Feb 20, 2014 – The Winterfolk Blues & Roots celebrated it’s 12th year this past weekend. It’s a folk and blues festival in Danforth and Broadview neighbourhood. Winterfolk featured artists including Ron Hynes, Jason Fowler, Lynn Miles, Tony Quarrington, Rick Taylor, Danny Marks, Jack de Keyzer, Noah Zacharin and many others. We’re certainly not folk aficionados and not knowledgeable about all the players but a couple of the shows caught our interest and this was a chance to experience something a little out of the norm.
The Smokin’ Guitars of Winterfolk
On Saturday at Terri O’s at 185 Danforth, The Smokin’ Guitars of Winterfolk was the finger picking wizardry of Jason Fowler, D’Arcy Wickham, Noah Zacharin and Brian Gladstone. Each played a couple songs. First up was Jason Fowler whose first song was From Cambridge to Coventry, a song he wrote while in England. It had a beautiful melody and it sounded like several guitars were being played at once. His second song was inspired by the Minimalism of Philip Glass and the sounds of Dominc Frasca. The song was Lumens of Light, the hypnotic title track of Fowlers’ 2010 album and it was the highlight of the show.
D’Arcy Wickham first song, Signal Hill, was written and inspired by a trip to Newfoundland. For Zeppelin fans, the song was not dissimilar to Physical Graffiti’s Bron-Yr-Aur. His second song was also amazing but I didn’t catch the name of it.
We’re big fans of Noah Zacharin who is a brilliant guitarist and very soulful singer. Zacharin started a song called Chasing After Bert which was inspired Bert Jansch. It was a lively uptempo song but he changed course mid-stream to a beautiful albeit much more mellow song. The magic of this opportunity created by the four great players came during Zacharin’s second song Let It Fly when Fowler joined the song midway way through the song and with Zacharin’s encouragement took an ad libbed solo.
Brian Gladstone played a galactic themed guitar and played a song he wrote inspired by the strongest force in the galaxy, estrogen. With that sort of insight, we think he may have missed his calling, rather than a musician, a theoretical physicist may have been his true calling.
Jack De Keyzer
Immediately following the The Smokin’ Guitars of Winterfolk was the primary reason for attending Winterfolk, the under appreciated local blues legend Jack de Keyzer across the street at the Black Swan at 154 Danforth. de Keyzer is 2 time Juno and 7 time Maple Blues Award winner. With a resume like his, most everyone knows de Keyzer but the young lady introducing him apparently didn’t and introduced him from her written notes, pronouncing his name properly but not too confidently. de Keyzer beamed encouragingly when she completed the introduction. In one brief moment his kind and modest character shone through before the show had even begun.
And what a show it was. Starting with Electric Love, title track to his latest album released in 2012. He also played Good Thing and My Love Has Gone from that album among a diverse mix of blues including by Willie Dixon and JB Lenoir. The band had much of the crowd on their feet dancing throughout the show. Everyone had a great time. Any blues fan should have De Keyzer’s Electric Love in their collection.
Jack de Keyzer’s band is Richard Thorton on sax, Alan Duffy on bass, David McMorrow on organ and Chicago native Rick Donaldson on drums. In the summer you can hear Donaldson entertain baseball fans outside the Rogers Centre before Blue Jay games.
De Keyzer will be playing at Eaton Chelsea Hotel on February 27th.
Review and photos by Steve Mallinson
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