Blues

One reviewer recently wrote – ‘Daniel Champagne exudes a natural ease on stage, as he sings poignant lyrics and beautifully crafted melodies that invariably whisk the heart up with grand romanticism. Coupled with an exhilarating guitar talent that transcends mere acoustic playing to replicate a whole band, Champagne is just magical’ (themusic.com.au)

The story goes that the young Australian singer, songwriter and one-of-a-kind guitar virtuoso first picked up his instrument of choice as a five-year-old following in the footsteps of a musical father. He began writing songs at 12, training classically throughout his teens and performing solo wherever he could, honing his craft and developing what would become the dynamite live show that he is renowned for today. At 18 he left school, turned professional and hit the road.

The next several years saw him traversing North America, the United Kingdom, Europe, New Zealand and of course, his homeland Australia playing such festivals as California WorldFest, Winnipeg Folk Fest, Vancouver and Mariposa Folk (Canada), Belgium’s Labadoux Festival and Australia’s Woodford, Falls Festival, Port Fairy Folk Festival and the legendary Byron Bay Bluesfest.   He has toured and shared stages with Jake Shimabukuro, Jesse Cook, Roderigo Y Gabriela, Richard Shindell, The Ragbirds, The Waifs, Lucinda Williams, Judy Collins, INXS, John Butler, KT Tunstall and Ani DiFranco.

As one reviewer recently wrote, “still in his early twenties, the distances he has been would be more frequently associated with veterans of the Folk scene” (The Dwarf).

Daniel has accomplished all of this while writing, producing and independently releasing two Eps, Gypsy Moon Volumes 1 and 2, his first long player ‘Pint of Mystery’ (2011)  ‘My Own Design’ (2009), ‘Wide Eyed and Open’ (2010),  ‘Real Live’ (2012), and 'The Heartland Hurricanes' (2014), and 'Fault Lines’ (2017). His latest release the ‘Satellite City EP’ (2018) is comprised of three singles, Satellite City (out Sept 14), Indigo (out Oct 12), and The Great Divide (out Nov 1).

A review of his two Gypsy Moon releases said the following: ‘Champagne has gone a step further this time, it’s like he’s realized his own potential, his confidence is sky-high and he’s truly ready to explore’  -  Australia’s roots music bible Rhythms Magazine

Now regarded as a leading light in acoustic music, with a firm reputation for making festivals buzz, holding crowds in his palm, dropping jaws and breaking guitars wherever he goes. Daniel Champagne has relocated to North America where he continues his exciting career as an international touring and recording artist.

PRESS QUOTES

“Daniel Champagne is a crossroads. Fusing the strong traditions of Blues, Folk and other roots art with pop showmanship and admirable lyrical ability. I firmly believe that he will become an ambassador for roots music in a time where it desperately needs representation.”  -- The Indie Blender, Canada

“One of the more amazing young percussive guitarists touring the world right now.”  -- Blank, Gold Coast, Australia

“Today I saw the future of Folk – Festival goers flocking in their thousands towards the main stage to witness the young musical phenomenon from Australia dish out an absolute show-stopper at the evening’ send.”  -- Firefly Column, USA

“Watching Daniel Champagne perform is a once in a lifetime experience. He is a true prodigy that plays like no one else could possibly play unless they spent at least two lifetimes studying the art.” -- BW Review, New Zealand

“The superb talent of Daniel Champagne can’t be explained by mere words; it must be seen to be believed.” --  FasterLouder, Australia

“There’s a reason Champagne has an amazing reputation as a live performer.”  -- Timber And Steel, Australia

Back by popular demand, Rita Chiarelli returns to the Aeolian stage.

Rita Chiarelli is Canada’s most highly acclaimed female roots and blues artist.

With a JUNO award and 4 subsequent JUNO nominations, she is known across Canada as the “Goddess of the Blues”. Chiarelli is a gifted songwriter and an entertaining performer, but it is her soaring 3 octave voice that sets her apart from her peers, inspires awe and often tears in her audiences, and causes critics to gush. “ a voice so blue it could make the angels weep”….  “a voice that can growl at her demons or soar with the angels, a gift for lyric, an ear for melody and the heart to combine them”. 

