Winnipeg blues/ folk musician Romi Mayes is excited about her new CD “ Devil on Both Shoulders” and her new band.

 She will be playing South Country Fair, Friday night.

Mayes started a crowd-funding campaign so she could record  the new music in Austin, Texas with Big Sugar’s Gordie Johnson, but decided to record it at home in Winnipeg with Grant Siemens.

“ I really wanted to record with Gordie and actually did raise enough, but  we didn’t make the schedule work. I  didn’t have as much pre-production done as I had hoped,” Mayes said.

“ It was crazy how many people supported the campaign,” she said adding her supporters have become new friends.

She is glad to have worked with Grant Siemens on the project.

“We’ve played together a lot and we’ve been friends for years,” she said, noting she only has three slower songs on the CD.

She even plays piano on the last track “ Walk Away.”

“ I’m just learning to play piano. I hadn’t intended it to be on the album, but Grant said it had to be on the album,” she said.

Siemens plays guitar on the CD while  Damon Mitchell is on drums and Bernie Thiessen is on bass.

Mayes has a hot new touring band,  including Ontario wunderkind Jimmy Bowskill on lead guitar, drummer Jesse Miller and bassist Micah Bell who she is taking around Canada and possibly the United States.

“ They’re all really young guys. They’re still excited. They are not jaded yet,” Mayes chuckled. 

“Jimmy Bowskill is 24 but he plays like he’s 59. He’s an old soul. He understands traditional  roots and blues music, but he also really understands  the rock and roll side of what I do. Jesse Miller is  27 and he’s the most positive person I’ve ever met. He’s in a  great young band called the Honeysliders,” she said.

“And I just hired the definitive player Micah Bell— he’s the son of Steve Bell. He’s a child prodigy who has played with everyone, like the Bros Landreth,” she enthused.

 She will be touring Canada this summer and the United States in the Fall.

“ I’m really excited abut it. I like to play somewhere different,” she said.

— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor