Riley Brandt

'The fact that you don’t have big clubs bringing in big names means people are a little bit starved for good blues,' says Maurice Ginzer, producer of the Calgary International Blues Festival

The Calgary International Blues Festival will likely be packed with musicians and fans getting their mid-summer “fix” of blues music from August 6 to 9 at Pumphouse Park. It will have to last, because most of the year the blues and blues musicians struggle in Calgary, due to a lack of venues.

Since Kaos Jazz and Blues closed its doors in 2003, followed by the demise of the King Edward Hotel in 2004, musicians and festival organizers say Calgary’s blues scene is “singing the blues;” not a single Calgary venue offers live blues six nights a week.

“There are places that have tried copying the Eddy, but for various reasons they haven’t worked,” says Maurice Ginzer, producer of the Calgary International Blues Festival and the former owner of Kaos. “There were a few bands who decide to move on to greener pastures. A lot of bands stopped gigging, others started taking more gigs out of town, or branching out to other types of music. What do you do when you don’t have the work?”

Ginzer was forced to close Kaos after rent skyrocketed by 115 per cent for its 17th Ave. S.W. location. But by 2005 Ginzer was back in the blues business, this time running the Calgary International Blues Festival. It filled the void left by the Calgary Blues and Roots Festival, which folded after its 2004 event, because it made what Ginzer calls “the cardinal mistake of trying to go too big too fast.”

The Calgary International Blues Festival (previously the Kaos Blues Festival) began as a small, homegrown affair and though local acts are still a prominent part of the festival, it has expanded to include big names this year like Colin James, Booker T Jones and Joe Bonamassa.

“The fact that you don’t have big clubs bringing in big names means people are a little bit starved for good blues,” Ginzer says. “Some promoters bring in players to the big halls but it’s not the same. The festival is an outdoor event, a big party with lots of stuff going on that’s attractive to a wide variety of people.”

Mike Clark, veteran blues saxophonist and owner of downtown bar Mikey’s Juke Joint, commends Ginzer for showcasing local musicians and attracting a more diverse audience, saying the event is turning into one of the best blues festivals in Canada. “It is getting outside of that small blues community and getting out to the general public — the big names help that,” says Clark.

But Clark also laments the demise of the smoky intimate blues club as the music shifts from bars to concert halls and festivals. “A lot of the guys who played the Eddy play the blues festival and you get to hear them once a year,” Clark says. “It’s not the same sort of vibe, you can’t get close and talk to these guys.”

Some Calgary clubs, including the Shamrock Hotel and Mikey’s Juke Joint, which opened in 2007, are still carrying the blues torch, though neither presents exclusively blues bands.

“I wanted a place for musicians to be appreciated, and Calgary needed another venue,” Clark says. “We fill a bit of a void that the Eddy and Kaos left.”

That void has left Calgary musicians playing “wallpaper” gigs at upscale restaurants and left touring musicians with few local places to play. Clark says that while there is still a strong, loyal blues community, it isn’t the same as it was 20 years ago. “It’s not at a high water level right now, that’s for sure,” he says. “What does it say when one of the city’s best blues guitar players (Johnny V) leaves the city because there are no gigs?”

Clark remembers his years spent in Calgary at the King Eddy back in the late 1980s, where he heard and learned from great players, while jamming with the likes of Matt “Guitar” Murphy of Blues Brothers fame and Luther "Guitar Jr." Johnson, with whom Clark remembers jamming until seven in the morning.

“The Eddy was like my second home, well, more like my first home,” Clark says. “When I was younger that’s what we lived and breathed. We were always down at the Eddy, that’s how we learned our craft.”

Ginzer hopes this summer’s festival will bring new, younger generations to the blues. “We need to get the word out to the younger generation and get that misconception that blues is ‘an old guy on a porch’ out of the way,” he says. “It’s a constant case of trying to educate the public to what the music is all about.”

The festival’s following has more than tripled since it started four years ago, a testament to the loyalty of this city’s blues fans.

“On some days I think more people are coming to the blues, but other days I feel like we’re going backward,” Ginzer says. “It’s a funny thing; it ebbs and flows. Blues has done that for the last 80 years or more.”

There will be a new, larger blues venue in town in the next few years, predicts Ginzer, who is always on the lookout for a suitable venue in which to reopen Kaos, which hosted almost 4,000 bands in its history. “There are zillions of bands that want places to play, but the problem is that there aren’t enough places to play,” says Ginzer, who will also be organizing the third annual Calgary Mid-Winter Blues Festival in February.

Cantos Music Foundation will also be opening a venue on the old King Edward site, though it will be presenting everything from blues to rockabilly to classical and most everything in between, something Ginzer has reservations about. “If they try to be everything to everyone, I don’t think it’s going to work too well,” he says.