The one thing Chiarelli is not; is predictable. Over the past few years she has released Cuore, a recording of traditional Italian folk songs, which won the World music category at the prestigious Canadian Folk Music Awards; Uptown Goes Downtown Tonight, a highly acclaimed collaboration with the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra; and Music From the Big House, an award winning documentary movie filmed in Louisiana, at Angola prison, which premiered in New York and L.A.  Her CD Sweet Paradise, heralds a return to Chiarelli’s blues roots, and is her first album of all original tunes since 2001 ‘s JUNO nominated Breakfast at Midnight.

As if creating beautiful music wasn’t enough, Rita has entered the film world starring in the critically acclaimed Music From The Big House. She also developed the original concept for the film, one that takes Rita on a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the blues, Louisiana State Maximum Security Penitentiary a.k.a Angola Prison. She never imagined that her love of the blues would lead her to a historic jailhouse performance with inmates serving life sentences.

Her most recent release is the critically praised Music From The Big House Soundtrack, recorded LIVE with the musical inmates of Angola Prison as seen in the film and featuring Rita’s gut wrenching performance of These Four Walls.

Over the past decade Rita Chiarelli  has won every major Canadian blues award, including multiple Maple Blues awards, CBC’s Great Canadian Blues Award, Toronto Independent Music Awards, Hamilton Music Awards, Manitoba Blues Society and the Hamilton Blues Society’s Lifetime Achievement Awards. Most recently Rita was awarded the prestigious Maple Blues ‘Blues With A Feeling Award’ for Lifetime Achievement.

Showing no signs of slowing down, Chiarelli continues to tour incessantly in North America and Europe and intends to spend more time performing in the U.S. over the next few years.

More information on Rita Chiarelli visit www.ritachiarelli.com and www.musicfromthebighouse.com.

When it comes to one-man bands, guitarist and singer extraordinaire Steve Hill has no limits. The truest definition of a one-man band; Hill performs standing up while singing and playing guitar, his feet playing bass drum, snare drum, hi-hats and with a drum stick fused to the head of his trusty guitar, any other percussion within reach. An overnight sensation 20 years in the making, Steve Hill is an ambitious and raucous force to be reckoned with on the Canadian and international blues-rock scene. “The one-man band style has made him the top star in the Canadian blues scene right now.” (Bob Mersereau, CBC) Following the success of his JUNO nominated Solo Recordings Volume 1, which also won album of the year at the International Blues Challenge in 2013, and JUNO Award winner Solo Recordings Volume 2, Steve Hill released Solo Recordings Volume 3 on March 4, 2016. Solo Recordings Volume 3 features originals that are outright rockers (Damned, Dangerous, Rhythm All Over, Smoking Hot Machine, Can’t Take It With You, Walkin’ Grave) to more acoustic-based melodic tracks (Slowly Slipping Away, Troubled Times, Emily) and three reimagined and rearranged covers (Still A Fool & A Rollin Stone, Rollin & Tumblin / Stop Breaking Down, Going Down That Road Feeling Bad). Solo Recordings Volume 3 shows an artist at the top of his game and proves why the Montreal Gazette called him “the meanest guitar player in Canada.”“When I started the Solo Recordings projects four years ago, I had hopes that the songs and performances would resonate with my existing fan-base”, says Hill. “I am constantly trying to improve on the songs, both lyrically and technically, live and recorded, in order to keep the fans excited about my material and live shows. I feel that Solo Recordings Volume 3 is my best work yet and I am excited to present it”. Hill’s reputation as an exciting performer has provided him the opportunity to showcase his talents at some of Canada’s biggest music festivals including the Montreal Jazz Festival, Ottawa Blues Festival, Mont Tremblant International Blues Festival, Thunder Bay Blues Festival, Kitchener Blues Festival and more. Steve Hill is clearly in his element as a solo artist and one-man band, inviting listeners into a world of musical madness in the form of blues and rock ‘n’ roll.

