Jook: The Story of the Blues

The Story of Jook

Jook has been an incredible journey for me. It began in 2017 when I recorded a live Delta Blues record, “Preachin’ From Down Low: at the Sharon Temple. It was new for me and a big challenge playing a style of music that was new for me and recording a record of it. I kept at it and kept writing songs and learning more and more about slide techniques and writing a lot. The idea for a play was given to me, but one of my friends at school who told me that she heard a play in the songs. It took me a while to figure it out and once I did, the play rapidly unfolded and from the play more songs and a dream to share these songs with the world.

I went to Memphis January 2025, for the solo competition in the International Blues Challenge. After the finals, we were all headed out for dinner and my friend Wayne Wanemaker and I went looking for the famous Dyer’s Burgers, which Wayne had only mentioned about 100 times before we went. He only wanted two things, for me to win and to have a Dyer’s Bologna Burger. I made it to the semi-finals, so the win part didn’t happen, but we could still get the burger! Dyers, claim to fame, was back in 1912, the late Elmer “Doc” Dyer opened his own cafe and began to develop a secret cooking process for the uniquely delicious world famous burgers we still serve here today on Beale Street. Legend has it that the “secret” was Doc Dyer’s ageless cooking grease. This famous grease , strained daily, has continued to produce our juicy Dyer’s Burgers for almost a century now. One of “Doc’s” original employees, Mr. Kahn Aaron bought the establishment in 1935 and continued the Dyer’s name and tradition of famous burgers. The Dyer’s legacy continues to this day. Over the years, this famous cooking grease has been transported to our various Memphis locations under the watchful protection of armed police escorts, finally settling here on Historic Beale Street, Home of the Blues and World Famous Dyer’s!

Well we got lost, which isn’t easy on Beale Street, but we ended up at the Wither’s Museum and Art Gallery which we thought was a souvenir shop, but turned out to be an incredible gallery that featured the work of Ernest C Withers, who famously documented the Civil Rights movement as well as photographing many of the top blues musicians and athletes of that era. We walked around lost in the inspiring, haunting and moving images from this incredible photographer that captured the Civil Rights movement, the blues music of Memphis and placed our incredible week in perspective in a way we could never have imagined or foreseen.  We were on our way out and we stopped to talk to the gallery manager,  Joe Calhoun who had just arrived. It was absolutely mind-blowing and deeply humbling to talk with this incredible man who told us the story of how he sat in the basement of the Clayborne temple and assembled the iconic I’m a Man signs for the march with Dr King in aid of the sanitation workers strike in Memphis in 1968. He told us that he marched with Martin, at Little Rock in 1969 and has kept on marching his entire life. We were so moved by this experience and incredibly inspired. We went from being downcast to elated and headed to Dyer’s feeling renewed and revitalized. At Dyer’s we ran into the event manger from the semi-finals, Mick Wilson, who has become a good friend and had a great talk about the week and felt that we had ended the week in an absolutely perfect way. 

 I competed at the IBC in 2024 with my band and while watching the finals at the Orpheum, I experienced an epiphany. I could see my entire set for 2025 playing out in front of me, from my broom song, I’m a Man to the rollicking rhymes of Jook, my bar room stomper about the legendary Juke joints in the south. It all unfolded as the Story of the Blues. It went beyond wanting to perform it. I had to do it. The songs had been living in me for a long time and were the culmination of a life time of performing Black History shows, writing a delta blues album and a play called Jook and immersing myself in the history of the blues music and the story of black culture in North America. This is a story of heartache and redemption and a continual fight against the tyranny and horror of racial discrimination, told through the most powerful music in the world, the delta blues. I didn’t make it to the final for win, but I learned so much about myself and my music and that may  prove to be a greater victory than any completion could provide. I no longer believe that the world needs to hear this album, I know in my heart that it has to hear this album. That racism still exists and that this incredible story of the Great Migration remains untold, these songs are my calling to share this story and the truth, the real truth about racism. 

I’m a Man

 The march in Memphis for sanitation workers rights in 1968 was characterized by the iconic I’m a Man signs that were carried in the protest marches led by Dr Martin Luther King Jr who was called to Memphis after 

With the slogan, “I am a man,” workers in Memphis sought financial justice in a strike that fatefully became Martin Luther King Jr.’s final cause. 

Sanitation workers made .65/hour and many were on food stamps and welfare in order to survive. Two workers were crushed to death in a truck and the protesters began striking for fair wages, and a union to protect the workers. Martin’s last speech, I’ve been to the mountain top”, was delivered in Memphis on April.03rd. On April.04th he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel. 

This song came to me and I don’t recall thinking it through or planning it, it just happened in a moment of powerful emption and my disgust at racism and the appalling inhumanity of it all. The song is in the voice of a slave on a plantation, saying that no matter what you do to me, you cannot take away my dignity, I will always be a man and stand tall. 

Chicken Bone Special

The Great Migration occurred from 1910-1970 and consisted of black’s moving from the south to the north in search of freedom and dignity and a chance to live without fear of being killed or hurt in the extreme racial climate of the south, where someone could be killed for giving the wrong look or saying the wrong thing. There was little if any justice and the law wa often enforced by mobs and vigilantes lynching and killing people without trial. The level of racial discrimination was appalling and hard to believe. Many musicians left the south to come to the high city’s of Chicago, Detroit and New York in search of a career in music. There was a southern music circuit, called the Chitlin’ Circuit and musicians made the rounds of Juke Joints, tents, and plantations playing for hours at a time. The city promised fame and fortune but leaving was difficult, expensive and dangerous. Sharecroppers wanted their labour to stay and as a result, blacks leaving on the trains, would often go to another town and leave with very little but the clothes on their back and a shoebox full of of food. They wouldn’t serve them food on the trains, so they would put biscuits and chicken in a box and tie it with twine. It was called the Chicken Bone Special and I first read about it in Isabel Wilkerson’s powerful book Caste. I play this song on a diddly bow, a one string guitar invented on the plantations by stretching baling wire tight on a broom handle and running a bottleneck slide up and down the strings. It was made for me by my writing partner Todd Phillips and has a very unique and cool sound

