THE "YOU AIN'T EVER TOO OLD TO HAVE THE BLUES" BLUES

Can you to be too old to rock n roll? Rod Stewart, with his failed lounge lizard act says Yes, you can be too old to rock n roll. Mick Jagger, who can still put on an effective live show, says No, you can't be too old to rock and roll ... but you may need oxygen.


Now, can you be too old to make the blues? B.B. King is in his eighties and every time I've seen him, the man amazes me. He may sit on a chair to the do the show, he sometimes loses the lyrics, but when Lucille sings, she still puts the shivers down my spine. Buddy Guy is in his 70's. These days Buddy tends to lose focus during his shows and he tends to gab a bit more but his voice is still powerful and he still plays one of the hardest, meanest, scariest electric guitars I've ever heard.


What inspired this line of thinking was a concert that Collette and I attended this past Saturday night. It was the 40th anniversary of the Downchild Blues Band, held at Massey Hall. Forty years of grinding it out in bars, mostly, a hardcore party band, touring the world, spitting out always enjoyable recordings but making their living on a stage, usually in some place reeking of beer and desperation. The inspiration for the Blues Brothers, according to Dan Akroyd. And for a band with that kind of longevity, a surprisingly cohesive unit.


Founder Donnie Walsh was there, and singer Chuck Jackson, who still has an impressive set of pipes and who has been with the band for 20 years. The "newest" member of the band was the drummer, who has been with the outfit for 17 years. This current version of the band has been touring together for 15 years. As Jackson put it, "We've been through 1,900 band members and two thousand wives. We still keep in touch with the band members"

Blues is certainly a musical form infused with tradition. Its history is well documented by non musical white guys (like me) but more importantly, it's a music aware of its own traditions and it respects them. Blues is a musical form that has survived, from the cotton fields and juke joints of the Delta to the hard urban streets of Chicago and Memphis, to the the stages of England and Europe during the revival of the sixties. Blues is a live music; I don't know how many blues CDs I have, too many to count and I love listening to them but the blues is a living art form and it lives on a stage near you.

Saturday night Downchild kept the blues alive with the their traditional, rollicking, brand of basement blues; two harmonica players, three horns, Donnie's gutsy slide guitar. A comfortable yet thoroughly entertaining middle ground. Forty years, damnit, they have to be doing something right

If Downchild is middle aged, two other ends of the spectrum were well documented. Colin Linden opened the show; you may not know Colin but you should. Besides his own albums, Colin has produced and/or appeared as a sideman on about 300 others and his original tunes have been covered by an awful lot of people. I love Colin's voice, I love his kind of goofy exuberance but man, when he plays that Dobro guitar with a steel slide, it sends shivers up your spine. Colin has been around, not for 40 years, so not quite middle aged.

Downchild brought some players up on stage to jam with them. One of them was a young rock singer called Jonas who had a hell of voice and rocked out with the old men like someone who really appreciated this music. Collin James always showed up and traded licks with Donnie. He didn't sing and I love his voice but this is another guitar that gets the nerve ends tingling. So some blues teenagers in the house, if you get my point.

There was one very special player up on that stage as well, and he represents the blues tradition as well as anyone alive. If I have to put my thumb on a single album that kick started my love affair with the blues, it may be a Muddy Waters album from the 70's called Hard Again. That album featured Johnny Winters and a harmonica player named James Cotton. Cotton is in his eighties, the last living member of Muddy's band and one of the last flesh and blood links back to the Delta. There he was, perched atop his chair, chugging away at his harp, a huge smile on his face. Every person who came up on that stage to play made a point of going to him, shaking his hand or just touching his shoulder. The living blues. No shit.

The other special guest of the evening was Dan Akroyd. He was the emcee, he came on to dance and grunt and play his harp. I have to love Akroyd in this context. I have to. Cuz Akroyd is me. A white guy of no real discernible talent, with a huge passion for this music, who gets to jam with James Cotton. Shit, he may be like my personal deity. And, oh, by the way, as part of the Blues Brothers, also managed to sell a few million dollars. I am so not worthy.

So a great night, one of a kind, blues played in many of its flavours but played hard and soft and sweet and dirty but played to make us stand up and dance and played to help all the men on stage feel connected to that dark, sweet pulse of the Delta

Yes, they were all men but coming up .. the Women's Blues Review.