Australian acoustic blues mastermind Lloyd Spiegel is delighted to announce the release of his 8th album, Backroads and is touring to back it up. Backroads is a hard-edged, brutally honest account of Spiegel's life outside of music and reinvents his sound for new audiences, delivering more punch in his most powerful studio performance to date. Lead track, The Kick Around͛ sets the tone from the outset with just over 2 minutes of fuzz, searing lead breaks, seedy bars, and the potential for regret. Says Spiegel of the new album "So much of what I've written in the past is focused on where I'm going. Both literally and figuratively. I’m a driven person and never really paused to think about the sacrifices, what I've left behind till I sat for a moment and started writing." "The plan to step outside of what people might expect from me, sound fresh and push harder made it feel like I had no boundaries placed on me and I had a sense of creative freedom with this one that I hadn't felt before. I hadn’t really let loose with an electric guitar on record since I was a teenager... it felt good." Lloyd Spiegel has always forged his own path throughout his long career. Spending quite literally his whole life performing, Spiegel blends his grounding in the blues with storytelling and dazzling guitar technique to create a show and signature sound that is launching him onto festival and theatre stages around the globe as a true master of his craft.

The Backroads Canadian Tour kicks off in at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Ontario on October 14, 2018.

"The Stones wouldn't be the Stones without Chuck." Mick Jagger.

And you'd think that Mick might know a thing or two! Chuck Leavell has been pleasing the ears of music fans for more than 40 years.

VIP Meet & Greet tickets that include an array of appetizers from www.rootcellaroganics.ca, three drink tickets, and a signed photo are available!

Rolling Stones Musical Director and Keyboardist Chuck Leavell has been pleasing the ears of music fans for more than 40 years. He has been a member of the Rolling Stones family since 1982 and he has held the role of Musical Director with the band since 1989- Leavell is responsible for song arrangements and he has catalogued the band's vast repertoire. In addition, Leavell is the principal architect of the band's setlist for each and every show they perform. As well as his work with The Rolling Stones, his piano and keyboard can be heard on the works of Eric Clapton (on his multi-grammy award winning album Unplugged), John Mayer, The Black Crowes, George Harrison and many others. Leavell was also an integral member of The Allman Brothers Band during the height of their popularity and later formed jam greats Sea Level. Leavell has also released several successful solo CD's; his last called Back To The Woods, a sensational rendering of some of the greatest pioneering blues piano songs ever recorded. In addition to being a well-established pianist/artist in the music industry, Leavell is also a published author, long time tree farmer, co-founder of the popular website The Mother Nature Network and a dedicated environmentalist.

On March 24, 2018, at the Aeolian Hall, Chuck Leavell will share songs and stories from the span of his incredible music career. Audience members will revel in his musicianship as performed on the Aeolian's beautiful grand piano and they will share the inside track by hearing stories about a professional life that has made him an integral part of some of the most famous and greatest popular blues/rock music ever produced.

Tickets on sale SOON!

Fifty-five years after he moved to the United States from Kingston, Jamaica, his home town, pianist Monty Alexander is an American classic, touring the world relentlessly with various projects, delighting a global audience drawn to his vibrant personality and soulful message. His spirited conception is one informed by the timeless verities: endless melody-making, effervescent grooves, sophisticated voicings, a romantic spirit, and a consistent predisposition, as Alexander accurately states, “to build up the heat and kick up a storm.” In the course of any given performance, Alexander applies those aesthetics to repertoire spanning a broad range of jazz and Jamaican musical expression—the American songbook and the blues, gospel and bebop, calypso and reggae. Like his “eternal inspiration,” Erroll Garner, Alexander—cited as the fifth greatest jazz pianist ever in The Fifty Greatest Jazz Piano Players of All Time (Hal Leonard Publishing) and mentioned in Robert Doerschuk’s 88: The Giants of Jazz Piano—gives the hardcore-jazz-obsessed much to dig into while also communicating the message to the squarest “civilian.”

Born on D-Day, June 6, 1944, Alexander was playing Christmas carols by ear at 4, entertaining neighbors and relatives by 5, taking his first piano lessons at 6. He resisted formal instruction, but still, growing up in Kingston, absorbed all the musical flavors that comprise his mature sonic palette. “I soaked up everything—the calypso band playing at the swimming pool in the country, local guys at jam sessions who wished they were Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, a dance band playing Jamaican melodies, songs that Belafonte would have sung,” he recalls. When Alexander was 9, his father, a Kingston merchant, brought him to hear and play for the legendary pianist Eddie Heywood. At 10, he saw Nat “King” Cole play at Kingston’s Carib Theater, the same venue where, at 13, he heard a concert featuring Louis Armstrong.

“I had one foot in the jazz camp and the other in the old-time folk music,” Alexander says. “One was not more valuable than the other. Boogie-woogie was important to me, too. I’d sit at the piano and think I was the Count Basie Orchestra or a rhythm-and-blues band. I automatically reached for anything I wanted to play on the piano, and just played it. It didn’t come with practicing. It came with playing, playing, playing all the time.”

