Anybody know Alberta's blues giant Johnny V?

[zero]

One summer as a very young man working in Waterton Lakes National Park I had the opportunity to see the Johnny V trio with a bass player Bill Eaglesham and a great old blind piano player. They were playing monstrously psychedelic southern fried blues heavy on the tone and fusion emanating from Johnny's guitar. I've tried to track him down over the years but apparently not hard enough as he has a website . Last I heard his vehicle hit a moose on tour in Northern Ontario and maybe there was even a fatality, but that was years ago still.

This guy means so much to me. After first getting my eye's really opened to music seeing the Band a number of times and then Phish in '93/'94 I was in a musical wasteland out in Waterton. Guy really took me in under his wing I guess you could say. He had this perfect duck's ass coif on the back of his had like a true greaser. He was just the real fucking deal. I travelled around to see them at a couple shows in Southern Alberta then when I went back out years later treeplanting I saw him on Whyte Ave. I asked him if he remembered me, the wide eyed hippy kid that followed him around, and he said 'didn't you break your neck later that summer' and I was like 'yeah how the hell'd you know that' and he was like 'I kept tabs on ya kid.'. The guys my fucking hero and if anyone is interested in getting him out here to Ontario I'd be willing to lend major support whether booking or promoting dates or whatever. Dude seriously is right up there on a par with someone like Dicky Betts and I know how that sounds but he was a monster back then I can only imagine. Plus he never shied from the extended even psychedelic improvisations we all love while staying rooted in the blues. Fuck Colin Linden, give me some Johnny V!

Here's an old picture of him and John Hammond

[SolarGarlic]

looks like he hosts (w/ Mike Clark and Amos Garrett) a jam here in town...I'll have to hop down to check it out some time. Thanks for the heads up!

[payce-ley]

thanks for the well worded testimonial

another artist added to the must check out list... I always try to support the real deals

(really enjoyed Amos Garrett when he came through town years back as well)

[zero]

Please do check out his jam I would love to know that he's still playing shit hot these days. I don't see that bottle of wine getting worse with age though.

[zero]

I guess he moved to Chicago and did a lot of session work. Here's a really eery story about one recording.

Just before Johnny left Chicago in January 2000 he laid a killer solo guitar track on the Reverend Terry House - (Single) "I Miss You" (Independent). Reverend House is living every parents worst nightmare. His 6 year old daughter Terry-Ann was murdered in the summer of 1999, and according to him the child's mother is the murderess. Reverend House was divorced from the mother years earlier, but still had contact with his children and had been fighting to get custody of them when this tragedy occurred. All because little Terry-Ann was going to tell her Daddy that "Mom was still smoking crack and working the streets to support her habit". Reverend House was so devastated by this terrible news that the only way he could get closure on the pain was to write this song and sing it out of his soul. He asked Johnny V to play guitar on it and Matt "The Cat" Ryan to play drums. The organ, piano, and keyboards are all Reverend House. The background vocals and gospel choir are all family members lending a hand. It was recorded in Chicago at the infamous Paragon Studios with the skilled hands of Jack LeTourneau engineering and producing.

[payce-ley]

holy... like to hear that, figure it takes a pretty serious soul who's capable of putting a tragic situation like that to music