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.

November 21

Big Hank’s Tribute to the Blues

~ Songs of Christmas featuring The Smokin’ Hot Toasters

Big Hank’s Christmas Blues Show

Featuring The Smokin’ Hot Toasters

Big Hank has his “Ho Ho working” and the highly regarded, veteran bluesman and bandleader is certain “it’s going to work on you.”Former Edmontonian Big Hank has been touring his Blues Songs of Christmas show for a number of years now and this unique, variety filled program of blues-basted Yuletide tunes is one that has left audiences drenched in the Christmas spirit and coming back for more when the next holiday season rolls around.

Touring from Vancouver Island to the snowbound prairies of Alberta, this Christmas show has consistently tied together a variety of classic blues styles, some r&b and a touch of soul. Blues Songs of Christmas is a show where every song puts a different spin on the season and everything that goes with “the most wonderful time of the year.”

He’s armed with a muscular voice, one that can be as warm as the hearth surrounding a well-stoked winter fire, and one that can alternately rattle the rafters and shake the snow off a 30 foot Christmas tree.

 This refreshing take on holiday concerts finds the singer and his talented, veteran band rolling through music that includes tunes going back a century to Christmas blues tunes that have been favourites of the boomer generation that grew up listening to B.B. King and Eric Clapton.

 Tunes from the books of Big Joe Turner, Charles Brown, Etta James and Louis Jordan also find their way into the festive mix that has received rave reviews.

It’s been quite the road for Big Hank originally from Stettler Alberta who cut his teeth on the Edmonton bar and cabaret circuit early on in his career. He immersed himself in the blues with two of the best blues bands to have come out of Western Canada in the seventies and eighties, those being the Edmonton-based Hot Cottage and Victoria’s Uncle Wiggly’s Hot Shoes Blues Band. The latter group signed with RCA, sold an impressive number of albums and opened for the greats like Muddy Waters, Joe Cocker, James Cotton, Paul Butterfield and Koko Taylor.

 His love of blues has also been the foundation of acts like The Toasters, A Fistful of Blues and The Kingpins that were also regional favourites.

 VIDEO

Christmas Comes But Once a Year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sly1602mVDM

Santa Claus Santa Claus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWu9GzWWRcI

Christmas in Jail

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGNnRkJOElk

I Told Santa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF7tyy2qv18

So, who are these cats?

BIG HANK LIONHART

Lead Vocals

Hank's singing career began in High School in Edmonton in 1964.

After graduating and a move to Seattle, Washington to attend Art School, he formed a band called the Clouds. They had a coveted house gig at the legendary Door Night Club for over 9 months every Friday and Saturday night. Hank moved back to Canada after Art School where he sang for the Son's of Adam, Sweet Salt, Coloured Rain, Kicking Horse and Hot Cottage touring all over Western Canada and ending up in Victoria BC. He formed Uncle Wiggly's Hot Shoes Blues Band, signed with RCA, opening shows for Muddy Waters, Joe Cocker and many more. Next a move to Vancouver where he formed the Smokin' Hot Toasters.

Hank has recorded 15 Albums in his 60 year career. He has no plan to retire any time soon.

As he always says. Keep it Live

ANDY GRAFFITI

Drums & Vocals

Born in Vancouver, drummer Andy Graffiti has been engaged in making visual, verbal and aural art for decades. After participating in the then vibrant Victoria Jazz Scene of the late '70s he returned to Vancouver and became well known and a respected figure in the alternative music community during the 1980s working with local and national songwriters in many genres.

In the latter part of that decade he began to work in professional theatre throughout Wester Canada, as a musician and sound designer, and continued to tour extensively through most of the decade. He was active in the Victoria Music Scene for over 14 years.

Wiggly's Hot Shoes Blues Band, The Blue Hearts, Jack DeKeyzer, Big Joe Duskin & Amos Garrett to name a few. Andy has been with the Smokin' Hot Toasters for many years.

MICK WOODHOUSE

Bass Guitar & Vocals

Mick started playing bass in Edmonton with the CHED Marauders.

He then moved to Calgary and spent two years with the 49th Parallel, a popular, Pacitic Northwest recording and touring act. In 1985, Mick, Hank and Steve formed The Toasters, a Vancouver-based Blues and R&B band. 39 years later, the Toasters, now called the Smokin' Hot Toasters, Mick holds down the bottom end with his solid style.

His vocals on the highnotes make for really great harmonies from this group. Mick makes Vancouver his home.

DAVE BABCOCK

SAX

Award-winning Edmonton artist Dave Babcock leads a rich musical life with an underlying confidence only a man of his abilities and experience can possess. For over three decades he's earned his reputation as one of Canada's finest saxophonists, his soulful playing steeped in the living traditions of jazz and blues.

Multi-instrumentalist, singer, bandleader, producer, musical director and clinician, Dave is equally at home onstage or in the recording studio. He has performed in concert halls, live venues and at music festivals all across Canada and continues to be a first-call session player for artists and producers alike. Dave has been a member of Big Hank's Christmas Blues tor several years. We are excited to have him back again this season.

STEVE CROSS

Lead Guitar & Vocals

Steve began his musical adventure in Victoria playing with various local bands until Vancouver beckoned with more opportunity. Once in Vancouver Steve got work in some club bands eventually hooking up with bluesman Al Foreman, forming the Foreman-Young Band. That band toured and recorded, eventually moving to Los Angeles. Contractual problems led to the end of that band. Back in Vancouver Steve also performed and recorded with Denise McCann. After that Steve went on to perform with the Al Foreman band. In 1985 Steve met Big Hank Lionhart.

The Toasters were formed shortly after that and went on to work for many years. These days Steve is living in Sooke and back gigging with Big Hank and a reformed reenergized version of the Smokin' Hot Toasters. Steve is the musical director of this great band.

STEVE RANTA

KEYS & Vocals

Ranta started playing professionally in Maple Ridge Secondary School, leading Ranta's Rubber band. As a young teenager, he has become enamored of the piano stylings of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard.
"The first time I played rock and roll piano outside my basement was when I was 15, I walked into the band room and sat down at the piano and started pounding it out, several of the girls jumped up to dance and I have been playing ever since." Ranta went on to play in a local funk band and then hit the road with Bobby Curtola's show band and then the Buddy Knox Band. He played in a number of bands, then he met the Toasters just in time for Expo 86 and a strong Vancouver blues scene. "We opened shows for the Neville Brothers, John Mayall and more." Steve's Boogie, Woogie style is a major part of the Smokin' Hot Toasters sound.