Next Campfire Jam:
Sunday, May 31 3-6pm at the Rivoli (upstairs), 334 Queen St. W. Toronto
Return of the Blues Campfire
Brian Blain's Campfire Jam was a fixture on Toronto's blues jam circuit until COVID struck. It never got going again after the pandemic but thanks to the initiative of one of Toronto's iconic music venues, the Rivoli on Queen Street West, it has a new lease on life and this month it is the TBS "Jam of the Month" for May. Brian is inviting some TBS "old-timers" who sat on the board or the Musician's Advisory Council to sit in on Sunday, May 31, 3-6pm upstairs at the Rivoli.
On March 14, 2020 Brian Blain was packing up his old Epihone guitar to head across town to the blues jam he was hosting at the historic Old Mill for the last few years. The Blues Campfire was a "pro jam" with top blues musicians joining Brian at a venue where all the other nights were very "legit" jazz. The guests that night were Ken Whiteley and Julian Fauth. Michelle Josef was on drums. As he was preparing to leave the house, Brian got a call from Julian saying he had a bad cough and thought maybe he had caught this yet-unamed virus that was sweeping across the land. Brian said take no chances and stay home and when he got to the Old Mill he saw the sandwich board that listed all the upcoming shows with all the names after his crossed out with "Cancelled" and Brian was advised that this would be the last show at the Old Mill and they were shutting down the bar (thinking it would re-open in a month or two) but when it re-opened a couple of years later, there was no more live music and Brian thought that was probably the end of the Blues Campfire. Well, he was 75 by then and finding it harder and harder to drag around a couple of guitars, a couple of amps and a bass.
But he had a good run. When he arrived in Toronto in 1990, Brian had never attended a blues jam. In the hills of Quebec he played at ski resorts as a "one-man-blues-band" but when he got to Toronto, he was told in no uncertain terms to "put away that drum machine" and he joined an acoustic blues group called "Blue Willow". Around the same time he attended his first blues jam, at the legendary Black Swan and had a "baptism-by-fire" when he couldn't figure out how to turn on the amp (and nobody was helping him). He just plugged his guitar in to the PA mixer and got through it but when he got back to his table his leather jacket had been stolen. Welcome to Toronto, kid.
As he settled in to the Toronto blues scene, he volunteered to work on the Toronto Blues Society's newsletter and soon became editor (and still is) and he obtained a weekly residency at the Tranzac - "Thursday Blues" where he and a different guest each week would trade songs and jam together. Over the years the jam grew to 4 or 5 musicians but it was always about everybody playing together and because blues is typically easy to follow, and because Brian only called upon musicians who "played well with others" it was always a magic night for the musicians and the audience. Young players got to jam with their heroes, collaborations and cross-continent connections were forged, and many musical projects were germinated.
Brian christened it the "Campfire" at a music conference (Ontario Council of Folk Festivals) where it was more of a "song circle" but where folks were expected to play along. Later he brought it to other music conferences (The Blues Summit, the Folk Alliance in Memphis) and eventually to his regular gigs in Toronto.