By 14, Alexander began to display his skills in local clubs. Soon thereafter, he made his first recordings, both as leader of a group called Monty and the Cyclones, and as a sideman for such legendary producers as Ken Khouri (Federal Records), Duke Reade (Treasure Isle), and Clement Coxsone Dodd at Studio One. These early sessions for Federal, which Alexander describes as “not calypso music, but the beginning of Ska,” included such subsequently famous aspirants of the day as trombonist Don Drummond, tenor saxophonist Roland Alphonso and guitarist Ernest Ranglin.

But after moving to Miami with his mother in 1961, Alexander would sublimate Jamaican roots towards establishing a jazz identity. By 1963, he was ensconced in New York City, with a steady gig at Jilly’s, the eponymous West 52nd Street piano bar owned by Frank Sinatra’s close friend Jilly Rizzo. There, for the next four years, Alexander’s trio swung until the wee hours of the morning for Sinatra, a mix of celebrity entertainers, tough guys, thrill seekers, and such iconic jazzfolk as Miles Davis, Count Basie, Milt Jackson, and Roy Haynes. As the 1960s progressed, he also held regular gigs at Minton’s (the iconic Harlem lounge where bebop gestated) and at the Playboy Club, where he met and became friends with Quincy Jones. During these years, he also met Ray Brown and piano giant Oscar Peterson, who recommended Alexander to Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer, the proprietor of Germany’s MPS label, for which he made a dozen records between 1971 and 1985.

Meanwhile, Alexander continues to apply his creative, charismatic sensibility to the trio context, as demonstrated on Uplift and Uplift 2 (JLP), a pair of deep-swinging navigations of the American Songbook with Shakur on bass and Riley on drums on the former and either Clayton or Shakur on bass and either Hamilton or Frits Landesbergen on drums on the latter. It follows Alexander’s 2008 trio dates, Calypso Blues: The Music of Nat King Cole and The Good Life: Monty Alexander Plays the Songs of Tony Bennett both on Chesky. Also in 2008, Bennett tapped Alexander as the featured pianist on A Swinging Christmas, with the Count Basie Orchestra.

In August 2000, the Jamaican government designated Alexander Commander in the Order of Distinction for outstanding services to Jamaica as a worldwide music ambassador. In 2015, the great modern pianist Donald Vega released With Respect To Monty, which included his interpretations of seven Alexander compositions. Furthermore, 2016 will mark the seventh edition of the namesake Monty Alexander Jazz Festival in Easton, Maryland, for which he has served as Artistic Director and perennial performer every Labor Day weekend since 2010.

Canada’s Queen of Rock, platinum selling, Juno and multiple award winner, Sass Jordan, will be in Canada this Fall/Winter on her “Racine Revisited Tour” to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the release of her 1992 Sophomore album, “Racine,” which made her an international success and produced some of the most memorable songs of the 90’s including: “Make You a Believer”, “I Want to Beleive”, “You Don’t Have to Remind Me” and “Goin’ Back Again”.

Racine Revisited, a brand new rendition of the classic album, will be released on September 15th via True North Records and the Racine Revisited Tour is going to be an unforgettable night for Sass Jordan fans. It’s a chance to hear this timeless record performed live in it’s entirely - unlike it has ever been performed before. The show will consist of two (45) minute sets, stripped down with some stories from Sass and a Q&A element woven into the show.

It’s a show you can’t miss - from a Canadian Legend!

THIS CONCERT WILL FEATURE A SPECIAL ACOUSTIC PERFORMANCE BY JULIAN TAYLOR!

