If you were planning on dropping in on my gig at Ziggy's on Saturday afternoon, forget it. Ziggy has decided to discontinue live music...effective immediately (and that means me) ...and Butch Coulter (all the way from Germany) was going to sit in...Brian Monty was coming up from Van Kleek Hill. It would have been a rocking good time - an Eastern Townships reunion. Oh well, I guess we'll have to go to the Eastern Townships for an Eastern Townships reunion.
I got a feeling these Saturday afternoons at Ziggy's were not going great. And now with the new smoking bylaw, he claimed business was down. I suppose he lost a few regulars - I seem to recall there were a lot of smokers around the bar. But it's an uphill battle for the club owners that are booking blues. Expect to see more tribute bands and less blues bands in some of our favourite clubs.
Anyway my gig at the Orangeville Blues & Jazz Festival is *STILL ON* for Friday (tomorrow) night (I checked). 7PM - 10PM at the Village Coffee House, I guess you know where it is if you live out that way.
Drop in and say hello - I was interested to read Sluggo's comment about how few people from the blues lists came out for his gigs - I think he counted one. I've had a few more than that over the years, but I'm always astounded to see almost no response from a big email blast but then you run into somebody on the day of the gig and you mention it to them and they show up with a bunch of friends - I guess it's that human touch. Anyway, I can't get worked up about this when I see that many established artists go through the same thing. They could be the biggest thing out east or out west and they come here and play for...nobody. Next week it will be NXNE and some bands will drive a thousand miles to play for half an hour to a handful of people. I hope it's worth it for them. Last week I went to a big preview showcase for a hot new artist, Matt Andersen. It was an open invitation posted on this list with free booze and free food...and still they could not pack the joint. That's Toronto for ya.
Even if you don't want to see Ole Colorblind, try to give this new festival some support. They've got a good team behind it, but if people don't come out, they're going to be ziggied.