Music is best served... LIVE!
Central Music Festival Society is recruiting the next generation of live music enthusiasts. We want to keep bringing great acts to Red Deer and featuring local local talent, both as opening acts and headliners. Our goal is to become more diverse, more inclusive and to build on the past decade and a half (or so) and to continue to pursue our mission. Want to help? Click here.
February 7 - JW Jones
with special guest Charlie Jacobson!
A night that features two exceptional young Canadian bluesmen!
Billboard Top 10 Blues Artist, 2020 IBC Winner, and JUNO Nominee, Canadian singer/guitarist JW-Jones is known for his high-energy shows!
After winning “Best Guitarist” at the 2020 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Jones started working on his 12th release 'Everything Now' [May 26, 2023], an all-original project with special guest Jimmie Vaughan, and production by Gordie Johnson (Big Sugar).
"Songs! It's all about the songs!" said the JUNO-nominated Jones, whose searing axemanship has been praised in recent years by legendary blues artists Buddy Guy and Chuck Leavell (The Rolling Stones). "While there are plenty of burning lead guitar solos, I wanted to open up and get more personal than ever with the lyrics. From the true story 'Papa's in the Pen' to 'When You Left' that I sang with tears rolling down my cheeks about my mother's passing, these are stories that I feel like I can finally share through my music."
The frequent resident of Billboard’s Top 10 Blues charts and roots radio favourite continues to accelerate his career momentum to new heights, whether it’s as a personally requested sit-in with the likes of 8-time Grammy winner Buddy Guy, opening for blues-rock icon George Thorogood, or entertaining thrilled audiences in 23 countries and four continents.
www.jw-jones.com / @jwjonesblues
Grammy Nominee Sue Foley brings her One Guitar Woman concert to Red Deer! Tickets are on sale now!
Sue Foley
Thursday, March 6, 2025
Red Deer Elks Lodge, 6315 Horn Street
General Admission
Doors 7/Music at 8 pm
Prepare for a captivating musical journey with ONE GUITAR WOMAN, Sue Foley’s new solo acoustic tribute to female pioneers of guitar. Foley’s much-anticipated album on Stony Plain Records was released on March 29, 2024.
ONE GUITAR WOMAN is more than a tribute. Foley doesn’t merely cover these artists’ songs; she absorbs their style and inhabits the soul of the music. Her guitar work is so deep and natural that it seems to rise from the same roots that gave birth to the originals, while her vibrant vocals bring new life to the lyrics and make the songs her own.
Esteemed music writer Hal Horowitz notes in Rock & Blues Muse, “The often spellbinding One Guitar Woman … is an enlightening look into her remarkable talents, filtered through the lens of a more intimate expression of the blues.”
SUE FOLEY is an acclaimed guitarist, singer/songwriter and writer who began her professional career in her teens. She’s released thirteen albums and has garnered several awards, including four time Blues Music award winner. (2020/22/23/24).
And this just in: last week Sue was nominated for a Grammy Award for One Guitar Woman!
Sue Foley One Guitar Woman – Artist Statement
I started playing the guitar at thirteen, mainly influenced by my father and my three older brothers. Being the youngest girl in the family, I was always curious when I saw a woman play the instrument. Now, what seems commonplace, at that time, was anomalous. You see, I didn’t just want to strum the instrument, I wanted to really play it, like the guitar heroes of the day; Hendrix, Clapton, Page, and Beck.
Whenever I saw woman really play, whether it was flamenco guitarist, Charo, or classical musician, Liona Boyd, or Heart’s Nancy Wilson, I was not only curious, I was filled with excitement that there were female guitar heroes too. These were women that I could look to for guidance.
As I ventured on my career path as a professional guitarist, I always kept track when I saw other females on the scene. In 2001, I began reaching out and contacting many of my sisters in guitar. In an eight-year span, I logged over 100 interviews with players as diverse as Bonnie Raitt, Sharon Isbin, Joan Armatrading and even my early heroes, Nancy Wilson and Charo. Some of these interviews have been published in Guitar Player Magazine, and the rest are being featured in my book, Guitar Woman. (Release TBD)
Because I had a natural passion for researching, I pursued my PhD in Music with my dissertation focused on the work of pioneering female guitarists. These are the women who were expressing themselves through the instrument as far back as the 1920’s, at the inception of radio and recorded music. Players like Maybelle Carter, Memphis Minnie, Mary Osborne, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and more. I have developed this passion for research and for honouring these players with a one woman show.
Sue Foley’s “One Guitar Woman” - is a show devoted to the female pioneers of guitar--to celebrate women of excellence, passion, and accomplishment. It’s an evening of varied guitar styles and musical genres interspersed with history and stories, all tied together with my own personal narrative.
April 4 - Ray Bonneville
Often called a “song and groove man,” Bonneville has lived the life of the itinerant artist. From his native Quebec, he moved to Boston at age twelve, where he learned English and picked up piano and guitar. Later, he served in Vietnam and earned a pilot’s license in Colorado before living in Alaska, Seattle, and Paris. Six years in New Orleans infused his musical sensibilities with the region's culture and rhythms. And then, a close call while piloting a seaplane proved pivotal: After two decades working as a studio musician, playing rowdy rooms with blues bands, and living hard, Bonneville’s lifetime of hard-won experience coalesced into an urge to write his own music.
Ray recorded his first album, On the Main, in 1992. He’s since released nine albums, including his October 2023 release, On The Blind Side, earned wide critical and popular acclaim, and won an enthusiastic following in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. His awards include a prestigious Juno, the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy, for his 1999 album, Gust of Wind. In 2012, Ray won the solo/duet category in the Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge. His post-Katrina ode, “I Am the Big Easy,” earned the International Folk Alliance’s 2009 Song of the Year Award, placed number one on Folk Radio’s list of most-played songs of 2008, and was recently covered by Jennifer Warnes for the BMG label.
Other notable artists who have recorded his songs include Ronnie Hawkins (“Foolish”) and Slaid Cleaves (“Run Jolee Run”). Ray has shared the bill with blues heavyweights Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Dr. John, J.J. Cale, and Robert Cray, and has guested on albums by Mary Gauthier, Gurf Morlix, Eliza Gilkyson, Ray Wylie Hubbard, and other prominent musicians. He has performed at renowned venues around the world, including South bySouthwest, Folk Alliance, and Montreal International Jazz Festival, and plays over 100 shows per year across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. When not on the road, Ray divides his time between homes in Goulais River, Ontario and Austin, Texas.
