Join Michael Pickett and Doc MacLean on their Canadian Tour and enjoy delta blues at its finest.

Michael Pickett

Massey Hall
(Toronto, ON Canada)
Pickett’s performance at Massey Hall this night was flawless and engrossing throughout his entire time on stage. He played acoustic guitar throughout, as well as blues harp (on a rack) with rousing, forceful vocals that radiated the confidence and supreme talent that only a decades-long blues performer can muster up and deliver to an audience, with ease, effortlessly like a blues angel flapping its wings.

Doc MacLean

Son of a civil rights lawyer and a fiddle player, Doc MacLean was exposed to country blues and folklore at an early age. By his early teens he was performing in coffeehouses and festivals, and was appearing on radio and television variety shows. Answering the call of the road, Doc traded a guitar for a 1948 Dodge and set out to explore America.

In a relentless cross country ramble, Doc MacLean sought out every living old time blues player he could find. Significantly, he met and became friends with artists such as Son House, Tampa Red, ‘Sippi Wallace, Yank Rachel, Robert Pete Williams, Rev Robert Wilkins and Bukka White. Meanwhile he toured and performed with artists as diverse as Peg Leg Sam the Medicine Show Man, Blind John Davis, Sunnyland Slim, Little Brother Montgomery, Rev Pearly Brown, Colin Linden, Mose Scarlett, the Carter Family, and Sam Chatmon. With Linden, he became a popular opener for Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Muddy Waters, and John Hammond.

Show starts at 9pm - $5 cover

Max Cann has a reputation as one of the finest singer_songwriters in the south_west of England, making music based on 35 years of rich experience, and writing entertaining songs that resonate with listeners, an extensive repertoire of original folk_rock tunes, from topical songs to hilarious novelty tunes. There’s humour and thoughtfulness in Max Cann’s live presentations, and, most of all, variety.

This is his first Canadian tour.

Artist Bio: You start performing when you’re 16. You form a folk band with your brothers. Then you front rock bands. Play bass and guitar. Feel the energy of Celtic music and riff off that, too. Add blues. Go off to Germany with your brothers and entertain the burghers in small towns. Come home, write more songs. You play weddings, parties, anything. Big bands, duos, solo. Perform regularly on Glastonbury’s acoustic stage. Work, work, work - sometimes as much as five or six nights a week.

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Hard as nails, tough as steel, but with a warm silver glow stretching from coast to coast. Join Doc MacLean and Michael Pickett, two of Canada’s most uncompromising, most travelled and most storied acoustic blues artists as they bring the real deal to your town. Feel the heat from two vintage National Steel guitars, up close and personal. Experience true blues on the edge and share the inspirations of these veteran artists, together only for this unique tour. The Ammo’s in the Icebox, and there’s a raw steak on a plate, cut like a valentine. So be ready.

The National Steel Blues Tour, September 3 - November 14, 2008, is to include up to 75 shows across Canada. A small number of American dates are also under consideration. Although many of the prime nights have been sold for theatre and festival presentations, the Tour looks forward to performing in a variety of venues both humble and grand.

“This tour is going to feature some very, very deep blues. I’m totally thrilled imagining what Michael and I will do over this many shows. The National Steel Blues Tour is going to be an amazing journey.” - Doc MacLean

Brenley MacEachern and Lisa MacIsaac do their best songwriting in remote places and confined spaces. Caravan, their second album as the Toronto-based duo Madviolet, draws its title from a vintage motor home they occupied for three weeks in Byron Bay, just south of Brisbane, following the completion of their first Australian tour last year. With the Pacific crashing onto a white sand beach and cockatiels delivering raucous wake-up calls, the pair hunkered down with their guitars in the spring of 2005 and wrote many of Caravan’s ten songs. They’d surf, bike and play backgammon in the mornings, then begin work after lunch, pausing each evening to barbeque fresh fish and drink wine under the Southern Cross. Escaping the sun, they wrote in the dusky interior of the camper, a silver-with-maroon-stripe 1965 Morton Caravan they nicknamed Greta. “There’s something about a cramped van that works for us creatively,” explains Lisa. “It squeezes whatever’s inside of you out.”

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Joe Gee’s been around, geographically and musically. Born in N.Y. state, lived in Seattle, Baltimore, Charlotte, and, for now and forever, in Austin Texas. The son of musicians, he started playing piano at eight and, when The Beatles came on the scene, guitar at ten.

Early on he was influenced by the AM radio playlists of his youth; The Beatles and other British Invasion bands, The Beach Boys, R&B and soul acts like The Drifters, James Brown, and Otis Redding. But Joe was especially and increasingly drawn to the sounds of bands like The Byrds, Bob Dylan, The Band, Buffalo Springfield; acts that incorporated traditional country music styles and instrumentation in their work, and writers whose lyrics seemed more real and often more meaningful than those of their pop\rock counterparts.

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Formed in the spring of 2003 these rowdy Winnipegers are on a mission to show that not all country is Nashville Pop with a hint of twang. Drawing influence from artists such as Johnny Cash, John Prine, Fred Eaglesmith, and Stompin’ Tom, they bring the music back to its original roots with alcohol-soaked songs full of trucks, trains, and a whole lot of heartache.

African percussion, a cello, an acoustic guitar and a bass. Fusing traditional acoustic sounds with pop, folk, soul and funk, the Mike Yates band provides some pretty intricate arrangements. Worth coming out to hear and see!