When the Powder Blues Band crafted their first album, Uncut, it was largely ignored by the major record labels who believed that there was no market for blues music.
They couldn’t have been more mistaken.
That was more than four decades ago and luckily, the band remained undeterred. They sent their music directly to radio stations, only to have those stations have their switchboards lit up with calls from listeners who wanted more. The band sold 30,000 copies of that album in the next few weeks that followed and the same labels that had snubbed the group were suddenly in competition to sign the band.
Decades have passed but the Powder Blues continue to be one of Canada’s leading blues bands.
That’s not to say that it’s always been an easy road.
“When we started out, I was playing for $6 a night at a place called the Café Copenhagen in Vancouver. It was located between the Ivanhoe and American Hotels, and it was the first topless (and bottomless) strip joint in the city,” says Powder Blues founder and lead singer, Tom Lavin. “I remember the owner was a pretty colourful person.”
But Lavin’s love of music predated even that experience.
“My dad had a furniture store in Chicago, and we lived in the back of the store. My dad hired this handyman who was also a square dance caller and ukelele teacher. I remember he taught me a song called I only want a Buddy, not a Sweetheart, Cause Buddies Never Make you Blue.”
Lavin chuckles at the memory.
“I was swept up in the folk music thing by the time I was 10 and I listened to the Kingston Trio and got imprinted early hearing the musicians down on Maxwell Street and down Tenement Street.”
There are other memories as well.
“There was the time when a couple of European music writers accused us of being inauthentic blues musicians,” Lavin says.
It so happened that John Lee Hooker heard this and took those writers to task saying, “What you guys talking about…these guys are the real thing.”
Those music writers "changed their tune pretty quickly,” Lavin says.
It’s not the only legend that has influenced Lavin and his band.
“I remember Big Walter Horton was in Vancouver and I’d bought an album and wanted him to sign it…but he was illiterate. Someone showed him how to print his name, and he signed it like that and was so proud of it. Here was this musical genius who couldn’t write his own name,” Lavin said. “There were a lot of guys like that. They were my gods.”
Lavin’s love of the blues is something he has passed along to his own son.
“My son is 17 and really into Coltraine, Charlie Parker…music like that,” Lavin says. “He’s like me in that. He plays the music he really likes to play. It’s easier if you love what you do…a lot easier than posing.”
In their 47th year, the band has a legacy of awards, including winning Canada’s Juno, headlining the Montreux Switzerland Jazz Festival, winning the Blues Foundation Award in Memphis, Tennessee and touring the US and Europe with legends like Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, James Brown, Albert Collins, James Cotton and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Lavin has won BCMIA awards for ‘Guitarist, Singer, Songwriter and Producer of the Year,’ a Juno award for ‘Best New Band’ and the American W.C. Handy award. He has over a dozen gold, and platinum records for Powder Blues, Prism, April Wine, Long John Baldry, Amos Garrett and many others.
Powder Blues are appearing at the Beachfest Rocks music festival in Parksville on Aug. 9 and at Sidney's Mary Winspear Centre Oct. 29, followed by performances in Duncan on Oct. 30 and Campbell River on Oct. 31.
Find details and additional dates at powderblues.net/tour.
