Colorblind Brian and the New Blainettes _                       Brian Blain 
Some clips from the second set at the 2007 Toronto Jazz Festival ______ "Last Time I saw Lenny"  Winterfolk 2008l

More Brian Blain on the Web:

 
MySpace:  Listen to some tracks from "Overqualified For The Blues" + tour dates

NorthernBlues:  Buy it here + hi-res pics, lots of reviews & more bio bumpf
 
Flickr:  Photos of my tour of Europe with the Kathi MacDonald Band in the fall of 2007
 
YouTube:  six videos, some brand new songs
 
 


Below is my latest update (Mar/08) to my blog at Colorblind Blain's Toronto Blues Diary
 
Nowadays, anybody with a music career has to become a video editor so they can get their music up on YouTube. There's a couple of videos embedded above and more at  "Myspace". You can also view them by going to YouTube.com and searching for “Brian Blain” . Tonight I just dug up a clip from a gig at The Silver Dollar a few years back with the dearly departed Rod Phillips (Blues Is Hurting) and I will load that up too. Pat Carey rips it up on the sax.

It’s been a couple of weeks since the passing of Jeff Healey but the town is still reeling from his loss. I heard beautiful tributes on the radio from Colin Bray and Danny Marks and Jazz-FM has been re-running his old shows. They just played a show I heard when it was first broadcast and it’s interesting to note that the only conversation I ever had with Jeff, besides standing outside the Reservoir Lounge, was shortly after this show was originally broadcast. I was at his club (I suppose he had just finished playing a blistering set…and the rest of his band would always rise to the occasion). He was standing at the bar on a break and I went up and said how much I enjoyed his radio show and asked about a piano player he had featured…I couldn’t remember the name, but he said right away “That was Herman Chitteson, he wasn’t very well known in America because he worked mostly in Europe…” and proceeded to wax on enthusiastically with all kinds of minutia about this obscure musician and you could tell he was so pleased that he had been able to introduce someone new to this great unknown piano player.”  I was just listening to Jeff playing two recordings of Mae West with the Dorsey Brothers (and finding out that she only did 3 recoding sessions in her career!). On Danny Marks’ show he played an old interview with Jeff and a sneak preview of Jeff’s new CD, coming out at the end of the month.

May 3 & 4 there will be two special evenings for Healey fans to come together and pay their respect. As has been repeated many times by different friends and colleagues, “Jeff was all about the music.”  I only wish I’d had a chance to play with him once – probably could have if I was a little more pro-active and came out to those jam sessions once in a while. I did play with many of his bandmates though, Al Webster, Alec Fraser (who recorded my first CD) and the wonderful fiddle player Drew Jurecka. My sympathy goes out to those fellows and all who were close to Jeff.  At the end of the re-run, I hear Jeff saying “we’re going out on a high note as we like to do” Well did he ever! I don’t know if it was on purpose but there was almost five minutes of dead air after Ross Porter’s outro. A very deep silence, indeed.)

Speaking of being pro-active, I was starting to beat myself up because I didn’t apply to any summer festivals until this week and of course I’ve missed most of the deadlines. Needless to say, if you, dear reader, are producing a festival this summer and and haven’t quite filled your quota of old Canadian bluesmen…let me direct you to my space (http://www.myspace.com/brianblain) where I just loaded up some video clips of me with band and solo. The solo tunes are all brand new (some not quite finished) but we got these video clips from my set at Winterfolk at the beginning of the month. One song is about Lenny Breau, “Another Song About Alice” is about Alice Brock (Alice’s Restaurant) and there’s my tribute to the musicians of New Orleans (“Forgotten”) and a song about whaling (“The Whaler’s Confession”).  Some years I’ve made a big effort to get gigs and other years I’ve done nothing and it seems that either way, I end up playing 3 or 4 festivals. Anyway, it’s always nicer to get invited than to go groveling for a gig.