Dirty Wind

I wrote this song after Trump was elected in 2016 and the KKK marched in August 2017 and he commented that there was fine people on both sides. It gave me chills and a sense of dread to see that hatred marching openly again without any kind of response from American’s leadership. His neutrality and uniformed opinion was as good as an endorsement and an invite for more groups to express their hatred without fear. The song is raw and visceral to me and pulls no punches comparing racism to a Dirty Wind, a “Hurricane blowing across America, blowing a dirty wind.” I poured my anger and disgust into every second of this song and it always shakes me up performing it, as I can feel the pain, sadness and anger rising in me with each note. 

To the Grave

When I read Caste, I thought about how hard it would have been for people to leave a life that was all they had known and head to the noise and pace of a big city. It must have been terrifying in some ways and I imagined that people may have to do and say things that they couldn’t talk about, that they would take it to the grave. It made me think of everyone’s experience and how we all have things we may find too painful to talk about that we have to take with us when we die. The song tells the story of the migration, “gonna catch that Illinois Central ( the train from Mississippi  to Chicago), gonna head on down the line.”

 I wanted to paint a picture of the journey and the frenzied pace of the song reflects the pace and sound of the big city. It’s one of my favourite songs to play live as the solo is pure improv and can go in a number of directions.

Dust and Dreams

I wrote Dust and Dreams on the advice of my good friend and songwriting co-conspirator John Dawson. He heard my Memphis set and recommended that I do something slower and more traditional. He sent me a song of his that had the traditional blues feel and inspired by that, I wrote Dust and Dreams very quickly. He and I fine-tuned the lyrics and melodies and it was done. The song is now one of my favourite songs. It has the ability to quiet a room and has a power and grace to it, that I love. It is a very personal reflection of someone leaving their home for a different life and a universality to anyone taking on that kind of epic journey in their lives. 

Jook

I wrote this one in Drop D and I love the groove and rumble in that key. I’m fascinated by the Juke Joint Culture and imagined a scene late at night, a shack packed to the walls with people swinging and grooving and letting go of all their worries, leaving them behind in the music and the feeling it brought to their bodies. Feel it dancing, feel it in my soul. I love that sense of wild abandon in this song. I learned that the word Juke came from a West African saying, that when someone was going a bit wild, they would say they’re out on a Joog. This was the origin of the name Juke Joints for the pop up clubs that appeared all over the south. I changed the spelling to Jook, and it inspired my play of the same name. I want to film a video for this song in a Juke Joint one day.

The Mojo Man

From the moment I heard him, I couldn’t get Muddy Waters out of my head, nor did I want to. It took my ears a while to learn the nuances of Robert Johnson and open my mind and soul to the delta sounds of Son House, Leadbelly, Blind Blake and so many more. Elmore James songs are a big influence on me too, but Muddy has always been the man for me. I love everything about him, his groove and song writing and sweet but powerful vocal tone. His bands have always been incredible, but I love him the most on guitar by himself, playing the pure blues that he learned growing up in a one room shack on a plantation. His story is one of the most inspirational stories in the world. From a one room shack to conquering the world. He is pure legend. I also wrote this one for Memphis with the intention of creating a swinging blues song with groove and the story was there waiting for me. I love this one. 

Leave the Light On

It has been estimated suggest that over 1.75 million Black men were under federal, state, and local criminal justice supervision in the US, which is more than double the number of enslaved Black men in 1850 (872,924).  This means a larger share of the Black male population was enslaved in 1850 than is under correctional control today.  This song was inspired and co-written with my friend Todd Phillips whose son was unjustly incarcerated and faced physical and mental abuse while in prison. It is a song of truth and speaks to the faint glimmer of hope that may be all that anyone has left, when they are in prison and is a cry for justice in both Canada and the US. In Canada over 27% of inmates are Indigenous even though the population is only 4% Indigenous. This injustice in both of our countries towards Indigenous and Black people is reflective of the evident discrimination that still exists in our legal systems

Gimme That

This song is a jook joint stomper that is about the moment on a weekend, when you go out and wanna leave it all behind, stay up late, dance and listen to live music from a band loud and proud. I love hearing the crowd sing this one back to me and imagine it being in a juke joint packed to the rafters.

Dip me in the Water

As I’ve gotten older and more connected to my own spirt and sense of self-worth, my desire to be baptized in a river has grown and strengthened within in me. I view it as a baptism of choice that will bring me closer to God and my sense of purpose in life.

Rm.306

In January 2024 my band toured the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis while competing in the International Blues Challenge. On our first day, everything was closed due to a massive winter storm, so we walked around and stopped at the Lorraine Motel. My drummer described it best I think when he said that he felt a mix of hope and despair. We all felt the power and spirit of Dr Martin Luther King Jr and having performed Black History shows for years and paying homage to his eternal and glorious message we were all deeply moved. The museum itself is a masterpiece and has the power to shake you to your emotional and spiritual core. It ends at Martin’s room 306, that has been replicated to look exactly as it was when he stepped out onto the balcony that fateful day, Apr.04/1968. As I stood and looked at the balcony, I felt a cold chill run through my body. One of my greatest heroes lost his life here in the pursuit of freedom and in that humbling moment, I was struck by how much he had done in his short life and how important it was to do everything I could to advocate for racial equality and to never waiver in that fight. Martin would have wanted us all to continue to march, speak, and rise up against tyranny, oppression and discrimination.