HAMILTON BLUES ALL-STARS
Featuring STEVE STRONGMAN
Sunday September 15
7:15pm-8:30pm
Fireball/Exclaim! Stage

Award-winning Canadian bluesman Steve Strongman is a versatile talent, and a restless one. By constantly pushing himself in new directions, he has kept himself vital. His talent is huge and impossible to miss, and it’s matched by his staggering musical ambition — as guitar-slinger, songwriter or vocalist. The same structures and progressions that animate blues and roots music can also choke the air out of it, smothering it in caricature and cliché. But Strongman is a subtle shape-shifter who manages to slip that trap without betraying the music he loves. Throughout, he never sounds an inauthentic note or loses touch with the essence of the blues. With his new album No Time Like Now, one of this country’s most talented and compelling blues players becomes a juggernaut. Backed by an impressive pack of players (including drummers Dave King and Adam Warner, bassists Rob Szabo and Alec Fraser, keyboardist Jesse O’Brien), the band is pure fire — both athletically limber and wickedly tight. Strongman’s breakthrough 2012 release A Natural Fact was hailed as a standout album, earning Maple Blues Awards for Recording, Songwriter, and Guitarist Of The Year as well as a 2013 Juno Award for Blues Recording Of The Year. In 2014 he was thrice-nominated at the Maple Blues Awards (Guitar Player, Electric Act, and Entertainer of the Year) and in 2015 received a second Juno nod for Blues Album of the Year (for Let Me Prove It To You). The performer’s impressive resume has seen him share the stage with international blues royalty including BB King, Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, Joe Cocker, Robert Cray, Ronnie Earl, Roy Clark, Otis Clay, and Jeff Healey. 

Steve Strongman appears as part of the Hamilton Blues All-Stars, alongside Jack de Keyzer, Harrison Kennedy, Hailee Rose, Jesse O’Brien, Dave King & Colin Lapsley