Click to enlarge	Harpdog
Last update: 05/24/12 10:36:01AM Account: Mixposure Artist Account Location: AMERICA NORTH: Canada: Alberta Signed up: 21 Sep 2009 07:12 PM Members: Genre: Blues Influences: Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Little Walter Jacobs, Sonnyboy Williamson, Tom Waits Website: http://www.harpdogbrown.com

Biography

Full-time blues musician Harpdog Brown has made a life for himself in the business for the last thirty years.

“When I stumbled into the blues, that was the first time I felt like I belonged. The blues would never fail me. When we die, blues dies,” said Brown.

Brown is no small man in any regard — not in stature, sound or accomplishments as a working blues singer/songwriter and harmonica player.

He is an intense man with a sharp sense of humour and piercing steely grey eyes that make you feel as though he’s looking right through you, into your soul.

And he’s coming down from his home in Lacombe, Alta., to the Blue Dog Café in Cochrane for a one-night performance, accompanied by keyboard player Graham Guest Sept. 26.

Brown has released four albums: Beware of Dog (1992), Home is where the Harp is (1994), Once in a Howlin’ Moon (2000) and Unleashed (2008) — a gem he sat on for fourteen years from a 1995 recording session.

His sound is best described as gritty blues with a swingin’ groove.

His band, the Bloodhounds, is made up of various players, whom he picks up as he moves across the country performing.

Originally an Edmonton boy, Harpdog left Alberta in 1987 to make Vancouver, B.C., his home, returning home to Alberta in 1996.

For Brown, his home is wherever the music takes him.

“1981 is when I bent my first note and when I put my first blues band together,” said Brown, referring to when he first began to play the harmonica (referred to as a “harp” in the music world).

He has been travelling the circuit ever since, from Alaska to San Francisco and Vancouver to Ottawa, taking a break from music for six years when his son, McKinley — named after the legendary Muddy Waters, was born 12 years ago.

Brown’s presence is as large as his sound.

He embodies the blues on his external self, as well as his internal.

Last year, at the age of 46, Brown had his two favorite harp players tattooed on his forearms — Little Walter Jacobs on his right arm and Sonny Boy Williamson on his left, as well as Muddy Waters on his right shoulder, next to the portrait of his son, McKinley.

CKUA, the Edmonton independent radio station that supports the blues in a big way, refers to Harpdog Brown as “an Alberta blues institution.”

“Music is a vehicle for me. It’s my guise — how I get through to people,” said Brown, who feels his role in this life is to teach, heal and guide others through music.

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