Bursting onto the rock scene two years ago, the band has already played around fifty shows across France, Germany, Belgium and soon in Switzerland.
Following a first studio record in 2024 and a Live in 2025, WINECRAFT is currently working on “Wild Wine Quest”, its first full album due in late 2026.
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At 17-years-old, Jake Soberlak of Kamloops, British Columbia plays the blues with the authority of someone who has lived inside the music for half a century. Today, the young guitarist, singer and harmonica player shares his debut single "You Gotta Leave," the first taste of his forthcoming album 'I'm In Trouble', arriving September 11, 2026. The song announces the arrival of one of the most compelling young voices working in Canadian blues today.
Soberlak's path into the blues began with a discovery that reached across generations. Digging through a collection of his grandfather's old records brought over from England, he found something scratchy, raw and utterly alive that grabbed hold and never let go. He followed the threads the way devoted blues listeners always have, one name leading to another, one record to the next, building a deep self-education in a tradition more than a century old. B.B. King, Peter Green and Eric Clapton became his teachers. He picked up guitar at thirteen and harmonica at fourteen, and word soon spread through Kamloops that something special was happening.
"You Gotta Leave" is an original Soberlak composition, and its origin offers a window into how completely he has absorbed the form. He wrote the song after hearing "Wine, Whiskey and Women" by Papa Lightfoot, a recording where the vocal sounds as though it is being sung straight through the harmonica microphone. Soberlak set out to write something where he could capture that very effect, channeling a vintage technique into a fresh new song. The result swaggers with confidence, anchored by a piano solo that he counts among his favourite moments on the entire record.
The lyrics carry the plainspoken directness that defines the best of the genre. "You gotta leave now babe go away from my door," Soberlak sings, "it's over now baby I don't want you around no more." There is a knowing assurance in lines like "won't you tell me where you learned to be so cold," delivered by a young artist who understands that the blues was always about connecting to something real and giving it your own honest take.
The single arrives from sessions that honour the way the great records were made. Soberlak cut his debut album at Afterlife Studios in Vancouver with producer and drummer Leon Power, known for his work with City and Colour and Frazey Ford. Power assembled a seasoned band for the dates, with Darren Parris on bass, the acclaimed Darryl Havers on piano and John Raham engineering. Every track went down live off the floor across two days, four musicians playing together in a room, capturing the spontaneity and feeling that the form demands.
For a teenager recording his first album alongside players of that caliber, the experience proved joyful and affirming. "They're all great people and great musicians, and it was so much fun," Soberlak says. He approaches the music with a humility that runs deeper than his years. "Not all blues songs are sad," he explains. "It's really a reflection of life. I like finding songs from the 30s, 40s or 50s, these gems that I really connect with, and I enjoy giving them my own take once I've learned them."
Soberlak has been building his live reputation across Kamloops and the surrounding region one room at a time, and his goals remain refreshingly uncomplicated. "I just want to be playing music and gigging," he says. "That's all I want to do." That clarity of purpose runs through every note of "You Gotta Leave" and points toward a debut album that introduces a genuine old soul finding his voice.
Jake Soberlak performs live this fall:
October 8, 2026: Salt Spring Island, BC, Salt Spring Legion
October 9, 2026: Cowichan Bay, BC, Private House Show
October 10, 2026: Port Alberni, BC, The Rainbow Room
October 11, 2026: Nanaimo, BC, Hosting the Nanaimo Blues Jam at The Queens
October 13, 2026: Victoria, BC, The Coda Club
October 15, 2026: Vancouver, BC, The Heatley
October 16, 2026: Langley, BC, Bez Arts Centre
October 18, 2026: Dewdney, BC, The Dewdney Church of the Blues
This month, Danny Marks and BLUZ FM celebrate 25 years on the air, a milestone that lands in the middle of what Marks calls a triple play of a year: hosting the inaugural Canadian Blues Music Awards in January, watching his new album 'Back to the Blues' climb to Top 5 on Canada's Big Blues Chart, and now marking a quarter century of the program that made him one of the most recognizable voices in Canadian blues broadcasting. "It's a positive affirmation that creativity is born out of adversity, turning coal into diamonds," Marks says of the convergence. "In this moment, that's the icing on the cake."
