Manitoba Live Music Event

Open Mic Night

Date
Tuesday, Mar 20, 2018 at 6:30pm
Performers
Tracy K
Location
The Handsome Daughter
Address
61 Sherbrook Street, Winnipeg, MB, Canada
Promoters
Manitoba Music
Winnipeg Folk Festival

About

No cover

Doors and signup 6:30PM / Showtime 7PM

Two songs

New Music Night is made possible with the generous support of the Winnipeg Arts Council with funding from the City of Winnipeg and the SOCAN Foundation.

ABOUT THE HOST

Passion is the reason Tracy K has brought audiences to their feet at Folk, Blues and Jazz festivals. Her Joplin-esque voice and hot harmonica playing are a rare and winning combination. In a strong energy packed show she delivers winsome catchy originals, peppered with toe-tapping blue and roots covers. She’s shared playbills with John Sebastian, Koko Taylor, opened for James Cotton, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and performed twice with the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra. First Runner Up in Toronto Blues Society’s Talent Search she was also featured at their Harmonica Workshop and Women's Blues Revue. Based out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Tracy K tours as an acoustic duo or with tastefully appointed band members. Most recently tearing up the northern United States with her band, Tracy K has toured festivals and events from Canada to the Caribbean. This songstress has collected nine awards in her career thus far, and is Canada’s only award winning female harmonica player.

‘What’s the Rush?’, Tracy K’s fourth studio album, was released in September 2016, and truly reflects her depth of talent, uninhibited soulful passion, and appetite for storytelling. ‘What’s the Rush?’ reached number one on Canadian Roots Radio, charting for several months. With vocals reminiscent of songstresses like Bonnie Raitt and Janis Joplin, Tracy K effortlessly delivers moodful melodies laced with that unmistakable bluesy groove. Impressive reviews amassed from Europe, USA and Canada. Listen closely, and you’ll discover an honesty and authenticity in musicianship and lyricism that can be acquired only from a lifetime of living.

Tracy K began indelibly stamping her versatility on the Canadian music scene in the late 1980s in Toronto, utilizing her outstanding vocal harmonizing skills in live and studio session work. Apparently she wasn’t in a rush back then, either, because it took her until 2000 to release her own album, all original. She began to tour Canada and USA clubs, blues, jazz and folk festivals, theatre concerts, women-in-blues events, honing her craft and sharing the stage with A-list international blues performers. Her songwriting catalogue boasts a song for a movie and two International Songwriting Competition Award Winning songs.

Tracy K’s recording career continued in 2007 with the release of a second album, the award garnering ‘Old, New, Borrowed & Blues’, and then the five-starred acoustic duo album Canned Heat in 2011. In 2014, she was the sole Canadian included on Ruf Records Blues Harp Women compilation album, and Mary4Music's Keeping the Blues Alive: Volume Six. She won regional competitions to represent Thunder Bay at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis Tennessee as a band in 2013 and duo in 2014, and was invited to return to Memphis in 2015 as one of the judges. While there, she was asked to arrange harmonies on a song for a fellow bluesman at Ardent Studios and had some fun recording at the infamous Sun Studios.

Unknown to locals at the inaugural Thunder Bay Blues Festival in 2002, Tracy K was an instant hit and was invited back for an encore in 2003. She moved to Thunder Bay in 2004, where she became a positive force impacting the local music community. She created and hosted a weekly Sunday Night Blues Jam at the local Legion, and also performed as a member of tribute troupe Thunder Bay Legends, posing as Janis Joplin, Ronnie Spector, Bobby Gentry and Brenda Lee.  Tracy K has enjoyed the distinct honour of performing two concerts with the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra in full diva glory.

Tracy K approaches her music the same way she approaches life: in a go-with-the-flow kind of way. Because if there’s something she has learned in 50+ years of living, and 30+ years of making music, it’s that things don’t always go as planned. Life happens. Kids happen. Marriage and divorce happens. Serious illness happens. Yet, she remains as cool as the blues that colour her world. laidback like the tranquil countryside that stirs her spirit.  Proving that for Tracy K, there is still a lot of life-after-life waiting to happen.

Among her personal reinventions is her own contemporary blues band, wherein she likes to kick it up notch with her trademark amplified harmonica, and test the limits of her vocal prowess. She also performs in an acoustic blues duo with partner Jamie “Snakeman” Steinhoff, whose mastery of acoustic, Dobro and lap steel guitar is derived from a well-informed history of early blues and folk. They have performed several folk festivals and a Home Routes Tour in 2018.

When not performing, you might find these two selling 'Tracy K's Stolen Apple Jelly' (find the song on the duo release) alongside her CDs at the farmer’s market near her quiet country home in Manitoba. And you just might be lucky enough to hear them belt out a blues tune or two. Because that’s just the way Tracy K rolls these days, same way she always has: going with the flow, seizing the moment, and living every incarnation of life to the fullest.

Yes, there’s still a lot of life-after-life waiting for Tracy K. And she’s still not in a rush to get there.

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