Colin James

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“I’m opening doors for you –walk through them.”
-Stevie Ray Vaughan.

From the prairies of Saskatchewan to sharing the stage with arguably the greatest and most
influential guitarists of all time, Colin James still remembers those words of advice given to
him by the late, great, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Colin James has taken those words to heart. His career has spanned over 30 years, with a
track record that includes 20 studio albums, 8 Juno Awards, 29 Maple Blues Awards and
multi-platinum record sales. His latest 2021 release, Open Road, is a celebration of
personal connections. It includes original tunes written with long time collaborators such as
Colin Linden, Craig Northey and Tom Wilson and reinterpretations of covers by a diverse
group of songwriters including Bob Dylan, Albert King, Tony Joe White and others.

His 2018 album Miles To Go garnered worldwide attention, debuting on the Billboard Blues Charts and holding a position on the RMR Blues Chart for 24 weeks, 14 weeks in the top
10. He continues to sell out shows across Canada with over 80,000 tickets sold on tours
over the past 3 years. Colin was inducted into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame in
2013.

Looking back over Colin’s career, it’s a timeline rich in highlights. His 1988 self-titled debut,
featuring his two self-penned hits “Voodoo Thing” and “Five Long Years,” was the fastest-
selling album in Canadian history. It won him his first Juno and an opening spot on tour with
Keith Richards. His second album, Sudden Stop, featured his hit “Just Came Back,” which
reached #3 on the U.S. radio charts and earned him the Juno Award for “Single of the
Year.” Colin was next credited with launching the swing revival, thanks to his wildly popular
Little Big Band, which has released four successful albums to date.

Balto

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California Rock ‘N Roll quartet Balto makes timeless, bone shaking songs - attitude and groove, joy and ferocity. They are the kind of band that is unafraid to bleed for their craft. Card-Carrying cultists of the Great American Song, the Great American Groove, and the Great American Highway.

A band of young working musicians with thousands of shows between them: Sheldon Reed, pounding his drums, face contorting with concentration, occasional Jarrett-like moan escaping into the overhead microphones. Mr. Adam Ditt on bass guitar, waist-length hair swaying, galloping in the pocket, sounding like The Who’s John Entwistle after a decade of peyote-fueled wanderings in the Sonoran Desert. Tristan Lake Leabu, long limbs askew, infectiously joyous, eminently maximal, jumping between the twin necks of a big SG. Dan Sheron, right hand bleeding on a telecaster, left hand in an electric socket, voice pushed past the edge of collapse, barreling towards the end of the night. Playing together, they are conduits for that mystical magnetic thru-line connecting the true believers and the great bands.”

Returning from the lockdowns, a grip of new music will be released throughout 2023 and beyond. The band has spent the last year recording at the studios of Riley Geare (Unknown Mortal Orchestra, La Luz, Caroline Rose) and Kim Bullard (Elton John, Yes, Santana), as well as their home studio. The tracks have been mixed by Sean O’Brien (Matt Berninger, Moses Sumney) and mastered by Howie Weinberg (Nirvana, Beastie Boys, Herbie Hancock). Their upcoming album feels like a culmination of the band’s ambitions as recording artists - to fuse the vulnerable, raw realism of Sheron’s songs with evocative, impressionist arranging and tremendous performances by the band. Echoes of the British Invasion and driving rhythms of the American Swamp tangle with the biting anxiety of Zevon, the satisfying hookiness of Petty, contemporary sonic ambitions of Jim James and Brittany Howard, and the urgency of Big Star, on an album that explores the absurdity of living in the decline.