Rogue Folk Club Month was proclaimed by the City Of Vancouver a few days ago. It gets underway this week with two concerts of Blues-inspired music!
1. Doug Cox & Mary Flower with Mark Stuart, Thursday May 3rd, 8pm, at St. James Hall (3214 West 10th Avenue)
Courtenay's Island MusicFest Artistic Director - and one of Canada's finest dobro players - Doug Cox returns to The Rogue this Thursday, May 3rd to be inducted into the BC Entertainment Hall Of Fame and to perform with one of the finest acoustic Blues Guitarists from the United States - Mary Flower - and versatile Nashville guitar picker Mark Stuart.
Guitarist, singer and songwriter Mary Flower is that rare breed of American roots artist. Her devotion to the art form is both lovingly and historically accurate, yet her creativity lends it vitality and energy that it might continue, evolve and flourish in an age of increasingly digitized and compressed music.
“With her warm contralto and dazzling skills as an instrumentalist and arranger, Mary Flower has cemented her status as one of the most dynamic performers on the acoustic blues circuit. Mary is deep in the pocket of the country blues and there are few musicians in the genre bringing as much creative spark and low-key mojo to this century-old music.”—Acoustic Guitar Magazine
Doug and Mary will be joined by a great acoustic Nashville-based Artist, Mark Stuart! You may know Mark from his solo shows, but mostly from numerous concerts here with his wife Stacey Earle, and with Doug Cox & co. in the The Mighty String Thing shows in each of the last two Aprils at The Rogue.
Perhaps you recall a couple of years ago both myself and Linda McRae were inducted into the BC Entertainment Hall Of Fame at a Rogue show. We are delighted to announce that Doug Cox is being inducted into the Hall of Fame at this show, with his work as a music teacher, performer, producer, and organizer of one of the Province's finest festivals marking him as a fellow Pioneer of BC Music. We invite you to come celebrate with us! There are still plenty of tickets left, and I reckon this will be a superlative concert experience with three of the finest guitar players on the planet!
2. Hornby Blues, Sunday May 6th, 8pm, Wise Music Hall (1882 Adanac Street)
Every year the Hornby Island Blues Workshop brings together a dozen or so of Canada's finest Blues players to share their knowledge and expertise. Last year we selected four of them to perform at The Rogue (Cecile Doo-Kingue, Paul Pigat, Suzie Vinnick, and Rick Fines). It was a big success, and a scintillating evening of Blues and originals. This year we couldn't rent St. James Hall, so we are delighted to be able to revisit our previous home venue, the Wise Music Hall for this show.
This year's performers are the amazing singer Samantha Martin (Ontario), brilliant boogie boogie pianist David Vest (Victoria), and two returnees from last year, Vancouver's Paul Pigat and Toronto's Rick Fines. We hope you can make it. I promise you a superlative evening of Canadian Blues. (No minors. Sorry.) Tickets and information here
3. Vancouver Folk Music Festival ticket deal for Rogues
The VFMF have just announced their complete line-up It looks really good!! Don't forget, Rogue members can obtain a substantial discount on tickets but you have to pay for them by Thursday May 10th (last chance will be at the Laura Smith concert that day.) Full details of the ticket deal can be found here.
4. St. James Hall Fundraiser, Saturday May 12th, 6pm, at St. James Hall (3214 West 10th Avenue)
Our venue hosts are holding a Fundraiser and Silent Auction next weekend to raise money for new windows, climate controls, and washrooms and a balcony extension at the hall. There are only a few tickets left, but you are invited to bid on the auction items
5. Rogue website updates and Spotify Playlist
We have made a bit of change to our home page so watch for a stunning, lengthy interview of Buffy Sainte-Marie (by Tony Montague - plus some photos of Buffy I took at Mission a few years back) and don't forget we have a Spotify playlist where you can sample the music of upcoming Rogue performers. You may have to become a Spotify member, and you may have to download the software. Safari doesn't support Spotify, but you can run it from Firefox on any PC or Mac. You can scroll down to find the performer you want to hear, or play it from the start, or shuffle the songs. I realise that not everyone is a fan of Spotify, which is notorious for its low payments to musicians, but it's a really effective way of promoting our shows - and we pay the artists when you come to see them, so everybody wins!
Here is the link You might need to click on Next Song (use the the >|| button) to keep it playing, though. I'm new to Spotify myself, so I'm not 100% sure how to drive it yet!
6. Radio Waves
Radio Rogue was off the air last night for scheduled transformer work at our Granville Island office. It's back now.
On this week's edition of The Saturday Edge On Folk I'll be marking the Rogue's anniversary by playing music from some of my favourite performers down these 31 years, as well as previewing the Vancouver Folk Music Festival and Island Musicfest. There'll be some new releases too, including Pharis & Jason Romero, Ndidi O, Ben & Anita, Van Django, Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita, Tom Russell (with Andrew Hardin), and Julie Fowlis. Plus some May songs to celebrate the end of that dark, soggy winter! I hope you can join me this and every Saturday from 8am to noon on CiTR fm 101.9 and www.citr.ca
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