What a pleasure it is to find in the monoculture of the current musical moment a group of musicians bold and talented enough to be various. In an era when music lovers seem to be required to like one thing, one style, one genre we get the protean of the Julian Taylor Band confident enough in their own abilities to delimit the genres and let the soulful beats resound from wider horizons. Here we have rhythm and blues, hard rock, thoughtful folky songs, and even a little hip-hop. In one way it signals something new —an exciting amalgamation of musical styles too long held apart. But in another way it’s a return to roots – the roots of the Toronto sound. You can’t listen to this album and not recall that Toronto has always been “the meeting place”. And just as many tribes and peoples always came through the nexus of this landscape so the musical tribes have continued the tradition. Not surprising then that this collection of songs erupts from the same musical epicenter that gave us Blood, Sweat & Tears, The Band, and Buffalo Spingfield hand-in-hand with cultural heavies like Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Steppenwolf and Joni Mitchell. Julian Taylor is a natural heir to this rich tradition– something he shares with two other proponents of the Toronto sound, Drake and The Weeknd. His music arises naturally from deep steeping in the historically mixed musical milieu that begat it. It has the comfortability of an open mind a wide palette and an experienced and inspired musical talent. So, welcome to the smorgasbord. I think you’ll find it very flavourful. Or as the song says “Ooh that spice is nice.”

Guy Davis once said, “I like antiques and old things, old places, that still have the dust of those who’ve gone before us lying upon them.” Blowing that dust off just enough to see its beauty is something Guy has excelled at for over twenty years of songwriting and performing. It’s no wonder his reverence for the music of the Blues Masters who’ve gone before him has been evident in every album he’s ever recorded or concert he’s given.

Guy has had his musical storytelling influenced by artists like Blind Willie McTell and Big Bill Broonzy, and his musicality from artists as diverse as Lightnin’ Hopkins and Babatunde Olatunji. However, there’s one man that Guy most credits for his harmonica techniques, by stealing and crediting from him everything that he could, and that man is the legendary Sonny Terry.

Guy’s new album, Sonny & Brownie’s Last Train – A Look Back at Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, is an homage to these two hugely influential artists, not only on Guy’s career, but to thousands of musicians around the world. One such artist is the Italian harmonica ace, Fabrizio Poggi, who collaborates with and produced this recording.

Recorded in the summer of 2016 in Milan, the album features the original, title track song written by Guy Davis, songs by both Sonny and Brownie, as well as songs known to have been recorded and performed by the famed duo written by their contemporaries, such as Libba Cotton and Leadbelly.

Guy and Fabrizio have a relationship going back a decade in which they’ve performed together on tour in Europe and in the United States. In 2013 Fabrizio produced and played on Guy’s highly acclaimed recording, Juba Dance, which was number one on the Roots Music Charts for eight weeks. And ‘Fab’ also performs on Guy’s last album, Kokomo Kidd.

Guy Davis has spent his musical life carrying his message of the blues around the world, from the Equator to the Arctic Circle, earning him the title “An Ambassador of the Blues”. His work as an actor, author, and music teacher earmark him as a renaissance man of the blues. What music and acting have in common, he explains, “is that I don’t like people to see the hard work and the sweat that goes into what I do. I want them to hear me and be uplifted.”

When Guy Davis plays the blues, he doesn’t want you to notice how much art is involved. “It takes work making a song that’s simple, and playful, and easy to do,” he says. “And I don’t want people to see that. I want some little eight-year-old kid in the front row to have big eyes and say, ‘Hey, I want to do that!’.”

Davis’ much-praised 1995 debut, Stomp Down the Rider on Red House Records, marked the arrival of a major talent, earning acclaim for his deft acoustic playing, his well-­‐traveled voice and his literate, yet highly accessible songwriting. He’s barely rested since then, taking his music to television (the Conan O’Brien and David Letterman shows) and radio (A Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage, World Cafe, E-Town), as well as performing at theaters and festivals. And he’s played the four corners of the world, with a recent tour taking him from the Equator to the Arctic Circle. He played the Ukraine in summer of 2014, just a week or so before the statues of Lenin were torn down. He even played for the visiting Queen of Denmark when he performed at a children’s home in Greenland. “I feel like I’ve only hit three corners of the world, with a lot more to go,” he says. “I seek to communicate no matter where I go. When I play in non-English speaking countries I play more of the classics—Robert Johnson, Blind Willie McTell. And I may tell fewer stories, but sometimes I can get away with it because the words sound like music.” Above all he’s looking to bring people together through music. “With the world falling apart it’s up to all of us to be ambassadors and to spread the music everywhere we can. There’s nowhere that I don’t want to play.”

