Juno Award-winning Canadian Bluesman Steve Strongman & his band bring their phenomenally successful Acoustic Show to The Voortman Stage with their special guest, Juno Award-winning Kenny “Blues Boss” Wayne for a toe- tapping, hand-clapping evening of Blues & Boogie Woogie. The band’s special guest, Kenny “Blues Boss” Wayne has been performing for over 50 years with many of the world’s most influential blues pioneers, including Jimmy Reed, Pinetop Perkins, Johnnie Johnson, Big Joe Duskin, Joe Louis Walker, and Floyd Dixon. He has also played as a guest performer with well-known rock and soul artists including Ike Turner, Sly and the Family Stone, Delaney and Bonnie and members of Santana and the Doobie Brothers. As a touring performer, he has played to knowledgeable and appreciative blues audiences on four continents and has been profiled by music journalists in Europe and North America. His many awards include seven Maple Blues Awards (Toronto Blues Society) for piano player of the year and four keyboard awards from Living Blues magazine, in which he was hailed as “an artist bringing the piano back to the front ranks of contemporary Blues.” In 2006 he won a Juno Award for Best Blues Album and was nominated three more times. In 2017 he was inducted into the Boogie-Woogie Piano Hall of Fame while performing at the Cincy Blues Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio and in 2021 he received the Western Canada Music Award ‘artist of the year’. His sixth recording for Stony Plain Records, Blues from Chicago to Paris, is a rousing tribute to two of Chicago’s postwar blues legends, the piano-pounding Memphis Slim and the bass-slapping powerhouse, Willie Dixon. Kenny now resides in beautiful Burlington, ON. Steve and his band are very excited to return to the Voortman Stage following their CD Release Show in June. Strongman's newly released album "The Strongman Blues Remedy" was conceived in the middle of the global pandemic, and was meant to be an antidote for the weariness that the past two years have brought to music lovers everywhere. By organizing songwriting sessions with a stellar cast of Canadian Blues artists, Steve Strongman developed an album of songs that touched upon multiple experiences and viewpoints, with the overarching message that the best remedy for the world we’re living in right now is to fill it with music that celebrates life and focuses on the joys of being on the other side. |
