A celebration 25 years in the making

A triumphant tour winds down in Hamilton Saturday, Dec. 10, with an all-star guest cast

Blackie and the Rodeo Kings is a big musical sandbox that everyone, it seems, wants to play in.

That sandbox is going to be a little crowded on Saturday, Dec. 10, when Blackie and the Rodeo Kings are joined on stage by guests Colin James, Serena Ryder, Terra Lightfoot and the husband-and-wife songwriting duo Digging Roots at Hamilton’s FirstOntario Concert Hall.

“We’ve been doing this for so long that we have enough friends who have been very charitable with their time,” says Blackie member Tom Wilson in an interview during a recent tour stop in Guelph. “Being around the people in our lives that have meant so much to us is why we’re doing this. We’re just looking to connect with old friends who have spoken a (musical) language that we’ve understood and adapted ourselves.”

At the heart of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings are three of the most respected roots musicians this country has produced – Wilson, Colin Linden and Stephen Fearing.

Linden is a Toronto-born guitar prodigy, now living in Nashville, who has played with Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris and The Band. Fearing, born in Vancouver, raised in Ireland and now residing in Victoria, is a multiple award-winning folk singer with a vocal range that can send a ballad soaring. Then there’s Wilson, all-Hamilton and an imposing presence on any stage, he is best known as the raucous frontman of Junkhouse and Lee Harvey Osmond.

The trio, backed by Gary Craig on drums and John Dymond on bass, has been playing off and on together for more than 25 years, coming together at first as a one-off tribute to the songs of the late great songwriter Willie P. Bennet. Their name, “Blackie and the Rodeo Kings,” is even taken from one of Willie’s songs.

Their debut LP “High or Hurtin’” made them realize that a certain magic happened when their talents collided, so a second album “Kings of Love” ensued, winning a Juno award. Nine more albums of largely original material followed, the latest “O Glory,” released this summer, has been on the Canadian roots charts for the past 15 weeks.

Blackie’s Hamilton show will be the second-to-last stop on an extensive “25th Anniversary Tour” that started in July at the Mariposa Folk Festival in Orillia where Wilson was given the honour of inducting Gordon Lightfoot into the festival’s Hall of Fame. Canadian folk icon Murray McLauchlan joined Blackie on stage that day.

Then, on to England, joined by Hamilton’s Jesse O’Brien on keyboards, for the annual Shrewsbury Folk Festival where the band was greeted by a huge crowd, estimated by Wilson at more than 10,000. In September, Blackie hit San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for a threeday festival that included Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello and the Drive-By Truckers.

In October, Digging Roots and Hamilton’s Terra Lightfoot joined Blackie for the start of a grueling cross-Canada tour picking up more musical guests along the way. At Toronto’s Massey Hall, they were joined by multiple Grammy-winner Daniel Lanois. At Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom, guitarist Colin James and mandolin player Ben Mink were added to the guest lineup. James liked the experience so much, he signed on to close the tour in Hamilton and Ottawa.

“It’s been a special tour, it feels that way, even on the bus,” Wilson says.

“The joy we experience amongst each other is a big part of it. It’s all about the joy and that’s showing in our play. Playing with this band every night, it just feels like we’ve gotten better.”