Who: David Honeyboy Edwards
Where: Garibaldi Lift Co. (GLC)
When: Monday, April 26
Tickets: $15
My grandma turned 89 years old this year and aside from the odd trip to the mall, she doesn’t do much other than smoke, complain and watch the Young & the Restless.
At the same age, Mississippi-born blues guitarist David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards is still living the life of a touring musician.
While an accomplished artist in his own right, Edwards is best known as one of the last living links to the legendary blues singer/guitarist Robert Johnson, the mythic figure said to have sold his soul to the devil at the Crossroads in exchange for supernatural skills.
The story goes that Edwards and Sonny Boy Williamson were onstage with Johnson at his last recorded gig, a Saturday-night dance at a juke joint in Three Forks, Mississippi in August 1938. The show is down in history as the fateful night during which Johnson swigged poisoned moonshine whiskey offered to him by the husband of a woman toward whom he had made advances. Johnson is said to have continued playing into the night until he was too sick to continue, at which point he retired to Edwards’ house where he died several days later.
Sixty-four years later, Edwards is still in the game, partly in Johnson’s shadow, but coming into his own as the years grant him legendary status.
The scribes at RollingStone.com deem Edwards "something of an underappreciated figure, but no longer," saying the artist’s "slashing, Delta-drenched guitar and gruff vocals are as authentic as it gets."
It’s not the resilient bluesman’s first trip up the Sea to Sky corridor. Local blues fans will remember his show at Dusty’s last April.
But after the maelstrom of the festival, there’s nothing like a dose of the true blues to bring it all home again. Make it so at the GLC on Monday evening.
Tickets for Honeyboy Edwards are $15, available at the venue.
For information call 604-905-2220.
