It’s not often you’d think of country music as a cultural ambassador – a cowboy hat diplomat? – but that’s exactly what Tim Hus is. A champion of all things Canadian, Hus has found acceptance not only from east to west but overseas as well. Speaking from his home in Calgary, Tim is on his way to Rocky Mountain Cowboy Festival in Nordegg, Alberta. “It’s a lot of boots and hats for sure,” says Hus, “and it celebrates western culture. There’s a number of them around western Canada and the western United States. There’s western art, saddle making, leather work and then there’s a music festival with bands and cowboy poets and that kind of thing. The festival has been going for five years and I played the inaugural edition and now, I’m ready to make my triumphant return,” chuckles Hus. For those curious about attending, rest assured you don’t need a bull rider’s belt buckle to get in. “I would recommend it,” says Hus. “It’s a lot of fun; the people are friendly and open. It’s like a folk festival except where a folk festival is more world music, cowboy fest is more like a western Canadian festival with good food, people and atmosphere.”

Tim Hus is preparing to premier his newest album, Hockeytown. When asked if it’s a concept album about the game, Hus reveals the meaning. “I did a big tour with Stompin’ Tom from Ontario to the Maritimes last summer and it went really well. This summer we’ll be doing the western leg of it. The album is from that experience and approach: all the songs are about Canada coast to coast and everywhere you go in the country, it’s always a hockey town.” As for Hus’s hockey passion, he fondly recalls playing hockey growing up and still keeps on top of the game, but declines to name favourite teams in the spirit of his “coast to coast” music.

While this Canadiana may be part and parcel of Hus’s music, he notes that it wasn’t always viable to be a Canadian artist passionate about your own country. “I think it’s getting better after stuff like what I’ve been doing and what Corb Lund has been doing. But we’re still largely influenced by the American music industry. We do have our own scene and we do have people who are champions of Canada and Canadian culture, for example, the Corb Lund song ‘Hurtin’ Albertan,’ which I co-wrote with him.”

This pride in being Canadian and representing the country has “led to an interesting thing that’s happened to my band as of late,” says Hus. “We’ve become a cultural ambassador. Last year we played at the Vancouver Olympics in that role (and) we recently played Martinque, a French island in the Caribbean, and we were told we were the first Canadian band to ever perform there. Last month I was over in South Korea playing at universities and Europe not long before that… Just because it’s Canadian music doesn’t mean it’s just for Canadians. We’re taking it around the world and giving everyone a taste of the culture.” In terms of the reaction, Hus says, “It’s gone over great everywhere. There’s a lot of interest but it’s always received differently, it’s not so relatable for some of them, so it’s more they’re experiencing something not familiar to them.”

In true Canadian fashion, one of the more memorable experiences comes from visiting our neighbour to the south. “We played the States at the Dollar Watch Jamboree in Washington. We headlined the festival down there and a lot of the time I get criticized that my songs are too Canadian to work in the U.S., but we had the most merchandise and albums sold out of any band at that festival,” says Hus with some trace of pride.

Just how Canadian are his songs? “Well, on the new album I’ve got a song about hunting the Sasquatch; I don’t think you can get more Canadian than that!” he laughs. “A lot of my songs are stories from the road – places we travel to and people we met are all seen through my eyes and my pen,” says Hus.

Because of the common threads running through the songs, Hus says, “People come up to me and s (less)

In September of 2006, I attended a concert honoring jazz historian Richard Sudhalter with Jeff Healey on the bill, only vaguely aware of Healey's pop music history and ignorant of his lifelong fascination with jazz performers of the 1920s and 1930s. His remarkable laptop guitar playing (strongly influenced by Eddie Lang and other early jazz masters) and heartfelt singing of Tin Pan Alley hits made me an instant Jeff Healey fan; seeing him pick up a trumpet and blowing Louis Armstrong-inspired choruses only added to my amazement.

Beautiful Noise was taped earlier that year for a Canadian TV program, and captures a live set by Healey and his working octet of jazz players. Reeman Christopher Plock's booming bass saxophone recalls the sound of '20s jazz ensembles; he has a striking Roland Kirk-esque moment on "Sugar Blues," simutaneously playing soprano and alto sax. Other highlights include violinist Drew Jurecka recalling Joe Venuti on "Wild Cat," performed in duo with the leader; Terra Hazelton, the band's blues diva, lays the double entendres thick on "Long John;" and, ofcourse, Healey demonstrating his multiple talents. He excels as a vocal balladeer on "If I Had You," which also contains an inspired trumpet solo. Healey's premature death, barely two years after this performance, was a tragedy for all lovers of swing.

(less)

Where his albums with the Jazz Wizards were sometimes more enthusiastic than authentic, this disc – recorded mostly with Healey overdubbing himself on guitars, trumpet and voice – gets the details precisely right, from his perfectly shaded crooning in Time on My Hands to the exquisitely swinging rhythm guitar underpinning I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter. And while Ross Wooldridge’s piano cameos are occasionally too florid for my taste, the contributions of the album’s other guest, violinist Drew Jurecka, are time-machine perfect. (less)

You could say that B.B. King and Aaron "T-Bone" Walker invented modern electric blues, a big-city sound in which the Mississippi Delta -- which continued to inform such contemporaries as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf -- was a very distant echo. A whole lot of memorable music, from Albert King, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Little Milton and others, followed. So, unfortunately, have many generic-sounding recordings. To my hearing, the latter have the resonance more of roots rock (or somebody's idea of it) than of real blues; "blues rock" strikes me as -- with, inevitably, some worthy exceptions -- effectively rock, incidentally blues. The standard complaint, fair or unfair but hardly mine alone, is that there's more hand -- the players are invariably adept at their instruments -- than heart in this approach. That said, Between a Rock & the Blues, produced by the hard-working, ever-reliable Duke Robillard (whose most recent CD I reviewed here on 4 July 2009), is as electric and modern as a blues disc can be, and a stunner. For once, "masterpiece" -- the word is used on the back cover -- falls short of hyperbole. The record has almost hypnotic powers. I have listened to it repeatedly, each time in some state of awed consciousness.

