Key to the Highway
2017-11-29
Canada
2017 edition
Nigel
Mack and the Blues AttackHarpdog Brown
Powder Blues
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Okay, so here is where I feel like a fourth grader on
the first day of school and the teacher wants me to write about what I did last
summer, but I don’t mind. I spent almost
two weeks in the town of my birth, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and its
vicinity. I flew up with my son and
granddaughter, but they left before I did so I took the train home just in time
to do my special Chuck Berry show because he was the player gracing the tee
shirt for our oldies marathon, which would begin about ten days later. My brother flew in from Winnipeg. His daughter now lives in Vancouver as does
my cousin, his wife, two daughters and two grandchildren, so I guess it was a
family reunion.
I can’t overstate what a great host my cousin
was. He follows my show on the internet
so he was happy to take me to hear a lot of music in the area, beginning with a
jam session at Donegal’s on Thursday; a lot of Rock in with some Blues but it
was all good Rock that night. Not so
much the next week when there was more of a country set of players and one guy
got up twice and played five Led Zeppelin tunes; I hate Led Zep! They take classic Blues tunes, alter a verse
or two and claim authorship. To be fair,
Donegal’s also has jams on Sundays that are more Blues-oriented but our Sundays
were already spoken for. I was turned on
to these sessions by Dan Orlando, who was one of the players both Thursdays to
play Blues. Thanks, Dan.
I had met Dan at The Cottage Bistro when I was up in
2014 and my cousin and I went there a couple of times then. We always get a chuckle thinking back on us
having a few beers while my brother had a strawberry milk shake! Anyway, it was a place I wanted to return to
because it was mostly good Blues, and we were able to go my first Saturday in
town but they were closed for renovations or something right after that night.
Now, we get to the substance of today’s show. One thing I wanted to do while there was to
scout out venues that KKUP’s own Johnnie Cozmik, a.k.a The J.C. Smith Band, could
add to extend his tours to Alberta. One
such place was a weekly summer series of free Sunday R&B concerts at Rocky
Point Park in Port Moody where we first saw Nigel Mack and the Blues Attack
(Mack sang, played harp and, I believe, guitar backed by drums, bass, another guitar
and keyboards), a very good, fairly contemporary styled Blues band. They had three CDs available and I asked for
the one out of print because we might have more recent ones at the station. (We don’t.)
Most of the disc Road Rage (the part you’ll hear today) was recorded in
November 1994 at Vancouver’s Yale Hotel.
Now called the Yale Saloon, the club had been on our radar for their
Tuesday night Blues, but now we had to go there for sure, if only to complete
the picture.
As you might suspect, the band of Harpdog Brown is a
harmonica-centric four piece ensemble with drums, bass and guitar backing. The band was very enjoyable but, as I was
thinking after the first set, they were a bit limited by the fact that the excellent
guitar player was a little low key for West Side Chicago Blues of the 60s and
70s which I love so much, guys like Magic Sam, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Luther
Allison … Then, a couple of songs into
the second set, they broke into a rollicking version of one of my favorite New
Orleans songs, Li’l Liza Jane and, what was I thinking, this is just good Blues
in the 50s Chicago style of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, so bring it on.
The Dog piqued my curiosity when he mentioned that his
current album, Travelin’ with the Blues, was recorded in California. I thought, hmm, the odds are pretty slim it
would be at Kid Andersen’s Greaseland Studios in San Jose but, when I spoke
with him, indeed the tracks were laid down there and at Big Jon Atkinson’s
Bigtone Records in Hayward, both of whom played at our 2016 Blues Marathon, the
same year the disc was released. It is a
very good CD with Dog along with his guitar player Jordie Edmonds and bass
player Pat Darcus backed by some excellent Bay Area talent. Dog’s manager later electronically
transferred another album, What It Is, to help me give a strong representation
on this show. I really wish I had
completed this article as soon as I got home when it was still all fresh in my
mind, but I postponed it and set it aside until now because The Harpdog Brown
Band has a gig at Biscuits and Blues in San Francisco next Thursday (December 7th,
Pearl Harbor Day) and I wanted to make you guys aware of the band to better
decide to head up there. They should be
coming in to Afrikahn Dayvs’ show for an interview Tuesday the 5th (4-6pm)
and from there plan to head over to the Poor House Bistro to join in Aki Kumar’s
jam session. Check them out while you
have the chance.
