley-inspired boogies such as the churning, slide guitar of leadoff track “4 Cars,” the glorious Sun Records homage of “Boogie Let Me Be,” inspired equally by early John Lee Hooker and Floyd Murphy, guitarist for Junior Parker with Colin playing his 1961 Harmony Stratotone with the original strings still intact, the Texas roadhouse blues of “Houston” and the apocalyptic, psychedelic roar of “Change Don’t Come Without Pain.” Other songs, like “When I Get To Galilee” recall a gospel vibe, while the closing “Honey on my Tongue,” reflects on life during and after the lockdown.

“Roots music and blues do speak to a lot of people right now,” acknowledges Linden. “Much of the healing and release you get from listening to this music, the power and form of expression, has shown itself to be so vital in these times. It feels timeless because it’s such a raw nerve.”

Linden has been mesmerized by music since hearing his older brothers’ records, not realizing Cream’s “Spoonful” and Jimi Hendrix’s “Killing Floor” were originally recorded (and the latter written) by Howlin’ Wolf. Hearing Wolf sing them on record for the first time on Labor Day 1971, shortly before seeing him live a few months later, irrevocably altered his life.

“Those songs had a gravitas unlike any pop music of the era,” he recalls. “I could hear that even as a kid.”

Linden willingly took the torch from Wolf, launching a career that has seen him not just as a singer, songwriter and guitarist, but as a producer, sideman, film/TV music supervisor and score composer. Meeting T Bone Burnett through artist Sam Phillips – who was the opening act for Bruce Cockburn, with whom Linden was playing – was another life-altering event, leading him to gigs with the Coen brothers and the Nashville TV series.

“I couldn’t ever have had a better mentor as a record producer and music maker,” says Linden about his longtime friend.

With a full schedule that includes fronting his other band, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Linden hasn’t missed a beat during Covid, recording tracks in his 1,000 square-foot, standalone home studio in his backyard, dubbed Pinhead Recorders. The new album features contributions from his lifelong Toronto collaborators, drummer Gary Craig and bassist John Dymond (the three refer to themselves as the Rotting Matadors), as well as Dave Jaques, a former member of John Prine’s band, on bass and Paul Griffiths on drums, who worked on the tracks originally for the movie. The album cover features a picture of Linden at age 22 onstage enraptured in the moment. (Linden says bLOW is the type of album he would have made if the era allowed).

The album’s title came from a drawing of an imaginary album cover done by his young nephew many years ago. Colin claimed, “I figured I’d wait until the right music came along to use the title... and this is it!”

“You’d like to think what once rang true is still relevant,” says Linden, who says the variety of different musical styles is a tribute to his admiration for rock legends The Band. His association with the group began when Rick Danko and Garth Hudson guested on Linden’s 1987 A&M album, When the Spirit Comes. Linden continued to work with The Band through their later incarnation and also wrote “Remedy,” one of their biggest hits and one of Linden’s proudest moments as a songwriter.

Although following in the footsteps of his heroes was the beginning of Linden’s story, with bLOW he continues a journey that began even before he met Wolf. That magic moment and so many others continue to live on in the music.

Tickets : CLICK HERE

Excerpt taken from : www.colinlinden.net

This is be the last show of our 29th season.

While still a young teenager, Jones played guitar in various blues bands in his home state. A little while later he spent some time living in Europe, developing his skills and building an admiring audience. In the mid-80s he relocated to Los Angeles, California, where he greatly expanded his audience, offering a potent mix of classic urban blues songs alongside his own compositions, which maintain the mood although dressed in powerful rock-influenced concepts. He played with guitarist Zac Harmon’s band and others before forming his own group in the mid-90s. This blending of musical genres is reflected in the name of his company, Blue Rock Records, for which he began recording in the early 00s. Included in his band for his second album, 2005’s Passion For The Blues, were Kenny ‘Boudro’ Gray (bass) and Michael Turner (drums), while among the guests were Jimmy ‘Z’ Zavala (blues harp/saxophone), Marshall Thompson (keyboards) and Harmon.

TICKETS : CLICK HERE

Excerpt : https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dennis-jones-mn0000330499

The Legendary Downchild Blues Band - The Longest 50th Anniversary Tour Ever! with Special Guest 2022 Juno-nominated Miss Emily

Costume Halloween Bash

Downchild, one of the planet’s foremost, most fêted, longest-running blues outfits with quite possibly the best back story ever told.

Roaring through bracing, high-octane performances since 1969, the band founded and continuously steered by harmonica and guitar ace Donnie “Mr. Downchild” Walsh is as vibrant today as when Dan Aykroyd and the late John Belushi went sniffing around for inspiration for their brilliant Blues Brothers venture back in the 1970s. The pair elevated Downchild’s “Shotgun Blues” and Walsh’s “(I Got Everything I Need) Almost” to smash status on their 1978 Briefcase Full of Blues record.

GET TICKETS: CLICK HERE

The Legendary Downchild Blues Band - The Longest 50th Anniversary Tour Ever! with Special Guest 2022 Juno-nominated Miss Emily

Costume Halloween Bash

Downchild, one of the planet’s foremost, most fêted, longest-running blues outfits with quite possibly the best back story ever told.

Roaring through bracing, high-octane performances since 1969, the band founded and continuously steered by harmonica and guitar ace Donnie “Mr. Downchild” Walsh is as vibrant today as when Dan Aykroyd and the late John Belushi went sniffing around for inspiration for their brilliant Blues Brothers venture back in the 1970s. The pair elevated Downchild’s “Shotgun Blues” and Walsh’s “(I Got Everything I Need) Almost” to smash status on their 1978 Briefcase Full of Blues record.

GET TICKETS: CLICK HERE

Due to an overwhelming response we have added a second night.

Doors open at 6:30, Show starts at 8:00

With his 19th studio album, Miles to Go, Colin James is getting back to the blues.

Blues at the Bow will be following the ‘Restriction Exemption Program’ You must follow all requirements under the Government of Alberta program in order to be admitted into the show. (Vaccine QR code, Negative test, or proof of medical exemption. Mask to enter.

TICKETS WILL GO ON SALE NOVEMBER 1st @ 8:00AMTICKETS : CLICK HERE

WEBSITE : CLICK HERE

Doors open at 6:30, Show starts at 8:00

With his 19th studio album, Miles to Go, Colin James is getting back to the blues.

Blues at the Bow will be following the ‘Restriction Exemption Program’ You must follow all requirements under the Government of Alberta program in order to be admitted into the show. (Vaccine QR code, Negative test, or proof of medical exemption. Mask to enter.)

TICKETS WILL GO ON SALE NOVEMBER 1st @ 8:00AM

TICKETS : CLICK HERE

WEBSITE : CLICK HERE