COLIN LINDEN from Canada to Nashville
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The Phenomenal RUTHIE FOSTER HADDEN SAYERS Breaking Free ANSON FUNDERBURGH Is Back COLIN LINDEN From Canada To Nashville NUMBER ONE www.bluesmusicmagazine.com US $5.99 Canada $7.99 UK £4.60 Australia A$15.95 COVER PHOTOGRAPHY © SCOTT ALLEN / VIVIDPIX 4 BLUE NOTES NUMBER ONE From The Publisher 5 RIFFS & GROOVES 6 RUTHIE FOSTER From The Editor-In-Chief Timeless Voice by Tim Parsons 20 DELTA JOURNEYS “Rock Stars” 11 HADDEN SAYERS 22 AROUND THE WORLD Back To The Blues “Good Night, Ann Rabson” by Phil Reser 24 Q&A 14 The Many Facets Of with Michael Hill ANSON FUNDERBURGH by Grant Britt 27 BLUES ALIVE! Damon Fowler 17 COLIN LINDEN Ronnie Earl Guitar Master 30 REVIEWS by Larry Nager New Releases and Box Sets 70 LEGACIES 72 DOWN THE ROAD A S P A L S R A G I A © Y H P A R G O T O H P PHONE TOLL-FREE 866-702-7778 EMAIL [email protected] WEB bluesmusicmagazine.com GuitarDMasterEEP ROOTS COLIN LINDEN’S Journey from Howlin’ Wolf to Hollywood by Larry Nager WHO YOU THINK sideman deluxe flying under the radar for pre-war blues to his eerie recreation Colin Linden is depends on which side in his trademark black hat and shades. of Skip James’ “Hard Time Killing Floor.” of the border you call home. In his native Specializing in the bluesier side of He toured arenas with the O Brother Canada, he’s long been known as one Americana, he can be heard on spinoff tour Down From The Mountain of the world’s premier blues and roots wide-ranging, high profile projects and put in a year backing Country Music guitarists and producers, lending his including the O Brother Where Art Thou? Hall of Famer Emmylou Harris. Most distinctive guitar lines and studio skills to soundtrack, where he brought his passion recently, he’s been an important part recordings by such North Country icons of ABC-TV’s glossy nighttime soap, as Bruce Cockburn, Blackie & The Rodeo Nashville, playing on the soundtrack and Kings, and blues-rocker Colin James. regularly appearing onscreen. That’s him In the States, where he’s lived playing guitar for tortured heartthrob in Nashville for the past dozen years, (Nashville has lots of those) “Deacon Linden, 53, is relatively unknown, a Claybourne” (played by Charles Esten). I ART TIPALD © HY AP GR PHOTO Blues Music Magazine 17 But Linden still finds time to hit the interested in helping me along and passing hear some new nuance of what he was road, both as a solo artist with a new CD, it along. I think that’s something that con- doing, some little bit of meaning or different Still Live (Yellow Dog), his twelfth solo disc, nects people from seemingly different cul- emotion in his voice. It’s an endless well. and fronting his longtime Canadian band, tures and different generations.” Those guys, really, that generation, Robert Blackie & The Rodeo Kings. That covers a He also gave the youngster some and the generations slightly earlier than lot of ground, musically and geographi- practical advice on learning the blues. him, gave us an unbelievable body of art.” cally, but Linden says it all started with his “Wolf told me the first time I met him, ‘If Even as he broadened into more mom and Howlin’ Wolf. you really want to learn this stuff, listen to electric, rocking music, he incorporated He was just an 11-year-old kid feeling the people that I listened to.’ And he told that early country blues feel in his use of his way around a guitar when his mother me about Charley Patton, which of course finger picking and a seamless ability to took him to see the blues great at Toronto’s was like giving me the key to the kingdom switch from fluid slide to blazing fretted Colonial Tavern. “You talk about the life- in terms of what to listen for and what to playing. He also developed his singing changing moment, well, that was it,” Linden learn.” (Editor’s note: Linden still shares and songwriting and soon made a name says. “There was a bunch of them, but that timeless photo on his iPhone.) in the Canadian blues and roots scene. none of them was bigger than that one.” He took that advice to heart and Then in 1987, another musical mentor You might think that a 61-year-old though he’d been playing since he turned changed his direction again. “I got to meet Mississippi/Chicago bluesman and a little eight, he began to dig a lot deeper. “I Rick Danko (of The Band), who would sing Canadian kid wouldn’t have much in com- became kind of obsessed by it