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Massey Hall Presents COLin Linden

FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2024 TD MUSIC HALL

 

 

(TORONTO – February 7, 2023) – TD Music Hall welcomes GRAMMY Award-winning songwriter, guitarist and producer, Colin Linden on Friday, April 5, 2024 for an incredible night of music featuring a career retrospective of his work that highlights his album South at Eight, North at Nine. Linden’s album South at Eight, North at Nine featured guests Bruce Cockburn, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Levon Helm of The Band, and celebrates it’s 30th anniversary since winning the first JUNO for Best Blues/Gospel Album.

Tickets to Colin Linden’s show at TD Music Hall are on-sale this Friday, February 9 at 10am ET via tdmusichall.com or 416-0872-4255.

Linden’s latest solo album, bLOW, the first outside artist on longtime friend Lucinda Williams’ Highway 20 label distributed by Nashville-based Thirty Tigers, is his 14th in 40 years, but first electric blues release. The title song comes from being stuck inside a flimsy motel after a casino gig somewhere in Oklahoma or Texas as a tornado was about to hit, waiting for the walls to cave in, with his wife, the novelist Janice Powers, providing not only the opening verse quoted above, but the gurgling Hammond B3 organ left to him by his former bandmate, the late Richard Bell, played, in her own words, “like a deranged church lady.”

With a full schedule that includes fronting his other band, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Linden hasn’t missed a beat during Covid, recording tracks in his 1,000 square-foot, standalone home studio in his backyard, dubbed Pinhead Recorders. The new album features contributions from his lifelong Toronto collaborators, drummer Gary Craig and bassist John Dymond (the three refer to themselves as the Rotting Matadors), as well as Dave Jaques, a former member of John Prine’s band, on bass and Paul Griffiths on drums, who worked on the tracks originally for the movie. The album cover features a picture of Linden at age 22 onstage enraptured in the moment. (Linden says bLOW is the type of album he would have made if the era allowed).

 

The album’s title came from a drawing of an imaginary album cover done by his young nephew many years ago. Colin claimed, “I figured I’d wait until the right music came along to use the title... and this is it!”


 

TD MUSIC HALL

Toronto's new 500-capacity performance space at Allied Music Centre 178 Victoria  Street , Toronto Ontario

Tickets  on sale Friday February 9 at 10:00 am

Presale :Thursday February 8th  at 10:00 am.   Presale CODE : SLIDE

 

PURCHASE  TICKETS

 
PURCHASEToronto's new 500-caed Music Centre 178 Victoria Street , Toronto Ontario

 

 

COLIN LINDEN RELEASES “UNTIL THE HEAT LEAVES TOWN” FROM UPCOMING ALBUM bLOW OUT SEPTEMBER 17 

Nashville, TN – Today, blues singer/songwriter/guitarist/producer Colin Linden releases his newest track “Until the Heat Leaves Town” from his upcoming album bLOW, out September 17, 2021 (on Highway 20/Thirty Tigers). The groove-heavy track conjures up a traditional blues theme of a down-on-his-luck character whose time has ultimately run out.  

Linden shares the true story behind the smoking song: 
“Larry. Country blues legend. My hero. Playing music fed his soul. Side deals fed his family. He ran afoul of some unsympathetic folks on a deal. He was in need of a place to hide. Me and Dave. Hanging out, playing guitar. A warehouse by the Brooklyn Bridge. Larry showed up one night, breathless and shifty. He stayed a few days, vague on details, one eye on the door. One morning he was gone, like a puff of smoke. I pictured him walking away, dawn climbing up the side of Manhattan Island like a cool breeze.” 

bLOW is the first release from another artist on Lucinda Williams’ imprint Highway 20 and embodies the powerful blues-meets-rock-meets-roots style Linden has crafted over his illustrious 45-year career. Linden’s epic blues odyssey began at the mere age of 11 during a fateful encounter with Howlin’ Wolf, who implored him to carry on the torch after he was gone. An act of beautiful foreshadowing, Linden’s career has seen him share the stage with legends like Bob Dylan, Gregg Allman, Bruce Cockburn and John Prine. In 2020, after playing on over 500 albums and producing 140, he landed his first Grammy for his producer role on Keb’ Mo’s Oklahoma. Complete with 25 Juno Award nominations, nine wins and contributions to the Nashville TV show, O Brother, Where Art Thou and Inside Llewyn Davis, Linden has a stacked resume. 

Acclaimed author Peter Guralnick (Searching for Robert Johnson, Last Train to Memphis) notes, “Colin always has something soulful to say.  Howlin’ Wolf charged him with bringing everything he had to offer, all of his feeling and all of his humanity, to the music, and he has.”

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