Time: 9:15 p.m

Tickets: call The BluesLine at:
403 545 2340

http://www.davidvestband.com/or

http://www.myspace.com/davidvest

From the back of a flatbed truck in Alabama, to concert halls and festival stages around the world, the Original Boogie-Woogie Starchild has been lifting people up for half a century, bringing audiences to their feet with his unique blend of blues, boogie, gospel, jazz and old-time country -- the real stuff.
Sometimes he comes alone, like the legendary barrelhouse piano pounders from the turpentine camps in the piney woods, and rocks the house unaided.
More often he brings with him a lineup of seasoned veterans, ready to back him on many musical fronts. There's a reason why the top players are eager to work with him: he brings out the best in them, time after time.
He writes most of his own material. But whether recalling the classics of Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon, the Gulf Coast boogie of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, or the ethereal depth of Sun Ra, Vest always brings a surprise or two to the stage. He will mix metaphors and it will make sense.
Prepare to tap your toes, dance your ass off, and listen to messages that move the soul and challenge your mind. This is intelligent music, viscerally delivered. CounterPunch called it "rock and roll for grownups -- dangerous, fast, addictive."

In the Fifties David went back and forth between juke joints and gospel music, appearing on programs with the Blackwood Brothers and Statesmen when he wasn't honky-tonking.
In the early Sixties he played with Big Joe Turner, sat in with Bill Black's Combo and the Jimmy Dorsey Band, wrote the first songs ever recorded by the late Tammy Wynette and played theaters as a duo with author/comedienne Fannie Flagg.
Then he moved to Nashville and, after playing on some Zeke Clements sessions engineered by Scotty Moore, disappeared completely from the scene.
More than ten years would go by before he would perform in public again.
Turns out he was off teaching and writing poetry -- lots of it. By the late 70s his work had appeared in many of the leading literary magazines and a few anthologies. But he split that scene as suddenly as he had left Nashville. A letter from a university press asking to publish his book went unanswered.
Finally, in 1980 he took the stage again at a jazz festival -- not in the U.S. but in Transylvania, of all places, while in Europe as a Fulbright scholar. The live telecast of the show was seen in several countries, leading to an offer to record an album ("Heart Full of Rock and Roll") in Bucharest, backed by Romanian musicians led by the legendary Johnny Raducanu,
In 1981 he relocated to Texas, where he toured with blues legends Lavelle White, Floyd Dixon and Jimmy T99 Nelson and played with bands like the Generators and the Sheetrockers, as well as the jazz combo Straight No Chaser and his own band featuring Susan Alcorn, queen of the pedal steel guitar.
1999 brought another move -- to Portland, where he was a founding member of The Cannonballs before joining forces with Paul deLay.
Other performance credits include gigs with Johnny Reno, Curtis Salgado, Lloyd Jones, Jerry Woodard, Sam the Sham, Grady Gaines, Jerry Lightfoot, Tommy Dardar, Little Junior One Hand, Trudy Lynn and Milton Hopkins.

He has appeared at many festivals, including Portland's Waterfront Blues Festival, Seattle's Bumbershoot, the Baltimore Blues Festival, Houston's Juneteenth Festival and the New Orleans Jazz Heritage Festival.
The set turned in by David Vest at the 2007 Waterfront Blues Festival was called Portland's Best Live Performance of the year.
In 2008 he began performing a series of concerts with Northwest Pianorama.
His four years co-fronting the Paul deLay Band made him a familiar face to northwest blues audiences. Since that time, he has taken some new directions, clearly aiming for a higher (and deeper) target than the average bluesman tries to hit. Judging by audience reaction, it works —probably because he does all of it with absolute sincerity and obvious authenticity.
 

Located in the historic Bow Theatre - Bow Island, Alberta Canada - the house is a down-home club in the tradition of juke joints of old. Crankin’ out rockin’ live blues, many times along with an opening acoustic set; Blues at the Bow has garnered the distinction of being a listener’s venue, as well as a dance-party haven with it’s frequent double-billed shows.

Blues at the Bow opens it’s doors to national and international-level artists and it’s history of sold-out performances, along with high praise from the Musicians alike, attests to the magic of the place. A balcony, three-tiered levels of table and chair seating and the sunken, infamous ‘sloped’ dance floor, provides excellent sightlines. On site, a state-of-the-art sound system that is second to none.