Canadian blues stars sidestepped boundaries in 2008. Talents Michael Jerome Browne, Roxanne Potvin, Suzie Vinnick and Paul Reddick all made records that could be called “bluesy,” but not necessarily blues.
By drifting from the traditional portions of bars and chords, the hope is that new audiences will be lured as artistic impulses are honoured. Though it's possible old fans and followers won't cotton to new sounds, the gambit of detouring from tested paths isn't necessarily risky. All of the above acts have their name printed on short lists for this year's national Maple Blues Awards, the winners of which will be named tonight at a Toronto gala. The Gatineau-raised Potvin, for example, with her sophisticated crossover album No Love for the Poisonous, made the strongest album of her young career.
For diversity, look at this year's top entertainer prize: When the envelope is ripped open at the podium, those in suspense will be veteran acoustic player Big Dave McLean of Winnipeg, sassy Montrealer Dawn Tyler Watson, the iconic ensemble Downchild Blues Band of Toronto, Nova Scotia soul-rocker Garrett Mason, and the friends and family of the late Jeff Healey.
There's more than one way to skin a black cat to its bones, even Muddy Waters would agree.
That's Browne, with an ‘e'
On a leafy corner of downtown Toronto last fall, a photographer had just finished her session with acoustic bluesman Michael Jerome Browne. As the snapper jotted down the singer-guitarist's particulars, Browne stressed the spelling of his surname. “That's with an ‘e,' he told her. “It's important.”
Just as his name is distinct from, say, Mike Brown, the talents of Browne are distinguishable as well. The earthy country-blues of 2001's Drive On and 2004's old time-y Michael Jerome Browne & The Twin Rivers String Band were among the finest roots albums put out in this country this century.
So why did Montreal's Browne release something less distinct in 2008? Last year's This Beautiful Mess is an electric album of country soul – an articulate, superior package of Southern grooves for sure, just not as remarkable as his previous works. Catching his set at the Gladstone Hotel, where the album was launched here in September, it didn't seem that the audience was getting the electric drift.
“Some people might not like it,” admits Browne, “and some people are going to really love it. But, yes, some prefer the blues stuff.”
Mind you, there are blues to the album. Summer Shoes On, a commentary on racism toward native Canadians, is done solo Delta-style. Browne is a guy who Long John Baldry once compared to titans Leadbelly and Big Bill Broonzy; his musicianship and earthy delivery transcend time and skin colour. When asked why he would emigrate from a style that seems so innate, Browne explains that the material of This Beautiful Mess is just as instinctive to him. “All of it comes from the American South,” he says. “I've listened to so much of it, it seems to come naturally to me now.”
Browne, a native of Indiana who moved to Montreal as a child, has never toured south of the border though, nor does he expect to soon. “I'm a Canadian coming down to do their music. It's not that easy.”
Distinguishing oneself in blues, anywhere, is never easy.
Canadian Blues in America
Only one homegrown act distinguished himself with a nomination at the upcoming U.S.-based Blues Music Awards, handed out each spring in Memphis. Jeff Healey, a jazz fiend who played blues rock almost reluctantly in his last years, is in the running for the posthumously released (and dismissively titled) Mess of Blues.
Canadian label Northern Blues made its mark south of the 49th as well. Run by sharp-eared Ottawan Fred Litwin, the label's stable includes the Homemade Jamz Blues Band (a precocious trio of Mississippi siblings favoured by National Public Radio) and Watermelon Slim & the Workers (charismatic Oklahoma roughnecks up for four Blues Music Awards, including the year's top entertainer).
Shakura's Star Rises
A press quote on the back of her 2006 album Blueprint noted that Shakura S'Aida has “long been tagged as a rising young blues star.” What sounds like a backhanded compliment doesn't bother S'Aida. “That's okay,” says the 44-year-old singer and actress who fronts jazz ensembles and does big-band rhythm and blues with Bill King's Saturday Night Fish Fry too. “The blues album was something I couldn't have done five years ago, or 10 or 15 years ago. I wasn't ready.”
Nominations as entertainer of the year in 2007 and top female vocalist for tonight's Maple Blues indicate she has arrived. Born in Brooklyn, the Toronto-based, trilingual S'Aida spent a few years living in Switzerland as a youth. She holds a Swiss passport, and tours extensively in Europe. The big-voiced singer, who has worked in film and theatre, believes strongly in the storytelling component of blues music. Until recently, she simply didn't feel she had a story to tell. But now? “I'm a single mother, divorced, with two children and a 100-pound dog that's getting bigger by the moment,” she says. “I've been so miserable I literally could have laid down and died if not for my kids. And I've been so happy that my soul wept. I'm grown now.”
If, before recording the boldly arranged Blueprint, S'Aida felt she had anything to prove, it was to herself, not to others. “I am a blues singer by birthright,” she says. “My grandfather was a sharecropper, and he was a barbershop quartet singer. My mother was in the civil-rights movement – she was jailed. The music I listened to was blues. I didn't have to sing it to be a blues singer.”
The Maple Blues Awards take place tonight at Toronto's Phoenix Concert Theatre, 416-538-3885.
