PRESS

October 20, 2010

The Insider

Claire Still, Kathy Kennedy and Judy Wasylycia Leis

Funny how the blues can cheer you up. Women in Blues pulled a happy, boisterous male/female, gay/straight, young/old gang who managed to snag concert tickets early. Four female singers and their bands hit The Windsor stage for the sold-out show.

Thunder Bay import Tracy K, who plays a powerhouse harmonica and manages to sing hot blues between bars, crowned the evening. Angel Calnek & Hillbilly Burlesque kicked it off, waking everybody up. Psst!Her trademark Day-Glo red hair is not a wig. 

Organizer Kathy Kennedy and up-and-comer Claire Still got everyone up dancing, and the four acts were captured on tape for a live CD. Juicy bits: Tracy K says she got the K in the divorce settlement because she'd already recorded under that name... Still was so tickled to have mayoral candidate Judy Alphabet in the audience she hustled over for a photo with her. Angel Calnek, who's had a heart attack in middle age, says she's only doing what she loves now, like a 2011 tour of northwestern Ontario. Kennedy says they still have to raise more money for the recording project, which means more concerts coming up.

 

October 14th 2010

Songs for a blues guitar

Women in Blues series tuning up for fourth concert

by Robin Dudgeon (Culture Reporter)

Kathy Kennedy has a deep-seated love for the blues, and a special place in her heart for the blues in Winnipeg.

A fourth concert in the Women in Blues series will draw some of Manitoba’s best into the premier blues room in the city.

The fourth installment of the WIB series will take place at the Windsor Hotel, and will feature Manitoba’s own Angel Calnek, Tracy K, newcomer Claire Still, and of course Kennedy herself.

The show will be recorded live, and is in part sponsored by renowned blues fanatic Dan Aykroyd.

Kennedy created the series when she moved back to Winnipeg from Ottawa in 2005, and has organized and promoted all the shows.

Kennedy wanted to bring opportunity to local women of blues in a concert setting and highlight the genre and the women who love it.

“I just wanted to make the concert to get myself into the blues scene immediately and so I promoted it and it seemed to grab. It’s something that really promotes itself,” said Kennedy.

The three previous show have included talented locals Shelley Lynne Hardinge and Debra Lyn Neufeld. 

Every woman on this lineup has a story to tell. It’s a very interesting lineup and it comes across in the show, the material they write – they’re very sincere about it.

– Kat Kennedy, blues musician

“I just did it when I could, you know, working between day jobs, gigs and three different bands. There’s not many musicians who want to do this kind of thing because it takes all your time,” she said.

But for Kennedy it’s a labour of love.

Along with three previous concerts she has also released a Women in Blues CD that was recorded live in October 2008 and released in February 2009.

The CD, which featured Shelley Lynne Hardinge, Angel Calnek and Kennedy, was recorded at the Windsor Hotel.

It’s since received a lot of national and international attention, including a permanent place in John Einarson’s Manitoba Music Experience.

“The reason I chose to have it at the Windsor (was) because I wanted to prove the worth of the Windsor – people really do love it,” Kennedy said.

“Lots of good people come in to these concerts – you get all types of personalities and all walks of life and that’s what the blues is about.

“No matter which room you go into across the country and all over the world, if you go into a blues room you’re going to see all types sitting down to enjoy the same music,” she continued.

“Every woman on this lineup has a story to tell. It’s a very interesting lineup and it comes across in the show, the material they write – they’re very sincere about it.”

Fans of the series can expect a CD release in the near future, as well as a possible outdoor show in June 2011.

Kennedy says she would really like to make the Women in Blues series into a festival with headliners like Sue Foley, Rita Chiarelli or Roxanne Potvin.

This article appeared in Volume 65, Number 07 of The Uniter, published October 14th 2010.

 

The Selkirk Record - October 21, 2010

 

 

Feb.21, 2009

 

 

 

readible version

LAST October, when snow was still a far-off twinkle in the sky, the Free Press sat down with four of Manitoba's finest ladies of the blues to chat about a fundraiser they were throwing to raise money to release the province's first CD compilation of female blues artists.

