Get ready to rock it for a great purpose, with an awesome band.
Tom Lavin and the Legendary Powder Blues are coming to Salmon Arm for the first time – Doin’ it Right to help raise funds for the Roots and Blues Festival.
For over three decades Powder Blues has been one of Canada’s leading blues bands.
The sound is a mix of swing, blues, jazz, rock & roll and rhythm and blues, with an appeal so wide that people from seven to 70 often dance side by side at a Powder Blues concert.
Over the years Lavin and the band have toured non-stop through Canada, the United States and overseas, spreading a feel-good groove.
Watching the powerful performer and his band incite people to revel on the dance floor, it’s hard to picture a little boy in the back room of a furniture store learning to strum a ukulele.
“My dad ran a furniture store and we lived in the back,” Lavin says of his introduction to music in Evanston, Illinois. “He hired one guy, a divorced square dancer who played a four-string guitar, and he bought me a ukulele.”
That hired man launched what would become a stellar music career by teaching Lavin to play I Only Want a Buddy not a Sweetheart (cause buddies never make you blue.)
Since then, Lavin has won many awards as a guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer, a Juno award for ‘Best New Band’ and more. He has more than a dozen gold, and platinum records for Powder Blues, Prism, April Wine, Long John Baldry, Amos Garrett, and many others.
His Blue Wave studio has gold records for Powder Blues and numerous other artists.
2015 is the band’s 37th anniversary. Their more than a dozen CD titles and DVDs continue to sell worldwide, making Tom Lavin and the Legendary Powder Blues, one of Canada’s longest-standing musical ambassadors.
“I think a lot of it relies on live shows where people inherently see the difference between people who play music and are emotionally involved as opposed to people who just play,” he says. “I don’t want to play music to dance to, I want to play music that it’s hard for people not to dance to. That’s a marvellous thing.”
Lavin admits to thriving on the on-stage experience and connection to his audience.
“When you have a night when you look at the instrument and see notes emanating from it, you feel like you’re channelling something as opposed to forcing something,” he says.
While it doesn’t happen every night, the magic happens more frequently as the musicians who have played together for so long have matured.
“For every guy who says they’re professional at 21, there’s one left at 60,” he says wryly. “Those who manage to be weathered and hammered by the musical storm of decades are changed by that professionally and know how to co-exist with each other.”
And Powder Blues musicians also engage in other projects as solo artists or with other bands.
Lavin, an accomplished guitar player, does most of the song-writing and plays piano for his own benefit.
“I always played by ear; I never learned how to read music until 10 years ago with Linton Garner,” he says of the jazz composer, arranger and pianist who played with such notables as Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, and ended his career in a little Italian restaurant in Vancouver. “He played tunes from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s… I sat many nights and watched him.”
After Garner died, Lavin bought himself a very old piano and started playing mostly jazz, whose music structure appeals to him.
“There’s a whole trove of music theory, a marvellous game for the ear and the mind…” he laughs. “I know a little bit of theory, but not enough to hurt me. I still play a lot by ear.”
And it is for his ears and relaxation that Lavin goes home from a concert, sits down at the piano and plays himself to sleep.
Nobody will be sleeping at the Doin’ it Right concert at the Shaw Centre on March 14.
Kelowna’s high-energy trio known as Devon Coyote will rev the night up with their snarling, pure and powerful sound.
This fundraising event will also feature dancing, a cash bar, silent auction and raffle sales.
Tickets are $40 for bleacher seating or $45 on the floor. Tables of eight will be available on the floor but must be reserved by calling 250-833-4096. Call to order other tickets or go online to www.rootsandblues.ca. For those who don’t buy their tickets ahead of time, only cash will be accepted at the door.
