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.