Three days later, Free Press workers went on strike, and the story never made it into the paper.

Well, it turns out those ladies of the blues can do just fine without our help. That little fundraiser they threw? It sold out. And the CD they couldn't wait to get working on? It's finished.

Tonight, the first Women in Blues Manitoba compilation CD will be unveiled at the Pyramid Cabaret, just around the corner from the Windsor Hotel where it was recorded. Singer Kathy Kennedy, who spearheaded the project, couldn't be more thrilled.

"Expect to hear some of the best blues tunes ever written," she says of the CD, which features four songs each by Kennedy, Angel Calnek and Hillbilly Burlesque, and Shelley-Lynne and the Majestics. (Blueswoman Debra Lyn Neufeld, originally slated to appear on the album, had to pull out to focus on her own upcoming CD release instead.)

In releasing the Women in Blues Manitoba CD, Kennedy hopes to start a trend. Women have a long history in the genre, from Depression-era legend Memphis Minnie to modern-day stars like Sue Foley. And yet, when most people think of the blues, the first thing that comes to mind is a heartbroken man, not the woman who done left him.

And then there's the industry itself.

"Even if you look at festival lineups, even if a festival has 10 different stages, there are not that many females on the bill that are blues performers," Kennedy muses. "I don't think in this age that there's a problem with women singing the blues. So I don't know why there's not more things for them."

Solution: create your own opportunities. Women in Blues Manitoba isn't just an album -- it's something of a commitment. Going forward, Kennedy hopes to grow the project to include tours featuring blueswomen from across the country -- and more albums.

Maybe the blues will prove to be a growing sector in a shrinking economy. After all, what could be more appealing to someone who just lost their job than someone else singing about how they ain't had one?

"We are headed for a recession, and I think people will be drawn to the blues. They're definitely singing it a lot more," Kennedy says, and laughs. "Whether we get paid for it or not will be another thing."

The Women in Blues Manitoba CD release party happens tonight at the Pyramid Cabaret. Doors at 7 p.m., show starts at 10. Tickets are $17 at the door. 92 CITI FM host Howard Mandshein will be MC.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

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French and the foreigner from Alberta

Posted by Dave Nagy - Red Deer Advocate - March 30, 2009 8:22AM 

A night of two worlds in Winnipeg

 

Women in Blues Manitoba

 

It may have been a frigid night in Winnipeg, but in one nightclub the music and singers were hot.

Winnipeg has long been an artistic, cultural and musical mecca. The blues came out of the Deep South but they sound just fine out West, and up North, too.

Events that bring out fans of the blues aren’t frequent across our beloved Western Canadian provinces, but the ones that do occur have dedicated followers.

And artists.

The blues women of Winnipeg were out in full force. . . and feathers. . . back on that February night.

What was that line by that sultry actress of decades ago. .. Mae West. . .

“Why don’t you come up and see me sometime?”

Imagine a young Manitoban blues singer, dolled up to the nines, with a feather scarf wrapped all over her. . . belting out the blues in front of dozens of thrilled fans.

Shelley-Lynne Hardinge proffered the ‘Why don’t You’ line before leading her band, The Majestics, through a blistering set of songs.

Boy, did I love that red feather scarf, just the thing for a lonely traveller on a cold evening.

The other lady-led act I caught that evening at the Pyramid was Angel Calnek & Hillbilly Burlesque.

The blues performances were part of a triple bill, a CD release party for Women in Blues Manitoba.

I’ve collected dozens of blues CDs over the years, maybe a handful of them feature Canadian musicians.

But these gals. . . from Winnipeg. . . belong right up with the best of the genre.

I missed another great act, so I’m assured. . . a set by the founder, promoter, and organizer of Women In Blues Manitoba, Kat Kennedy, and her band Blues Earth.

That night was the third instalment of Women in Blues. I hope when Shelley-Lynne Hardinge is done with her red feather scarf that she gives it to me, I’ll even let her have my Alberta Boot Company boots.

It’s been over 20 years since I saw a blues act in Winnipeg, and that was John Lee Hooker.