Joe Louis Walker (no relation to T-Bone as far as I know) first recorded in 1986, and this is his 20th album. Though I know his early work, I lost track of him in the interim. Picking up on him in 2009, I encounter a major blues artist at the peak of his powers. Because race is so much a part of any discussion of blues' history and higher meaning, it is necessary to note here that Walker is an African-American who has lived long enough (born in 1949) to have grown up in blues culture, in other words at a time when blues was not -- as it has been for a long time now -- at the far margins of black life and entertainment. Walker seems to have heard, seen or known just about every significant African-American vernacular and popular musician of the mid- to latter-20th century. In addition he was close friends with the late Mike Bloomfield, who did as much as anyone (next, anyway, to the early Rolling Stones) to introduce electric blues to a whole generation of white young people.

Between a Rock & the Blues fuses gospel, r&b, soul and (yes) rock, but it is at its essence a blues record -- thundering and scorching, yes, but never bombastic. Afire with emotion, the songs, in common with all true blues, deliver convincingly lived-in storytelling. "Black Widow Spider" boasts a particularly compelling narrative and a terrific blues metaphor like they used to. Just as gripping, "If There's a Heaven," written by Walker with Kevin Eubanks and Joe Russo, is a confession of sin by a petty criminal who yet strives to commit good. It's hard to believe psychological and spiritual complexity of this kind could be compacted into a song, even one that clocks in at 6:41, but it's considerably more interesting than most gospel songs.

Social commentary drives "I'm Tide" -- meaning "tired" of a whole lot of aggravations of modern life; Walker is so exhausted that he can't even manage that second syllable -- and Murali Coryell's "Way Too Expensive," about economic inequity; there's also a richly earned dig at our most recent ex-president.

With electric guitar, slide and 12-string, Walker fronts a band which hits hard and lands every punch. Pleasingly, though, the album closes on a whole other note with "Send You Back," a quiet acoustic-guitar/harmonica country blues. Walker is fluent in all the blues languages.

(less)

Maria Muldaur has been in music now for some 47 years, during which he has dipped into most forms of American roots music – best known for her 1974 hit “Midnight At The Oasis”, but in her teen years in the early 1960s she was part of the folk revival, and involved with blues, bluegrass, jug band and more. In the 35 years since her major hit she has recorded 35 solo albums of blues, gospel, big band and jazz – concentrating mainly on blues since the 1990s.

Her latest release, “Maria Muldaur & Her Garden Of Joy”, her fourth for Stony Plain, sees her revisiting her jug band era, when she was a member of both The Even Dozen and The Jim Kweskin Jug Band, with the help of many musicians she was associated with way back and some younger talent.

It is a good-time, uplifting and humorous album, fittingly subtitled “Good Time Music For Hard Times!” The tunes include many traditional ones from as far back as the 30s, with a brace of newly written songs by the great Dan Hicks – the album produced by Muldaur herself, with Stony Plain boss Holger Petersen as executive producer.

Veterans from the past on board include John Sebastian, David Grisman and Fritz Richmond and the legendary Taj Mahal contributing some banjo and guitar, with the afore-mentioned Dan Hicks dueting on the hilarious medley of “Life’s Too Short / When Elephants Roost In Bamboo Trees”, with his “The Diplomat” opening the album in fine style, with lovely guitar and mandolins and Maria Muldaur’s fine vocal.

“Shake Hands And Tell Me Goodbye” has a nice old-timey feel to it, with the fiddle of Suzy Thompson highlighted and John Sebastian’s harmonica. The traditional “Shout You Cats” sees newcomer Kit Stovepipe on jug, with the glorious “The Ghost Of The St. Louis Blues” firmly in Dixieland territory with the brass of Bob Schwartz, Kevin Porter and Jim Rothermel – all playing quite beautifully!

Dan Hicks’ second tune, “Let It Simmer” sees Muldaur turning to her jazzy era, with a sultry vocal; Clifford Hayes title track “Garden Of Joy” is another easy on the ear delight, lots more swinging fiddle, jug, banjos and guitars! The Jim Kweskin Jug Band song “I Ain’t Gonna Marry” is again lovely, nice and steady rolling. The ensemble get low down on the traditional “Bank Failure Blues”, with this great album ending with “The Panic Is On” – again in blues mode – but with an uplifting feel for these hard times!

(less)

He's released about five of the most high lauded albums in the last five years and on top of that, continues to produce some fine records for a ton of people. However, this release along with his more jazzy-blues release from last year seem to be his real niche. Tapping into the rhythm and blues charts of the 40s and 50s is where the Duke is at home and actively creates, pulling from the obscure and the well known. Conjuring thoughts of a young B.B. King or a young Ike Turner or Eddie Vinson, Wynonie Harris, or Roy Brown; Duke funnels those guitar themes effortlessly back into the popular blues consciousness with each subsequent release and hasn't ever faltered. The Duke of the Blues is still firmly holding the standards high for all those who choose to call themselves a blues guitarist. (less)