Sugar Brown shares his gritty globe-trotting odyssey in his agile and mobile new single Toronto Bound — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
Picking up and leaving for a new town or city can be a challenge at the best of times. But for blues musician Ken Kawashima (aka Sugar Brown), leaving Chicago — undeniably one of the world’s blues hotbeds — for Toronto seems like a natural fit on his raw, raucous new single, which also happens to be the title track of his latest studio album.
The song, inspired in part from the 1954 song Chicago Bound by Muddy Waters’ guitarist Jimmy Rogers, is a lyrical trek of Brown’s journey over the last few decades. Taking you from his hometown of Bowling Green, Ohio on a circuitous route to Toronto, Brown (who was given his stage name by James Yancy Jones, aka Tail Dragger) describes the fun-filled trip perfectly with a timeless blues foundation. Think of some fusion between John Lee Hooker, Little Walter and a ramshackle Bob Dylan on a nearly seven-minute blues binge and Toronto Bound becomes crystal clear:
“In Toronto town, I got a job and pay
I got me a home where I can stay
But I need my baby
Or I need a new lover.”
“This song tells the story of my itinerant life as I left many places: Ohio, Chicago, Paris, N.Y.C., Tokyo… (and) Toronto, where I’ve resided since 2002,” Brown says. The single was naturally recorded in Toronto, with Brown using all local musicians for both the single and the album, which was primarily recorded on one hot, sweaty late-summer day. “True to my production principles, we recorded the album live off the floor and onto one-inch magnetic tape,” he says. “This is like jumping onto a fast-moving train without knowing where it is going.”
Toronto Bound features Brown on vocals, harmonica and electric guitar while guitarist Nichol Robertson, upright acoustic bassist Victor Bateman, drummer Lowell Whitty and percussionist Derek Thorne keep things chugging down the road Brown sings about. “They are bad, bad, bad,” Brown says. “That’s why I like ’em. They also thrive on ‘composing on the fly,’ as Ornette Coleman said. And, like myself, they’re all bound to Toronto in one way or another. Toronto Bound is what this city sounds like to me.”
The child of a Japanese father and Korean mother, the musician began playing blues in Chicago when he was 19 while attending university. Playing with the likes of Tail Dragger Jones and drummer Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, Brown left Chicago to become a researcher and teacher. He’s currently a professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of East Asian Studies. But “the blues followed me into the next stage of my life,” he says, resulting in his 2011 debut album Sugar Brown’s Sad Day, 2015’s Poor Lazarus and 2018’s It’s A Blues World: Calling All Blues.
Having already performed at the Montreal International Jazz Festival and the Edmonton Blues Festival, among others, Brown is looking to take Toronto Bound to the masses. And judging by how appealing the classic-sounding single is, expect it to be heard everywhere from Toronto to your particular stomping grounds.
Check out the song Toronto Bound above, hear the rest of the album below, and hitch a ride with Sugar Brown on his website, Facebook and Instagram.