The most recent blues gig I attended was Big Bill Morganfield, son of the late great Muddy Waters, and I was lucky enough to catch his show back in Alberta a few years ago.

And so ended the first never-a-dull-moment evening of my winter holiday in Manitoba.

From the Pyramid club, the friend-of-a-friend and I went off to find the other friend, who was unwinding at a nearby hotel after the the music show production, and I’ve told you that story. . . about Portage and Main, in the howling Prairie wind. . . in the middle of winter. . . in the wee hours.

From there, we went off to find a fine Winnipeg eatery for a wee-hours snack.

If occurred to me later, refleting upon the journey, that ALL the singers I heard that night, French and English, rock, folk and blues. . . were all women.

It was a night of two languages, two cultures, two worlds of music.

All in one city.

Dave Nagy is an Advocate editor who tries to tell stories once in a while.

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Oct, 18th, 2008 (Online during strike)

 

 

These Women Are Singing the Blues, and They’re Happy About It
Oct 18, 2008
By MELISSA MARTIN

Winnipeg Free Press

Musicians often come to the blues by epiphany, not design. And on a sombre October Saturday, over pints and the crack of pool cues in the Windsor Hotel’s iconic blues room, three of Winnipeg’s finest musicians share their testimony.

Debra Lyn Neufeld was 30 years old and caught in an unhappy marriage when she stumbled on the sound. Within a year, she had ditched the dude, picked up a guitar, and hit the road.

“I heard the blues and it changed my life,” says the self-taught Neufeld. “I gave up everything to play. It answered the sound in my soul.”

Kathy Kennedy first fell in love with the blues 16 years ago. In 1992, Kathy Kennedy was a rock and pop singer living in Calgary when a whim brought her to the King Eddie Pub. “I said, ‘I’m going to see a blues band,’ and that was it. Blues is something you’ve got to hear live. There’s nothing like it.”

Vocalist Angel Calnek, a “child of the ’60s,” came to her epiphany by comparison. “I was into the folk genre, and a lot of folk music was resurrecting old blues performers,” she says. “But when you compare Peter, Paul and Mary singing If I Had A Hammer to Odetta singing This Little Light of Mine… my God, the woman just walked onstage and stabbed you in the heart with her performance.”

Want to see these women testify onstage? Tonight’s your chance: starting at 9 p.m. at the Windsor, Calnek, Kennedy and Neufeld, along with Brandon-based vocalist Shelley-Lynne, hope to recreate that experience when they paint the town red (pink?) at Winnipeg’s second Women in Blues event.

The first concert(second and third as well), organized by Kennedy in 2005, was planned as a one-off event. Its sequel has been three long years in the making, but the final push was a tragic one: last year, rising Manitoban blues singer Kristi Johnston died suddenly after a fall. “We decided to do it for Kristi, because she should have been here,” says Kennedy.

Tonight’s show, which will be recorded for an upcoming CD, is part tribute to Johnston.

“She had been to the crossroads,” says Calnek. “She had something very special.”

So, of course, do many women who sing the blues. It takes guts for a female to go front ‘n’ centre in a genre where content tends to be about women that done broke your heart and stole your car, but the history of double-X blues is a colourful one.

“We do a lot of (Depression-era singer) Memphis Minnie,” says Calnek of her band, Hillbilly Burlesque. “And she had songs like… ‘I don’t want no one man, I’m gonna have ‘em all.’ That was radical for the time.”

Not too edgy these days, but that doesn’t mean that women are yet beating down the blues’ door. On that end, Kennedy and Co. hope that tonight’s Women in Blues showcase — which they hope to turn into an annual touring lineup — will inspire confidence in the next generation of female blues wailers and guitar pickers.

“I get so many women coming up to me after a show and saying, ‘Oh, I would love to play guitar.’ Well then do!” Neufeld says. “Men tell their stories, and women tell theirs. We need it all.”

Women in Blues hits the Windsor Hotel tonight. Doors open at 7 p.m.; tickets are $17. The show is hosted by Howard Mandshein, and features a silent auction, door prizes, and 50-50 draw. For more info, check out www.katblues.ca