It was very much a fun night that came to a bit of an
abrupt end. As I was outside the Yale after
the show ended, having a nice little chat with the Dog, a couple came by and
warned us that there was a skunk approaching us. Indeed, we were standing next to a van by the
front tires and when I looked down there was the skunk cruising down the gutter
just behind the rear tires, a little too close for me. Without a word, I made a quick exit to the
other side of the street and proceeded towards the car a few blocks away. There’s no telling what those Canadian
critters might do!
That was Tuesday, that Thursday was the jam session,
and Sunday we made another visit to Port Moody the day before I took the train
home, making it music almost every other night (in this case, day) as opposed
to maybe once a month recently at home.
This time the band was Powder Blues and, while I can’t recall ever
having heard their music before, I was often told by Americans that they were
the most famous Canadian Blues Band. And
my brother had very fond remembrances of hearing them often back in their
heyday when he was living in Vancouver and going to the University of British
Columbia. Perhaps it was because of high
expectations or perhaps I was just getting tired from a full twelve days, but
their show was maybe better than mediocre but certainly did not overwhelm me. Actually, it wasn’t until Monday when I
listened again to the tunes I’d picked for today’s show that I realized it must
have been Lavin’s voice that disappointed me; it is just too smooth to be a
Blues singer’s voice. Still, I think
you’ll find the instrumentation from their CD Let’s Get Loose provides a couple
of strong segments in what to me is an excellent encapsulation of my two weeks back
home. My fourth grade teacher might even
give it a passing grade. (She was rough!)
I
must say that at Port Moody I was made quite at home. I have a foot problem and standing long times
is not an option, so for the first show I headed toward the stage and stopped
by a tent and asked if it was okay if I perched myself on the ground in their
shade and, of course, it was. It turned
out to be where the folks running the festival were based and the main man
George and his wife Linda, particularly Linda as George was often working
around the stage, made me feel as though I fit right in. The second weekend, my cousin brought me out
a chair and I was welcomed there again.
They were just so …. Canadian! I
don’t say this to toot my own horn, but I do remember one time when I was
giving some foreign visitors a cab ride to the airport and, upon finding out I
am Canadian (still, after living here over sixty years) they responded, “Oh, that’s why you’re so nice.”
*************************
Basing his band, Nigel Mack and the Blues Attack, out of Chicago since 2003, Nigel
was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan but brought his ensemble to prominence while
he was living in Vancouver. Early on, he
was exposed to Jazz coming out of his father’s turntable and, of course, the
popular music of the 60s. Saskatoon
being a college town, all kinds of different groups touring western Canada made
stops there. In the mid-80s, Nigel
hosted the Saturday jams at Bud’s on Broadway and got to play with top Canadian
Bluesmen like Amos Garrett, Brent Parkin, Big Dave MacLean and Johnny
V. Mills (don’t worry, I’m unfamiliar with those names too!) as well as
solid American Bluesmen like Phil Guy and Eddie Shaw, one of my all time
favorites. As Nigel recalled, “It was unbelievable. There were great bands playing six night
stands every week! Blues legends that we had only heard on records, we
were suddenly hanging out and jamming with.”
Nigel, whose full last name is Mackenzie,
moved his base of operations to Vancouver in the spring of 1988, establishing a
strong local following as well as touring western Canada. In 1992, keyboardist Eddie Lusk asked Nigel
to perform with his band, The Professor’s Blues Revue, at the Chicago Blues
Festival. This would be the first of
four times at the festival, the most of any Canadian artist. This helped put Mack on the American map as
he went on seventeen coast to coast tours of the U.S. and Canada in the next
ten years, hitting most of the states and provinces with at least one European
trip thrown in.
