Canadian Bluesman Harpdog Brown is on the road again and will be bringing new sounds of The Uptown Blues Band to The Krossing.
Brown has been working on a new album and will have some new tunes for the audience to enjoy.
Produced by Steve Dawson, an award winning Canadian born producer, Brown has good things to say about the new album.
“We’re going to kick out what I think will be the best album to date,” he said in a recent chat.
Brown has been in the music biz since 1982 and draws his inspiration from life.
“Blues is just somebody reporting of life as they see it – that’s the message of Blues. It’s life.”
Brown averages around 60,000 kilometres a year, travelling across North America and has won three consecutive Maple Blues Awards for Harmonica Player of the Year (2014/2015/2016), the Fraser Valley Music Award, has three consecutive Western Canadian Music Awards nominations and a Juno nomination to name a few.
The video for his song Reefer Lovin’ Woman was recently released, and Brown likes to call it an observational song.
He wrote it about one particular woman who speaks her mind, which he says is always the best.
Brown’s current band consists of piano, trombone, clarinet, drums and of course himself.
“We don’t need any strings, there’s no strings attached to the show. What I mean by that is no guitars, no upward bass, no strings.
“The guitar was never really the first instrument of blues, the piano was!”
Brown said the blues is all about the truth and if he’s going to stand up and tell any story it will be the truth.
“The Rolling Stones were my gateway to the blues, I started looking at the songs and the writers and then I had to find out who they were and I resourced the source of where the Stones came from and found myself loving the blues more than the Stones.”
He was on the road in a rock band when he was just 19 years old and recorded a board tape up in Northern Alberta and looking back, he thought he sounded horrible. The young bass player obviously thought so too, as he told Brown he should be singing the blues, not rock, as he just didn’t have the voice for it.
And off he went into the blues world.
Brown said in his 37 years of travelling, one thing he’s learned is that there are two ways to travel with musicians and that is to ask the question – is it drama or is it comedy?
“When you’ve got four guys in a van and you’re travelling from town to town – is it going to be drama or is it going to be comedy? I prefer comedy, even if it’s poorly written as long as it’s well cast I’m a happy guy and this is a well cast, semi well written situation comedy when we’re travelling.”
He performs at The Krossing Nov. 22nd.