100 Bands in 100 Days Presented by Verity Credit Union — Day 9: Harpdog Brown
Please check out Verity Credit Union, our great partner in the 100 Bands in 100 Days local music showcase.
Music enthusiasts of the Pacific Northwest, welcome one and all to the sixth annual outing of 100 Bands in 100 Days, our year-end music showcase bringing you some of the freshest names in Northwest music you have to know about, sponsored by our four-year-strong sponsor for the showcase, Verity Credit Union. Some days the featured act could be a pre-established and locally-renowned musician with whom you may already be familiar, some days it could be an overlooked locally-sourced act on the up-and-up, and everything in between. Either way, we have faith you’ll come away with this segment with myriad new favorites. Today’s episode brings us to the corner table at an urbane blues club of Vancouver, British Columbia, to look at one of its blues scene’s most charismatic faces, Harpdog Brown.
Often referred to as a “Blues Evangelist,” Vancouver’s own Harpdog Brown is the perfect soundtrack to cutting loose, head-bobbing along with your best mates, smoke filling the air, brass instrumentation not hitting your ears so much as gently embracing them. Brown has been quoted as saying, “I speak the blues like it’s the truth, and it is. I do feel like I’m a servant of the people. A missionary if you will. Music can heal people if they pay attention to the messages in these songs.” Originally native to Edmonton, Harpdog Brown found himself in a seemingly endless search for his calling. Face-to-face with isolation stemming from his upbringing as an adopted child, Brown eventually found his answer in blues music, or rather, it found him. “The blues tapped me on the shoulder years ago and said, ‘This is where you belong, son.'”
Brown’s latest full-length endeavor, the 13-track For Love & Money, was produced by JUNO Award winner Steve Dawson, a seasoned blues producer who’s worked with the likes of Kelly Joe Phelps and The Deep Dark Woods. Brown’s subversive foregoing of conventional enunciation, combined with his uniquely gruff and well-aged tone of voice, leads to performances dripping with flavor and personality. For Love & Money was created in collaboration with a six-piece band, and their dense contributions are apparent throughout the LP, such as the colorfully layered “Reefer Lovin’ Woman” and the interplay-heavy romp that is “Blue Light Boogie.”
Are you looking to get down tonight? Look no further than Harpdog Brown.
(You can listen to Harpdog Brown below via YouTube and Spotify; you can keep up with Brown via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as his official website, HarpdogBrown.com.)
Submissions for 100 Bands in 100 Days are still open to any Pacific Northwest band interested in submitting. If you would like to submit for a chance to be featured in this segment, consult this link for more information on how you can do so.
A huge shoutout to Verity Credit Union for doing so much for the music community and for being such a great partner.
As an added bonus this year, House Of Cannabis will be playing the featured bands in each of their three Washington locations.