Nigel’s first CD, High Price to Pay,
made entirely of original tunes, earned a nomination for Best Blues / R&B
Album at the 1997 West Coast Music Awards the year after its release. Three tunes that didn’t make that album
because of size restrictions came out on the 2001 disc Road Rage, but the bulk
of that album came from a November 1994 gig at Vancouver’s Yale Hotel which had
been available previously only on cassette under the title 100% Live. For that concert, made just after the band
returned from a ten week tour to Chicago and back, Nigel was featured singing
and playing harmonica and slide and Dobro guitars, with drummer Ed “Leadfoot”
Young, bassist Keith Williamson, lead guitarist Tony Dellacroce (all three
providing backing vocals) and piano and Hammond B-3 player David Webb behind
him.
The third and most recent release, Devil’s Secret, again
containing only original tunes, was Canada’s #1 Blues CD for 2012. My source is not quite clear, but this honor
may be based on airplay on nationwide play on the Galaxy Satellite radio
system. His music has also made it into
the television soundtracks for Dawson’s Creek, The Street, and Time of Your
Life.
It might have crossed your mind that Harpdog Brown was not this artist’s birth name. As he explains in his song What’s Your Real Name, taken from the 2016 album Travelin’ with the Blues, he was playing a gig at the club Momma Gold’s in Kitsilano Beach (an area of Vancouver) in the fall of 1989 when a couple of guys in the audience began yelling “Harpdog! Harpdog!”, and Brown found it fitting and began using it, eventually even having his name changed legally. His friends just call him Dog.
Brown was born January 28th 1962 in
Edmonton, Alberta, and was adopted by a family including his slide guitar
playing mother. Quite naturally, the guitar
was his first instrument and by the age of fifteen he was playing in a garage
band. He moved on to a duo that was the
opening act at comedy clubs and, in the early 80s, he signed on as vocalist in
a touring band. That gig lasted six
weeks before he quit and put together his own road Blues band.
Dog put out his first album in 1993, Beware of the
Dog, and his follow-up, the 1994 release Home is Where the Harp Is, earned him
the Muddy Award for the Best Northwest Blues Release from Portland’s Cascade
Blues Association as well as a Juno nomination for Canada’s Best Blues / Gospel
Recording. His next album was Once in a
Howlin’ Moon in 2001, then his release Naturally garnered the #1 Canadian Blues
Album of 2010 as voted by The Blind Lemon Survey.
All of which brings us up to the two albums we’ll be
hearing today. I would be surprised if 2014’s
What It Is was not a major influence on Dog’s winning the 2015 Maple Blues
Award for Harmonica Player of the Year issued by the Toronto Blues Society (which
he would win again the next two years and is a nominee this year) and a 2014 Lifetime
Award from the Hamilton Blues Society.
This album utilizes Dog’s normal four piece structure with John Hunter
on drums, George Fenn on bass and guitarist Jordie Edmonds, who has been with
the Dog since 2013 and currently. It
comprises the entire second of our three Harpdog sets and most of the first (not
Sacrifice or Bring It On Home).
2016 saw Dog win Blues Artist of the Year from the
Fraser Valley Music Awards and the release of Travelin’ with the Blues,
recorded earlier in the year mostly at Big Jon Atkinson’s Bigtone Records in
Hayward, the exceptions being a couple of numbers not included in today’s
airing done at Kid Andersen’s Greaseland Studios right here in San Jose. For these sessions Dog brought down guitarist
Jordie Edmonds and bass player Pat Darcus, a regular in the band for about the
last five years. These guys were
augmented by Bay Area players Jimmy Morello on drums and Carl Sonny Leyland on
piano with Rusty Zinn adding extra guitar to two songs, Home is Where the Harp
Is and What’s Your Real Name. Atkinson
is mostly heard playing drums but his guitar does show up on the song Sacrifice and producer Little Victor
often adds his guitar work. To close out
today’s show we present to you a harp duet featuring Dog and his special guest
Charlie Musselwhite.
For
their California appearances (they will also play in Sacramento on Wednesday)
Dog will again bring down guitarist Edmonds and add the more local rhythm
section of Jimmy Morello and guitarist Rockin’ Johnny Burgin, with both Edmonds
and Burgin covering the bass requirements on their guitars and alternating
leads.
