Blues and booze

This is a shot of The Boiler Room from September last year.

This weekend, there's a blues festival going on down at the Distillery District. I'm not really up on the blues, but I didn't think I was up on jazz, either. But last summer my buddy P-Doug took me down to the DD and we sat outside The Boiler House here, drinking beer brewed by the Mill St. Brewery just across from this shot, to the right, sweltering in the heat, and listening to Kevin Clark's Jazz Kitchen. Clark was a tall, blondish, bespectacled guy of about 40... not the stereotype for a jazz man. But he was, believe it or not, from Louisianna (he married a Canuck and moved to Toronto), and he's also a chef. His CD has New Orleans recipes on it... P-Doug's tried some, I think. But the music was great. One of his songs, Tom's Jones, about a fellow jazz musician jonesing for Diet Coke, is one of my favourites to listen to. The band's great, and I'm looking forward to seeing them down there this summer over the suds, God willing.

Anyway, this weekend is blues, not jazz. P-Doug's tastes are pretty eclectic; he favours baroque, but jazz, classical, rock, and apparently blues are also in his repertoire. The weather folks are warning us of 40 degree Celcius weather with the humidex; that, and / or thunderstorms. P-Doug's hedging, but that kind of weather's just my cup of tea. If it's warm, and I don't have to be anywhere sitting around right afterwards, I don't mind getting caught in the rain. I think it could be great, to tell you the truth. We'll see how it goes.