NEWS RELEASE
MIDLAND CULTURAL CENTRE
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"A guitar style of exacting persuasive nuances, gut-felt harmonica lines and a voice soaked in whiskey and road-weary sentiment." (Planet Jazz)
Juno Award winner and Red House Records recording artist Ray Bonneville is a superb singer-songwriter who currently calls Montreal home, but has lived from Alaska to Memphis, to Paris, France. Bonneville's smooth blues styling features impeccable guitar and harmonica, whether he is working solo or with a full band.
Ray's Gust of Wind was produced by Juno Award-winning guitarist Colin Linden, and which took the Juno Award for Blues Recording in 2000. Ray's 2001 mainstage concert in the Winnipeg Folk Festival with Colin Linden and a full band was one of the highlights of the festival.
Bonneville didn’t even open his storybook until his early 40s, some 20 years after he started performing. But with a style that sometimes draws comparisons to JJ Cale and Daniel Lanois, this blues-influenced, New Orleans-inspired “song and groove man,” as he’s been so aptly described, luckily found his rightful calling.
With just a few simple words, Bonneville clearly expresses his thoughts, while allowing space for multiple interpretations. Which, of course, is the essence of great songwriting, the kind that earned him an International Blues Challenge solo/duet win in 2012. He doesn’t pretend to understand how he finds that essence, however.
“The whole songwriting thing, to me, is mysterious, and I want to keep it that way,” Bonneville says. Ultimately, what matters is knowing how to translate the mystery into music, and that, he understands perfectly. Much more at: http://raybonneville.com/
Ray Bonneville in Concert on Thursday, March 22 at 8 p.m. in Rotary Hall, Midland Cultural Centre.