and by the on my album, When The Spirit Comes. The mon, but the venerable cliché is true, the time I was 13 I was really practicing hard.” Band was always my favorite group from blues really is a universal language. He bought reissues of first-generation the time I was a kid. Even when I got into “The Wolf was a very deep guy. I think country blues masters and made that the blues in a big way, to me, they embod- he understood that my heart was honest in repertoire his own. You can hear it on his ied everything that was great about blues, that I truly loved the music and I sincerely early albums, in deeply felt covers of Bo that was great about country, that was wanted to know what he had to say, to find Carter’s “Go Back Old Devil” (Southern great about folk and all different kinds of out about him,” explains Linden. “The Jumbo) and, on Easin’ Back To Tennessee, roots music, all that was great about rock. closeness that you feel for the music is Charley Jordan’s “Keep It Clean,” and Blind And I never stopped loving them. Even completely connected with the closeness Willie McTell’s “Broke Down Engine.” when I got into country blues, they were that you feel with the people. And the way “In a lot of ways, I’m still obsessed by always in my mind and in my heart.” Wolf treated me, how sweet he was to me that music. When I listen to the 100th birth- Linden started occasionally playing and how encouraging and interesting and day re-masterings of Robert Johnson, I’ll with Danko. When The Band reunited T SALTZMAN OT SC © HY AP GR PHOTO Colin Linden and Colin James, Ottawa Bluesfest, 2001 18 Blues Music Magazine without lead guitarist Robbie Robertson, Danko invited him down to Woodstock. There, Linden met Band backup musicians Jim Weider (guitar) and Richard Bell (key- boards). He and Weider wrote “Remedy” for the reunited Band, and the song remains in Linden’s setlist. Linden calls Bell “the great- est musician I’ve ever played with.” They formed a close personal and professional bond that lasted until Bell’s death in 2007. “My wife and I basically adopted him, and we played together for 18 years.” After Bell died, Linden wrote a couple songs about his friend, but they were pretty mournful. On a drive from Nashville to Toronto with his wife, Janice Powers, Linden decided to write one more. “I said, ‘I want to write a song about Richard that just celebrates how great he is.’ He loved James Booker, that was his favorite of all the New Orleans piano players. And I wanted to make up something like that that would let me play guitar kind of like the way he played piano. My wife and I wrote it together, which was right because he wasn't just a gigantic part of my life, he was a gigantic part of all of our lives.” OTT Y SC The result, “Smoke ‘em All” remains T US Linden’s signature solo tune, a guitar tour D de force that he recorded for Still Live (the © HY title, by the way, is a joking reference to his AP 1980 debut, Colin Linden Live). His experi- GR ence with The Band raised his profile in the States, and he remained friends with PHOTO the group, including the late Levon Helm and his daughter Amy, of Ollabelle fame, Davis (Linden’s experience on the big snow-bound Ontario club, a Hollywood who has recently been touring with screen includes playing a singing priest in soundstage, or a luxury cruise ship under Linden’s Rodeo Kings. The younger Helm the George Clooney-Catherine Zeta tropical skies, it all springs from the music also sang on the Rodeo Kings’ album Jones-Billy Bob Thornton dark comedy and the men he learned from as a blues- Kings And Queens, which featured a Intolerable Cruelty). And of course, there’s besotted Canadian kid. dizzying, genre-busting array of female his role in TV’s Nashville, on which Burnett “When I first traveled through the vocalists, from Lucinda Williams to Exene is executive music producer. South, I stayed with Sam Chatmon and Cervenka to Cassandra Wilson to Patty Linden continues producing artists, Peg Leg Sam. I visited Robert Pete Loveless to Janiva Magness. Their tour including Big Bill Morganfield’s current Williams, Henry Townsend, Buddy Moss, across Canada featured guest spots by CD, as well as longtime Canadian pals Little Brother Montgomery, Son House, the women of Kings And Queens, along Bruce Cockburn and Colin James. He’ll Willie Trice, and spent time with Tampa with Keb’ Mo’ and Ron Sexsmith. also be touring behind Still Live in 2013 Red in a nursing home in Chicago.