Well it’s the last day of January so I guess I’m back to my old habits – call me the last-minute kid! But here’s your January Blainletter, hopefully arriving in your inbox while it’s still January. Ooops, it’s not the Blainletter anymore but you’ll forgive me for calling it that because this Substack does harken back to the days of the Blainletter which was what I used to promote my gigs. Well, guess what gang? I got a gig!
As you must be aware by now, I haven’t been playing around much since COVID, but even before that, when I turned 65 and got my first pension $$$ I announced to the world that I would be retiring. Not retiring from playing guitar but retiring from hustling gigs. I said I would play when invited and for the first few years I got just about as many gigs as when I was hustling. But then it started to die down and then COVID killed it.
The Gig
As part of Winterfolk, I will be playing a solo set in the Southern Cross Room at the Tranzac on Sunday, February 16 at 6pm, right after The Jesse Greene Band and just before sets from Michael Jerome Browne and Suzie Vinnick. That makes for a solid hit of blues for your Sunday Soiree. Thanks to Brian Gladstone for keeping plenty of blues content in Winterfolk, unlike so many folk festivals that are not. When did blues stop being folk music? Who can we blame for that? SRV? KWS? After Buddy Guy leaves us, that will be then end of a generation of blues musicians who were introduced to a new audience (mostly white college kids) at folk festivals. Buddy often tells how it was his appearance at the Mariposa Folk Festival that convinced him to quit his day job and become a full-time musician. All those college kids that discovered those blues pioneers and felt the impact of their songs and stories are now the boomers that you see in the audience when you go to a blues show at Hugh’s Room, and they/we are not getting any younger. If you ever have the occasion, put a bug in the ear of your friendly folk festival artistic director to include a little blues. It’s folk music and it’s a tradition.
Well before I get carried away on this subject, let me continue about my gig: I have two more plays at Winterfolk. I will be joining Jesse Greene for a set at 10pm Friday in the Tranzac Living Room and I will be participating in Brian Morgan’s “Songs from the Road” Workshop at 5pm on Saturday, also in the Tranzac Living Room. It was an impromptu invitation from Brian M at a New Year’s Levee as we reminisced about a country-rock band we played in out west in the 70s. We were called Sky Riders and he just sent me this old 8x10 glossy that I can’t even remember. I was commenting that back then you didn’t need a “team” to get gigs. You didn’t need a publicist. You didn’t even need a record or a demo. All you needed was an 8x10 glossy and matching outfits.
I’m brushing up on some old tunes for Winterfolk. It turns out Jesse is a big Star Trek fan, so we have worked up my old tune, “Vulcan Heart”. I had to find it on Spotify to remind myself of the last verse. There will be a couple of new tunes as well but I just googled my set at the last Winterfolk and I think I’ll be playing some of those tunes, as well. Check it out, if you don’t already know what Brian Blain’s about. I think I talk too much, but the audience seems to be enjoying it and I can’t help myself. My ex-wife used to say “One whack to get him talking and ten whacks to shut him up.”
Before I get off all this shameless self-promotion, I would remind you folks that this old blues guy is available for house concerts, if not world-tours. There is nothing like hearing an intimate concert in your own living room with a bunch of friends. I noticed lately that even hi-profile artists like JW Jones and Michael Jerome Browne posted that they would love to come and do a house concert. Please check out my full set at Winterfolk (on the video podcast) and imagine what a nice evening it could be in the comfort of your own living room. End of pitch.
What’s Happening with the MapleBlues…
As some of you may be aware, I’m the (barely)managing editor of MapleBlues, the monthly newsletter of the Toronto Bl;ues Society. It’s been going since 1985 and I’ve been editing it since 1992. I happened upon this old newsletter and noticed it’s probably the first one I worked on, May 1992
I know many of you are members of the Toronto Blues Society or maybe you just pick up the newsletter at your favourite Blues club, but those of you who got used to having a “hard copy” that you could hold in your hands, will have to make do with a digital version. Actually, not a lot of people are picking up the magazines we leave in the blues clubs every month and reduced advertising, increased postage and a new consciousness to “Save a Tree” has determined the Board of Directors to direct me to take it digital. And I have. Here’s what it will look like.
And now the last remaining (physical) blues magazine in Canada is going digital. There is a great history of Canadian blues magazines – there was a really early one and I can’t remember the fellow who kept it going for quite a while – but that’s before my time in Toronto. Also 5 years before I got here, the Toronto Blues Society began publishing their newsletter and somewhere in that period Eddy B published a few issues of a “Blues News”, on blue paper, I think. There were a couple of short-lived glossy blues magazines – I wrote an article in one, Blues Scene Quarterly it was called. The Grand River Blues Society had a printed newsletter for a long time and the Montreal Blues Society had a (bilingual) magazine. Out west there was a Toronto expat who I never met named Andy who published “Real Blues”, a great magazine for many years, albeit sporadic. Until he died, I think. But MapleBlues was the only monthly. When I started they used to skip January and August to give the volunteers a break but once I was on board and willing to work during the Christmas holidays we never missed a month after that – until COVID.
