Our Blues Week has been growing in renown since its inception over seven years ago. In July of 1999 we were fortunate enough to see Rick Fines at the Comox Valley Musicfest. As many of us now know, he is an outstanding Canadian musician, yet at that time, many of us in the west had not heard of him! We decided that we should do something about this.
From our humble beginnings (the first year we had only 16 paying students), we have come a long way. We now award 2 scholarships to our workshops each year, produce a great annual concert in Courtenay, bring "blues in the schools" to several districts, and host 4 or 5 concerts a year on Hornby. We have produced 2 well received CDs of our concerts and last year, with our local video producer, Dale Devost, we produced the first DVD of our acoustic concert.
Our mandate is to bring blues performers to our island to create a greater awareness of Canadian Blues music and of the depth that Canadian musicians have to offer. We feel we are accomplishing this having hosted many of Canada's top Blues musicians including Michael Jerome Browne, Gerry Barnum, Keith Bennett, Diana Braithwaite, Todd Butler, Ron Casat, Rita Chiarelli, Gary Comeau, Doug Cox, Carlos Del Junco, David Essig, Rick Fines, Georgette Fry, Sue Foley, Amos Garrett, David Gogo, Dave Harris, Sam Hurrie, Bill Johnson, Donald Ray Johnson, Ellen McIllwaine, Marg Stowe, Dawn Tyler Watson, Kenny "Blues Boss" Wayne, Chris Whiteley, Ken Whiteley, Tim Williams, and Suzie Vinnick.
Annual memberships are $10. Members are given a special ticket price on events.