Hornby Island Blues Workshop



David Gogo - Guitar



David Gogo has an international reputation as a powerhouse electric blues guitarist and vocalist. If you’ve heard him and seen him you know he is a passionate performer with an aggressive style that hold his audiences up close. Since he met Stevie Ray Vaughan backstage at the Royal Theatre in Victoria, who encouraged him to pursue a career in blues, David has released seventeen albums and has won most conceivable blues music awards including Junos, Maple Blues Awards, Canadian Indies, Western Canadian Blues Awards, West Coast Blues Awards and CBC’s Great Canadian Blues Award. Although he calls himself “relatively young in Blues years” everyone who has been a fan of David’s knows he is a hard-working tour musician and resourceful in all road warrior ways. His mythology recounts career-shaping events with not only with SRV but with Johnny Winter and BB King as well. And if you watch him work the room at the Maple Blues Awards it’s an experience. But while his folklore builds, his own personal legacy as a song writer and guitar player continues to move forward as well. His contributions to the Hornby Island Blues Workshop in its early years were huge, as it helped put the Workshop on the Canadian Blues map. And as his students discovered since then, he is musician who knows the blues intimately, and delivers its message with authority. He packs his infamous humour and his scorching guitar wherever he goes and that means the 2023 Blues Workshop is in for a treat. And for students, well – do your finger work exercises and get ready to learn from a guy who has built his life in Blues.


2023 Instructors