If the February blues have passed you by, there’s no need to feel you’re missing out.
While many Bow Valley residents have now gutted out the “blues” period so often attributed to the second month of the year, the Smoking Aces will ensure March comes in like a bluesy lion when they play the Canmore Legion, Saturday (March 7).
The Smoking Aces are John White (vocals, bass), Brian Burrows (drums), Barry Valgardson (keys) and Dave Macrae (guitar, harp).
White, who called England home until a few years ago, now fronts a Calgary band as much by good fortune as anything.
After being part of the blues scene in England for many years, he showed up in Calgary after his daughter’s husband was one of the English policemen airlifted to the city four years ago.
After moving to Calgary, he got in touch with a Calgary blues society, which informed him of a blues workshop taking place as part of a winter festival. Expecting to gain some knowledge of the local scene, “to my surprise, it was actually a competition, which I won.
“Then they said, ‘and you’ve obviously got a band’ and of course, I said ‘yes.’ The idea was they wanted me to play the Calgary Blues Festival, so I had to find a band after being in Calgary for only eight weeks.”
That’s where Kijiji came in. After advertising for blues players on the site, White found the current band members.
“The idea was we’d get together for the festival and then there would be no demands on anyone. Luckily, we’re still together.”
Since getting together, the Chicago blues style Smoking Aces have recorded the album Live in Cowtown and have been playing select clubs and legions. Live in Cowtown includes five originals and five covers.
“We’re reasonably well respected as a band these days,” said White. “It seems after we play somewhere we’re always invited back. We’re all in our 60s and we’ve all been doing this for an awful long time.”
Live in Cowtown came about in relation to a jam White attended in Cochrane after being in Canada for about a month. “A guy asked what kind of music I played. I told him the blues, and he said, ‘too bad, there’s not much call for that kind of music here.’ “
Clearly, you can’t tell a bluesman there’s not much call for the blues anywhere; even in Cowtown.
“The punchline, though, is you don’t get rich in Calgary if you play the blues.”
To prove the blues are welcome anywhere, Smoking Aces are currently working on new material, all original, for an upcoming album.
White pens most of the lyrics, Macrae tidies up the music, “then we bang it around for a couple of hours. Everyone gets involved, then we end up with something works.”
Smoking Aces have opened for blues men such as David Gogo and blues legend Tim Williams as well as for country music giants such as Emerson Drive, Hey Romeo and High Valley. A recent association with legendary horror film director Hershel Gordon Lewis lead to recording three tracks for the movie Blood Mania.
The Aces competed in the Calgary Blues Association’s 2014 Road to Memphis Challenge, competing with other top blues bands from Southern Alberta for the privilege of representing Calgary at the Annual Blues Challenge in Memphis.
Currently in the planning stages for the band is a blues pilgrimage which would carry them from Calgary across Canada, then south to Memphis and Clarksville and on to New Orleans and through the Delta region of the U.S. deep south.