(For a minute I was thinking of asking my AI assistant to pull together everything online about blues magazines in Canada and go on more… but I’ll spare you.)
Feel free to drop me a note if I got something wrong or omitted.
Remembering Garth Hudson
I saw The Band play a few times, including when they backed up Dylan and maybe once at The Coq D’Or when they were backing up the Hawk, and I loved their relaxed approach (ableit well-rehearsed) and Garth had these amazing textures he brought out of that old Lowrey organ. They introduced me to the magic that happens when you have both a piano player and an organist playing against each other. It’s celestial. Maybe that’s why that combo works so well in gospel music.
There was one festival where I got to “hang” a little bit with Garth. I was in the green room and I guess there was some song swapping going on and I played my tune “Saab Story” for a group that included Maude, Garth’s wife. She was hysterical because she said they had a “Saab Story” of their own - their Saab had just broken down on the exit off the 401 coming to the festival and they had to be towed. When Garth walked in she shouted, “Garth, you’ve got to hear this song!” I can’t remember exactly but I must have sung a verse or two and I don’t recall much of a reaction from Garth. He was a man of few words. Later that day at a Q & A with the audience, someone asked if Robbie Robertson had written a particular Band hit and Garth answered, “Apparently.”
Social media was full of recollections of Garth and I was particularly taken with Lance Anderson’s post and asked him if I could reprint it in the Maple Blues. Here’s part of it:
"Garth Hudson was by far the most unusual person I ever met in my life. Every thought, conversation, memory was told in the same way he played the organ/piano/sax. With an improvisational style and total uniqueness, that left me puzzled more than once. He was a gentle soul. A genius, yet so helpless in many ways. It felt like you were talking to a deer, or an animal that you only got a fleeting glimpse at. He talked slowly and deliberately, but if you waited for it, there was always a gem or little humour. or twist.… He was a fountain of knowledge. He would put the crook of the phone on his shoulder and then play me (and sometimes sing-a-long) to examples of where I could take these tunes. Had I heard of this player. Do you know about this technique? I remember looking around my kitchen thinking "Who's going to believe me that Garth Hudson is giving me piano lessons over the phone in the middle of the night." Garth was a savant and likely somewhere along the Asperger's continuum. He built a green house, made his own guns in his machine shop including his own bullets. He collected ancient medieval manuscripts by Ockegham a 15th century composer and other early church composers. He had an extensive LP collection and knew the catalog numbers of every record in the collection. He was also a water diviner, dowser or water witching and found an underground stream on our property when he stayed over in Orillia one night. In the studio, he would sit at the grand piano and start on a Duke Ellington tune which would remind him of another Duke song that would bring him to other standards and tunes by Basie, Cole Porter etc. He would switch between the songs and play bridges from another song, go from Harlem stride, to walking tenths, from Fats Waller to Teddy Wilson. He had the musical breadth of Art Tatum going from classical to jazz in the same few bars. Whatever hit his remarkable ear. He would play for 25 minutes at a time. It was magical to be around such a talent. Such a gift."
Out and About
I’ll finish with a couple of video clips you might enjoy. The Orange Devils is a 30’s style big band led by Martin Loomer, who was the Musical Director for my old boss, Jim Galloway. And they play charts from those days, if you like Ellington and Basie.
Then there was a guitar masterclass from Albert Lee, previously known as the Master of the Telecaster, now playing his signature Ernie Ball Music Man guitar through a couple of Toronto-made amps by Pete Medvic. At 81, he's playing with the same fire he had at 21.
What a delight meeting Albert and his phenomenal keyboard player, J.T. Thomas (thanks for the comp, J.T.) I thought an $80 ticket was a bit much until I looked up Jack White at History next week and it was more like $500! Wish I'd known JT played in Captain Beefheart's band - I would have had a few questions about those days...
Not much else to say this time. Feel free to forward this to any friend you think might enjoy my occasional ramblings (and maybe my music, too). The archives (going back to 1990) are available at www.torontobluesdiary.blogspot.com
See you out there, eventually.
BrianB, aka Butch, Nappy, Shaker, Two-Lane Blain, Colorblind Brian, Stringbuster, Buddha of the Blues
If you’re a paid subscriber I promise I will begin posting behind-the-scenes updates on the progress of my musical project as soon as we’re done with Winterfolk.
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