{"id":19787,"date":"2018-02-08T11:46:52","date_gmt":"2018-02-08T16:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=19787"},"modified":"2018-02-08T11:46:52","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T16:46:52","slug":"journeymen-get-ready-to-hit-the-blues-festival-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/journeymen-get-ready-to-hit-the-blues-festival-stage\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cJourneymen\u201d get ready to hit the Blues Festival stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

With a full month of teaser events well underway, the two-night Aurora Winter Blues Festival itself will kick off at St. Andrew\u2019s College on Friday, February 23, with the \u201cJourneymen Blues\u201d night.
\nThe Journeymen Blues evening boasts a line-up including Steve Strongman, Michael Schatte and Jack de Keyzer.
\nFor the Juno-winning de Keyzer, who has a long-standing relationship with the Aurora Winter Blues Festival, it is a perfect opportunity to showcase work from his new album, the aptly named \u201cCheckmate.\u201d
\n\u201cI just put out The Best of Jack de Keyzer, which features my music from about 1985 until 2015, so we\u2019re doing songs from that as well as my new record called Checkmate, which just came out last week,\u201d de Keyzer told The Auroran on Friday.
\nCheckmate features covers of classic songs from the Chess Records catalogue, a studio which was once home to such Blues icons as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon.
\n\u201cIt covers all the classic blues guys that influenced all the great rock and roll acts that followed like the Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix,\u201d he says.
\nde Keyzer says he was attracted to the Chess Records catalogue for the sheer level of influence it had not only on music contemporary to its day, but music contemporary and relevant to 2018.
\nBorn in England, where he lived until his family came to Canada when he was 10, this was the style of music he grew up with. The first record he ever bought was Elvis Presley\u2019s Heartbreak Hotel, which had its own roots in Blues, and he was still living in England at the height of the British Invasion.
\n\u201cHalf the material in popular music was based strongly on the blues,\u201d he says. \u201cAll of that was Blues-based, and then you had Motown and Marvin Gaye, which came out of Gospel and the Blues, and you had Soul people like Wilson Pickett, and that came out of Rhythm and Blues. I started playing these songs and I was self taught when I met older kids in the neighbourhood who told me, \u2018That\u2019s not a Rolling Stones song \u2013 Willie Dixon wrote it,\u2019 or Muddy Waters. I started studying that music and gravitated towards developing my own sound, influenced by the original masters like the Chess Records people.\u201d
\nIt took a while to develop his own sound, he said, but he says he hit his stride in the 1980s when the music industry entered the digital era. This lifted a lot of constraints in that he was able to produce and record his own records whereas before, the process was quite expensive.
\n\u201cI spent $40,000 to $80,000 back in the 80s making records, so I would always have to have backers and they would have a strong presence in the way the music went down and how it was recorded,\u201d he says. \u201cThe first album where I felt I was finding my own feet was Down in the Groove; that is where I felt I had more control over my music. It\u2019s at a point now where, with Checkmate, we just recorded and put everything together.
\n\u201cThe only thing I didn\u2019t do, for a change, was write the songs. That was liberating in a way because when you write the songs, there is that element of whether people will like the songs, how they are going to be arranged. Here you already know these are enduring songs; you just have to put your own stamp on it.\u201d
\nBut there is a certain satisfaction in creating your own songs from the ground up and, for de Keyzer, inspiration comes from every angle. Sometimes the process can be as simple as coming up with a song title and the rest just flows.
\n\u201cI can\u2019t do a song unless I can really, really get behind the lyrics and the meaning behind it,\u201d he says. \u201cI have to live the song before I can sing it.\u201d
\nSince he first started out, de Keyzer says he has seen the market and audience for Blues grow by leaps and bounds. When he first started putting himself out there in the 1970s, there was a small audience and gigs could only be found in big city markets. Nowadays, Blues festivals continue to spring up across North America and there is an appetite for the sound in smaller markets but with larger demographics.
\n\u201cThe beauty of Blues and Jazz is there is a framework and within that framework you can change it around and improvise,\u201d he says. \u201cThe improvisational point keeps it fresh, live and immediate and I think it engages the audience too because there is a bit of a tightrope thing going on. To me, that is an important feature. I don\u2019t think I could play the kind of music where you had to play it note for note the same each night.
\n\u201cIn Aurora, I\u2019ll have my full band, a great collection of musicians, and is going to be fun. There is nothing like live music. It\u2019s uplifting, energizing, and it\u2019s just fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more on the Aurora Winter Blues Festival, including tickets, visit www.awbf.ca.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With a full month of teaser events well underway, the two-night Aurora Winter Blues Festival itself will kick off at St. Andrew\u2019s College on Friday, February 23, with the \u201cJourneymen Blues\u201d night. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19787","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\/2018\/02\/2018-02-08-10.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-599","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 16:41:14","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\/19787","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=19787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}