It has been a long time since acoustic bluesman Ken Hamm has visited Lethbridge.
For the past three years, Hamm has been laying low in the rural Saskatchewan hamlet of Forget, which has 40 people, a restaurant, a bar and a music store which he recently opened with his wife.
“Cheap real estate. Even a musician can afford to live here,” said Hamm, from his home, where he is rehearsing for his tour with Linda McRae which comes to the Lethbridge Folk Club Wolf’s Den, Nov. 27.
Hamm is known as an intense performer with a deep well of encyclopedic knowledge about old school acoustic blues.
So much so that he was just in Edmonton to receive the Great Canadian Blues Award from CBC’s Saturday Night Blues host Holger Peterson.
“It was the coolest thing because it isn’t an industry award. It’s voted on by listeners — people who really dig the blues. I didn’t have to go chasing it. So it was really wonderful,” Hamm said, whose last CD was released in 2006.
He has booked studio time in Calgary to record a new CD, which he expects will be released in 2011. But in the meantime he has been busy teaching him self to play dobro and banjo.
“They are actually tuned the same way, in open G, so if you learn a lick on one, you can easily transpose it to the other,” he observed adding he hasn’t written a song in a while.
“I’m not really known as a songwriter. I’m better at interpreting traditional blues. There are lots of great songs out there,” Hamm continued noting he is looking forward to this tour with Linda McRae.
“We each do solo set then I might play on one or two of her songs,” he said adding the show provides a pleasant contrast of styles as McRae plays more of an alternative country style while Hamm is known for playing traditional plus on an old steel National guitar, and now dobro and banjo.
“We had also hoped to do a workshop too, but that didn’t work out this time,” he said.
“It’s going to be a relatively long show because individually, we’re both totally capable of headlining our own shows,” he continued.
Tickets cost $20 for members $25 for non members.
