{"id":16558,"date":"2017-02-16T14:15:55","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T19:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=16558"},"modified":"2017-02-16T14:15:55","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T19:15:55","slug":"legendary-band-tunes-up-for-aurora-winter-blues-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/legendary-band-tunes-up-for-aurora-winter-blues-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Legendary band tunes up for Aurora Winter Blues Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Next week, the man dubbed \u201cthe father of Canadian blues\u201d will be sitting down with his bandmates to learn a few new songs \u2013 and it\u2019s all for an Aurora audience.
\nWell, it\u2019s for a new album, but Donnie Walsh and his Downchild Blues Band will be debuting a few of these tunes to the public next week as they headline the Aurora Winter Blues Festival.
\nThe Legendary Downchild Blues Band will hit the stage at St. Andrew\u2019s College next Friday as part of the \u201cMasters of the Blues,\u201d which features special guest The Spencer Mackenzie Band.
\n\u201cI\u2019ll be learning some new songs the day before that in Toronto!\u201d says Walsh, whose take on Flip, Flop and Fly, and numerous other tunes, earned them a place in Canadian music history.
\nMr. Walsh says he and the Band are looking forward to playing the Aurora Winter Blues Festival (AWFB) after a storied career of nearly 50 years in the business.
\nWhen Mr. Walsh formed the band in 1969, Blues festivals were few and far between. Sure, there were a few clubs that specialized in the special sound, but as the years go by, these night spots have given way to the larger audiences of the festivals.
\n\u201cThere is a bigger audience by far,\u201d says Walsh. \u201cWhen you go and play the blues for an audience, the whole idea is to get from \u2018blue\u2019 to \u2018not blue\u2019 through the music and the music draws that out. I couldn\u2019t get enough of it as a kid and it was totally with me all the time. There is an old quote from [singer and guitarist] Big Bill Broozny that when you wake up in the morning and you are really down, you pick up the guitar and play it for a while and get cheered up or feel better. Blues has an effect on people that way, whether you are listening to it or playing it.\u201d
\nDownchild bassist Gary Kendall says he had the same feeling as a teen. He grew up listening to artists like Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley, who each had an elusive sound. He had to know more, he says.
\n\u201cI didn\u2019t really know where their music was coming from and they were bringing something new into the world,\u201d says Mr. Kendall. \u201cAs a young musician, I realised if I wanted to be a real musician, I had to develop an interest in all styles of music. I would listen to anything and late at night, when I was a kid growing up in Northern Ontario, it was terrible \u2013 you would hear a schmaltzy tune like How Much Is That Doggie in the Window and the next thing you hear would be Elvis singing Hound Dog then back to more schmaltz.\u201d
\nYet, he persevered forming a name for himself in the scene. His first stint as a member of Downchild lasted from 1979 to 1983. He returned to the band in 1995 and has been a member ever since.
\n\u201cI think myself and other band members share the same feeling towards music and the blues in general,\u201d says Mr. Kendall. \u201cWe all started when we were very young being blues fans and we\u2019re really interested in this non-mainstream style of music. Back when we started, if you wanted to hear some blues, you really had to dig for it. Things shifted in the late 1970s and 180s when blues started to be included in jazz festivals and the odd blues festival started popping up and it grew from there.
\n\u201cEven though we have been around for a long time, it is always important for us to get to new people that maybe will be seeing the band for the first time and reach out to people who have been coming to see our band for the last 48 years. If there is anything our appearance can do to add to, or help boost the profile of the Aurora Winter Blues Festival, that is important as well.\u201d
\nThe Sixth Annual Aurora Winter Blues Festival will take place February 24 and 25 at St. Andrew\u2019s College in addition to Downchild and the Spencer Mackenzie Band on Friday\u2019s \u201cMasters of the Blues Bill\u201d, Saturday, February 25 is \u201cLady Plays Guitar\u201d featuring the Sue Foley Band, the Suzie Vinnick Band and the Cecile Doo-Kingue Band. Tickets are available from www.awbf.ca.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next week, the man dubbed \u201cthe father of Canadian blues\u201d will be sitting down with his bandmates to learn a few new songs \u2013 and it\u2019s all for an Aurora audience.
\nWell, it\u2019s for a new album, but Donnie Walsh and his Downchild Blues Band will be debuting a few of these tunes to the public next week as they headline the Aurora Winter Blues Festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/2017-02-16-09.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4j4","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 09:45:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}