Time: 8 p.m.

Cover:$10

Paul Reddick http://www.paulreddick.ca

FICTION?
Meet Wishbone. He’s in the kitchen, watching Keith Richards and Robert Johnson playing dice, and sipping whiskey with Hank Williams and Bob Dylan. Across the room Leonard Cohen and Charley Patton and Jack White are playing five-card stud with Bo Diddley.

Together we have wandered, together we have roamed, A wanderland if strayin’, oh ever far from home

Meet Wishbone, but don’t expect him to be here long. He has songs to write and music to make and people to see and whiskey to drink and places to go and hearts to break.

Wearin’ my bowtie and my Sunday best
It’s been all night long I ain’t had no rest
Gonna take my picture, gonna give it to you
Don’t show your husband or your other man too

Wishbone’s past is wrapped in marshes and trees and vines and narrow roads and motels with missing bulbs in their signs. Blues wanderer? Visionary poet? Friend? Lover? Leaver?

I don’t tell no stories ‘bout the days gone by
I can’t remember and I don’t try.
I don’t keep mementos, my hands are clean
There ain’t no records of what I’ve seen

FACT
Paul Reddick may well be Wishbone. His music is rooted in the blues, but his new record is a portrait of a wandering musician, a lover with precious little time for sentiment. It owes its existence to the musicians he has heard for 20 years, and all the musicians he has played with over two decades and half a dozen albums. And his new CD — yes, it’s titled Wishbone — is, he insists, a soundtrack for dancing and sex. Self-portrait? Maybe — but it IS the most consistent, powerful statement he’s made. Produced by Colin Cripps, the cast of players on Wishbone include Gary Craig (drums), Kyle Ferguson (guitar), Maia Davies (keys, background vocals), Anna Ruddick (bass) and singers Cindy Doire, Samantha Martin and Tom Wilson. Cripps, who has performed with the Jim Cuddy Band and Blue Rodeo as well as Kathleen Edwards, Bryan Adams, Oh Susanna and dozens more, also plays guitar and backup vocals on several tracks. Reddick has long been a part of Canada’s rich roots music scene; he is one of the best harmonica players in the country, and he’s contributed to the recordings of other key artists, among them Kathleen Edwards, Colin Linden, Treasa Levasseur, Scarlett Jane, Susie Vinnick and more. His distinctive voice covers a wide emotional palette; always engaging; sometimes a shout, more often a conversationally vivid whisper.

But it is Reddick’s songs — sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter, always thought-provoking and rarely sentimental — and the passionate way he delivers them that best illustrate what the influential British magazine Mojo described as his “wayward brilliance.”

In the real world, he has been nominated for Junos and Blues Music Awards and he is a seven-time Maple Blues Award winner. And he continues to tour — across Canada and the United States, with two or three trips a year to Europe — with his hard-hitting band.

He was a stranger here in deep dark air
Came in on the train of love
Straight out of nowhere
Straight out of nowhere

 Greg Cockerill http://www.gregcockerill.com/

Born in Montreal, Raised in Alberta and living in Toronto, Greg Cockerill’s music is unique expression of Canadiana. Growing up listening to classic albums from John Lennon and Neil Young amidst the exploding new rock scene of the early 90’s, picking up a guitar and playing in as many bands as he could was a burning necessity. Going on to formally study music and getting a double major degree in composition/arranging and in jazz guitar at Toronto’s Humber College (2004), he found himself inevitably drawn back to his roots in Alberta, and his roots in music. In Calgary, Greg launched himself as a country guitar player on the scene as well as starting to write and sing his own original roots music. This quickly led to the formation of “the Greg Cockerill band” in 2007 which released its debut album “Summertime & Heartache” in may 2008 to zero critical reception yet regular cross-canadian radio play, a CBC 3 track of the day and 2 singles on regular rotation on CBC 2 and a separate single in Malaysia. Forever in pursuit of growth and Challenge, and inspired by Toronto artists such as Justin Rutledge, David Baxter and Corin Raymond among many others, in 2010 Greg Relocated to Toronto and re-formed a new Greg Cockerill band and joined up with his musical younger brother Joshua to produce “Festuca” along with Stew Crookes to be released October 4th 2011.