November 2024
Canada’s premier blues band, the Downchild Blues Band, played to a full-house at Hugh’s Room in Toronto on 13 November, just one of the stops on their farewell tour. After releasing 19 albums, receiving numerous awards and touring around the world for the past 55 years, Downchild Blues Band have decided it’s time to take a final bow and call it a day.
The Downchild Blues Band was formed in Toronto in 1969, co-founded by two brothers, Donnie “Mr. Downchild” Walsh and Richard “Hock” Walsh. Taking their name from the Sunny Boy Williamson song, “Mr. Downchild,” the band was the inspiration for The Blues Brothers, the musical act founded by Saturday Night Live cast members Dan Aykroyd and the late John Belushi. In fact, two Downchild songs, “Shotgun Blues” and “I Got Everything I Need (Almost),” both originally from their 1973 album, Straight Up, were covered on The Blues Brothers’ 1978 multi-platinum debut album Briefcase Full of Blues.
Dan Aykroyd has stated publicly that without the Downchild Blues Band, there would be no Blues Brothers. In 2005, Donnie Walsh joined Dan Aykroyd and James Belushi on stage at a Blue Brothers show at Casino Rama.
For their first year or so, Downchild were the house band at the fabled Grossman’s Tavern, one of Toronto’s longest-running live music venues.
From their 1971 debut album, Bootleg, recorded in a makeshift studio at Toonto’s Roachdale College and regarded as one of the first independent albums ever produced in Canada, to their most recent album, 2019’s Live At The Toronto Jazz Festival, the band has never diverted from their signature jump-blues style sound. For their entire 55-year run, Donnie Walsh has been the one constant throughout the band’s history. It’s estimated that more than 120 musicians have been associated with Downchild since 1969.
The current line-up, led by Donnie Walsh on guitar and harmonica, includes singer Chuck Jackson, who also plays harmonica, tenor sax man Pat Carey, Gary Kendall on bass, drummer Jim Casson and Tyler Yarema on keyboards.
Amongst the honours and awards bestowed on Donnie Walsh, he was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019, alongside some of the greatest Canadian songwriters of our time, including Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
Sources: Downchild Blues Band – Wikipedia, The Legendary Downchild Blues Band announces farewell tour | Roots Music Canada.
