Doc and Dave bring ‘Bad Boy’ blues to Strand’s Old House

Take two of the nation's best known blues personalities, put 'em in a big ol' Lincoln Town Car. Put a speaker on the roof. Switch 'em on. Send 'em out on a 30,000 km blues cruise. Shake well. Add ice.

Doc Maclean and Dave McLean are bringing the blues to Strand's Old House October 1.

Doc Maclean and Dave McLean are bringing the blues to Strand's Old House October 1.

Take two of the nation’s best known blues personalities, put ’em in a big ol’ Lincoln Town Car. Put a speaker on the roof. Switch ’em on. Send ’em out on a 30,000 km blues cruise. Shake well. Add ice.

Doc MacLean and Big Dave McLean are bringing their National Steel “Bad Boy” Blues Tour to Invermere October 1, for an 8 p.m. stop at Strand’s Old House.

Big Dave McLean is a Stony Plain recording artist who has been at the center of Canadian blues for most of his 40-year career. Doc MacLean is a blues vagabond writing from the dark side of the blues highway. He’s spent the last forty years exploring the road atlas from A to Z — surfacing sometimes on big stages in fancy halls, sometimes streetside trolling for change and a meal. Bad Boy is the sixth annual version of the National Steel Blues Tour. Featuring songs and stories in the round performed on vintage National guitars, the all-acoustic event has long been Canada’s biggest little blues and roots tour.

It’s not about fancy buses and slick, new guitars. Out on the Blues Highway it’s a battered Lincoln with speakers mounted on the roof. It’s Doc and Big Dave driving through town to promote the show. It’s the guys hauling in their own gear. It’s a lifetime of songs and stories delivered by two veteran bluesmen who have been there and done it all.

 

Invermere Valley Echo