His parallel careers – as a musician, an author, a music teacher and a film, television and Broadway actor – mark Davis as a Renaissance man, yet the blues remain his first and greatest love. Growing up in a family of artists (his parents were Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis), he fell under the spell of Blind Willie McTell and Fats Waller at an early age. Guy’s one-man play, The Adventures of Fishy Waters: In Bed With the Blues, premiered Off-Broadway in the ‘90s and has since been released as a double CD. He went on to star Off-­‐Broadway as the legendary Robert Johnson in Robert Johnson: Trick The Devil, winning the Blues Foundation’s “Keeping the Blues Alive” award. He followed the footsteps of another blues legend when he joined the Broadway production of Finian’s Rainbow, playing the part originally done in 1947 by Sonny Terry. Along the way he cut nine acclaimed albums for the Red House label and four for his own label, Smokeydoke Records; and was nominated for nearly a dozen Blues Awards.

So it’s no wonder that Davis is reluctant to define himself simply as a bluesman. “To me, a bluesman is somebody who has to carry a knife or a gun and enter dangerous situations and sometimes fuel it with alcohol—That’s not who I am. I call myself a blues musician, and to me the blues is a broad title. I include some ragtime, I make a nod to New Orleans, and a nod to the fife and drum players. And I always include things that make you want to dance.”

Sonny & Brownie’s Last Train comes out on the heels of Kokomo Kidd, Guy’s twelfth studio album and his follow-up to the stripped-down, critically acclaimed 2013 release Juba Dance, produced in Italy by Fabrizio Poggi. As always he combines modern with traditional blues, the somber and the celebratory. And for him it represents a jump into new territory. Kokomo Kidd was the first time I’ve produced myself,” he points out. “I stepped up to the plate, put the cash on the barrelhead and said ‘Let’s make this happen.’ What I‘m showing here is a side of me that’s deep inside. It’s needing air and light, and here it comes! For this new album, I let Fabrizio take charge as it was really mostly his idea.”

The rollicking title track, featuring Ben Jaffe of New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band, might be called a short story that you can dance to, featuring a rascal character who starts as a bootlegger and winds up a Republican advisor. “It’s sort of a demented celebration of corruption,” Guy says. “The Kidd represents all the forces that operate on the margins of society. That song says something about who I am, because I just don’t follow blues musicians, even though they’re very dear to me. But another one of my influences is someone I’d consider America’s modern Shakespeare, and that’s Garrison Keillor.”

Guy has been asked a lot lately about a song on his last album, Kokomo Kidd, which he produced. Part of the “I Wish I Hadn’t Stayed Away So Long” influence comes from one of Davis’ mentors, folk legend Pete Seeger, and the sense of loss. He explains, “I was on Pete’s last official tour in 2008, witnessing with my own eyes something I’d heard since I was a child. Folk music was the doorway that I came into the blues from. And I want people hearing the song to know that life is precious, and that the road is not always an easy place to be.”

Continuing his mission to spread the blues around the world, Guy has lately been doing more teaching. “I’ve had beginning and intermediate students, and I try to give them enough of the basics that they can go into a jam session, and create more licks out of the ones they know. And I try to give them a bit of my philosophy. To my mind you can treat these songs as recombinant DNA, you can own it and you can create something new with it. And I didn’t sign any papers, but I can claim an ownership to the blues.”

Rita Chiarelli is Canada’s most highly acclaimed female roots and blues artist. With a JUNO award and 4 subsequent JUNO nominations, she is known across Canada as the “Goddess of the Blues”. Chiarelli is a gifted songwriter and an entertaining performer, but it is her soaring 3 octave voice that sets her apart from her peers, inspires awe and often tears in her audiences, and causes critics to gush. “ a voice so blue it could make the angels weep”….  “a voice that can growl at her demons or soar with the angels, a gift for lyric, an ear for melody and the heart to combine them”. 

Rita's most recent release is the critically praised Music From The Big House Soundtrack, recorded LIVE with the musical inmates of Angola Prison as seen in her award winning documentary of the same name and featuring Rita’s gut wrenching performance of These Four Walls.

Over the past decade this Rita Chiarelli has won every major Canadian blues award, including multiple Maple Blues awards, CBC’s Great Canadian Blues Award, Toronto Independent Music Awards, Hamilton Music Awards, Manitoba Blues Society and the Hamilton Blues Society’s Lifetime Achievement Awards. Most recently Rita was awarded the prestigious Maple Blues ‘Blues With A Feeling Award’ for Lifetime Achievement.

As of late, this Canadian blues legend has been wowing audiences touring with her 6 piece all female R&B band Sweet Loretta.