For
over four decades Powder Blues has been Canada’s leading blues band. The mix of
swing, blues, jazz, rock & roll and r & b has an appeal so wide that
people from seven to seventy swing side by side at a Powder Blues concert. Over
the years the band has toured non-stop through Canada, the US and overseas, sharing
their feel-good music.
Powder Blues
debut album, ‘Uncut’, was ignored by major labels who said there was ‘no market
for the blues’. Undiscouraged, the band sent it to radio stations whose
switchboards lit up with calls asking, ‘who’s that?’ After selling 30,000
copies in a few weeks, the same record labels competed to sign the band. To
date Powder Blues have sold over a million records worldwide.
Highlights
include winning Canada’s Juno, headlining the Montreux Switzerland Jazz Festival,
winning the Blues Foundation Award in Memphis, Tennessee and touring the US and
Europe with legends like Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, James Brown,
Albert Collins, James Cotton and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Leader, Tom Lavin wrote many of the band's best-known songs including ‘Doin’ It Right’ (‘On
the Wrong Side of Town’) and ‘Boppin With the Blues’. Born in Chicago, where he
played with local bands and blues legends, Tom moved to Vancouver where he
worked as studio musician, song writer, band leader, record producer and film
composer.
Tom has won
BCMIA awards for ‘Guitarist, Singer, Songwriter and Producer of the Year’, a
Juno award for ‘Best New Band’ and the American W.C. Handy award. He has over a
dozen gold, and platinum records for Powder Blues, Prism, April Wine, Long John
Baldry, Amos Garrett, and many others.
2025 is the
band’s 47th Anniversary. Their more than dozen CD titles and DVD continue to
sell world-wide making Tom Lavin & the Legendary Powder Blues one of
Canada’s longest-standing musical ambassadors. |