Out and About: As usual, I enjoy listening to music almost as much as playing it and therein lies the reason that my career is not skyrocketing. I’m spending most of my time boppin around town hearing all kinds of incredible music. Even though I’m usually on the guest list, I’d be broke if I was a drinking man (hey, I am broke!). There’s just too much good music in this town. The other night I heard Charlie Hunter the renown 7-string guitarist. This time he was playing for a young crowd and it was real loud (but clear and loud - beautiful guitar sound). It's like listening to Robben Ford or John Scofield in a bluesy mood except Charlie is producing the thundering bass part with his thumb on that low B string.

After a stop-over at Thymeless where my son Joel (aka DJ C.O.I.)  was spinning I caught the last set at the Crazy Strings Wednesday at the Silver Dollar. I thought I would be seeing a "skeleton staff" with Folk Alliance Conference starting that day but they were all there in full force. I didn't even count how many people on stage but there were lots - twin fiddles and a great vocalist (Kristin, Christine?) I've always said that bluegrass is one genre where you can't fake it. If you haven't been playing (or especially singing) it all your life, it’s so obvious. Well these guys are now old enough to have been playing it "most" of their lives and it sounds pretty official to me.

The next day I decided I’d like to see Buckwheat Zydeco at the Horseshoe, but didn’t get in motion till late in the evening and all I heard was the last couple of songs. In the old days, Buckwheat would have come back for a half-hour encore but he’s not a young man anymore and I heard he had actually left the bandstand at one point and left the band to play a few tunes on their own. On the week-end I saw two powerhouse guitarists - Johnny V from Alberta and Big Gilson from Brazil.

On Saturday I took in three shows...first Laura Hubert and band at the Rex (she had two great horn players, Chris Gale and Bobby Brough…but where was the baritone?), then to the Silver Dollar to hear a touring outfit called Big James and the Chicago Playboys (a blues funk outfit fronted by a trombone player – he had played with many great blues stars and is now out doing his own thing). Then to finish off the night I dropped in to a neighbourhood bar where Michelle Josef was playing with David Wildsmith doing a lot of cover material and packing the dance floor. David’s girlfriend Sarah works for Jeff Healey and she spent the whole time checking her phone for an update on Jeff. Regretfully, the next day her worst fears were realized.

I probably heard a dozen different bands during Canadian Music Week and maybe I’m getting old but they all sounded the same. They all had this two-guitar thing with one guitar playing a repetitive riff high on the neck so that it sounded sort of like a synthesizer. Roman Carter & Tom Rothrock were the real deal…never mind three-chord blues. This was one-chord blues - but Roman pulled it off. The film he premiered featured a whole bunch of blues old-timers…Precious Bryant was the only name I recognized. Turns out five of them had passed on by the time the film was finished. It’s called “Songs From The Soul”.

Son Roberts Band and Steve Strongman made the best of a bad situation when he was told he couldn’t play – that the schedule had changed. He did manage to hit the stage for a fiery fifteen-minute set and he did great. After Steve, Son Roberts and the boys played. It did not have the intensity of Steve but they take the blues to a different place.

This weekend I did an end-run across town and saw Roxanne Potvin at Hugh’s Room then Garret Mason at the Silver Dollar. Roxanne had Christine Bougie playing guitar for her and Christine did a fine job but I know for a fact that Roxanne can pull off a great solo and I couldn’t figure why we had to wait till the end of the show before she showed off some of her blues soloing. Garrett Mason was quite the contrary – tearing it up with his 3-piece unit. Very Solid. I told him I had seen anybody using those big Fender Showman amps since Johnny Winter in the 70s. He had this pedal that made a real underwater warbling sound. I loved it.

Did u know?  As I observed Conrad Black going to jail today, I had to say to myself “there but for fortune go I…”  His  publishing empire got a little bigger than my non-profit desktop-publishing “empire” but it’s interesting that we both got our start in publishing at the same place, The Sherbrooke Daily Record. It was the first paper he owned and the first one I worked for (actually John Bassett owned it when I started at the Record).

Today I was at the funeral of a fine gentleman who was probably my oldest fan. Fred Houston was 92 years old. Five years ago he was celebrating his 60th wedding anniversary and I wrote them a tune called “Together Sixty Years”…and they made it to sixty-five. Imagine being with the same partner for sixty-five years…(hmmm, that could go either way, I guess). One time he came up to me and said “Brian you really make that guitar talk”. I never received a finer compliment.