*************************
Brothers Tom (guitar and vocals) and Jack Lavin (bass
and vocals) formed the Powder Blues Band
in 1978 along with keyboardist Willie MacCalder (who also provided vocals) to play
the local Vancouver clubs for a year and a half before putting out their
self-financed and produced LP, Uncut, in 1979 which led to a cross Canadian
tour that dipped into the States. In
time they would expand their lineup with drummer Duris Maxwell, trumpeter Mark
Hasselbach and the first of three saxophonists, which included Wayne Kozak,
Gordon Bertram and David Woodward, although likely not all together; at one
point, drummer Bill Hicks was also in the band – my information source
(Wikipedia) is a little shaky on this early band list.
In 1980, RCA distributed the debut Uncut album
considerably wider, helping it to go double platinum by 1982 (over 200,000
disks sold) and the group to win a 1981 Juno Award for Most Promising Group of
the Year. The band also had a trio of singles
released in 1980; Doin’ It Right climbed to #40 in Canada, Boppin’ with the
Blues reached #88 there and What’ve I Been Drinking, which appears not to have
charted.
The band was signed by Capitol / Liberty in time to
release Thirsty Ears in 1981, which also went platinum; the title track reached
#17 Canadian as a single and the 45 Lovin’ Kissin’ and Huggin’got up to #47
while Hear That Guitar Ring also hit the shelves in 1981. The label then released the LPs Party Line in
1982 and Powder Blues in 1983. The
single Farmer John also came out in 1983, and RCA released the LP Red Hot /
True Blue, making 1983 a busy year on the record front.
The band came out with Live at Montreux on Blue Wave
in 1984, so obviously the band had made a European tour, and 1985 saw the release
of the single I’m on the Road Again. In
1986 Powder Blues was recognized at the American W.C. Handy Awards as the
Foreign Band of the Year. After some
time away from the record bins, most likely even disassembled, the band
released First Decade / Greatest Hits on WEA in 1990 and came up with Canadian
gold. WEA again released old material
with a 1997 reissue of Live at Montreux on CD.
Stony
Plain put out Lowell Fulson with Powder Blues in 1997, teaming a west coast
American Bluesman with the west coast Canadian Blues backup band. More recently, but still a decade ago plus,
Blue Wave released two more CDs, 2002’s Swingin’ the Blues and their most
recent, Blues + Jazz = BLAZZ! from 2004, with Tom Lavin being the sole early
member remaining. enjoy
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Since it is still relatively new, I thought I’d
mention that KKUP is now streaming on the internet and, while it is still in a
developing stage, we have been putting out the word. I’m not all of that good with high-tech
stuff, but it seems pretty easy to access.
If you go to our website at KKUP.org you will see on the home page a
strip of options immediately above the pictures of the musicians, the next to
the last option being LISTEN ONLINE. By
clicking this, it brings up a choice of desktop or mobile. I can only speak for the desktop but after
maybe a minute I was receiving a crystal clear feed. As already mentioned, this is still a work in
progress and we are currently limited to a finite number of listeners at any
one time. I mention this so you will be
aware to turn off the application when you are not actually listening. (I put the player in my favorites bar for the
easiest of access.) Now we can reach our
listeners in Los Gatos and Palo Alto, even my family in Canada. Let your friends elsewhere know they can now
listen to your favorite station, and while they have the home page open they
can check out our schedule.
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You Don’t Love MeI Want to be Loved
500 Yards of Paradise
Don’t You Know That I Love You
Nigel Mack and the Blues Attack 19mins
Whiskey Bottle
If You Wanna Grow OldSacrifice
Headin’ Out
Bring it on Home
How Come
Harpdog Brown 25min
Rock ‘n’ Roll Man
B.B. Be GoneClose to You
My Guitar’s My Only Friend
Party All Night, Sleep All Day
Powder Blues 19mins
It’s the Night
The Sky is CryingWho
Nigel Mack and the Blues Attack 19mins
All Night Boogie
Big Rockin’ DaddyCheatin’ and Lyin’
Blue Lights
No Money in the Till
What it Is
Harpdog Brown 24mins
Whole Lotta Lovin’
Blame It on the BluesThe Days Are Few
Let’s Get Loose
Disappearin’ Baby Blues
Shiftless
You Don’t Know Me
Powder Blues 21mins
Another Fool Like Me
Fine Little Girl RagHome is Where the Heart Is
Hayward Boogie
What’s Your Real Name
Cloud Full of Rain
Moose on the Loose
Harpdog Brown 31mins