The story of BLUZ FM begins in the summer of 2001, when Marks got a call from CJRT general manager Chuck Camroux about bringing the blues back to 91.1 FM as the station rebranded into JAZZ FM91. Marks walked from his home in Cabbagetown to meet Camroux, who asked what he'd call the show. "Saturday Night Blues is taken," Marks told him. "The station is JAZZ FM, I'll be BLUZ FM."Camroux had his assistant register the domain on the spot and hired Marks before the meeting was even over. That September, BLUZ FM took to the air, and Marks still has the script from his first broadcast as a keepsake, though he abandoned scripts entirely not long after, choosing instead to riff on the music in a stream of consciousness that has defined the program ever since.
That first episode opened with "Let's Have a Party" by Amos Milburn, a tribute to Toronto blues champion Dave "Daddy Kool" Booth, and closed with "Lights Out," a track from Marks' own 1996 album 'Guitarchaeology.' That closing song, along with his signature sign off, "Good Night and May the Good Blues Be Yours," has ended every broadcast since - one of several old-fashioned touches Marks has kept deliberately intact through 25 years of change in how people find and listen to music.
BLUZ FM launched into a Toronto blues scene that was thriving seven days a week, from Albert's Hall, where Marks' own band produced the Stormy Monday television show for Rogers Cable 10, to Grossman's, the Elmo, the Silver Dollar and the wider Wing Circuit of clubs across the city. International legends including BB King, Albert King, Freddie King, Etta James and Hound Dog Taylor were still touring, and the Toronto Blues Society was actively building the local scene that would eventually give rise to the Maple Blues Awards.
Over 25 years and thousands of hours behind the microphone, Marks has met and hosted a remarkable list of guests. BB King, he says, may have been the most impactful of them all, an artist he places in the same company as Louis Armstrong for the reach of his influence. Buddy and Phil Guy, Robbie Robertson, Ronnie Hawkins, Eric Burdon, Bettye Lavette and Texas soul man Roy Head all passed through the studio, alongside Canadian greats like Harry Manx, Donnie Walsh, David Wilcox and Rita Chiarelli, each leaving Marks with stories he still tells today.
Canadian talent has always been at the centre of the show, with BLUZ FM carrying a self-imposed Canadian content commitment well beyond industry standard. Marks was the first to play Crystal Shawanda in a blues context, gave Jim Bowskill, now of Blue Rodeo, an early platform, and continues to break new Canadian artists like Dee Long of Klaatu. Heather Morgan's "Johnny Edwards" remains the single most requested song in the program's history, and Marks has made it part of his mission to keep the memory of artists no longer with us, from David Clayton Thomas era contemporaries to lesser-known local legends, alive on the airwaves.
None of it came without challenges. Marks points to management turnovers at the station as some of the toughest stretches BLUZ FM has weathered, moments when knowing when to stay quiet mattered as much as knowing what to play. "The soul of CJRT has prevailed through tough times thanks to the listener," he says, and today he counts the station's current leadership among the strongest it has ever had.
Marks arrives at 25 years with plans already taking shape for what comes next, including a home broadcast and recording studio currently under construction that will let him bring live music and rare vinyl deeper into the program. Between the anniversary, the CBMAs and 'Back to the Blues,' Marks calls this moment exactly what it looks like: a lifelong student and champion of the blues still finding new ways to share it. "The future looks bright," he says, "all the colours of the blues, one beautiful, blessed day at a time."
Vancouver based vintage soul, blues and roots quartet Honeybear will release its new album, 'The Cure,' on September 4, marking the follow up to a debut that turned four longtime friends into one of Canada's fastest rising roots acts. The band celebrates with two album release shows, first at Upstairs in Victoria on September 9 alongside Emmett Jerome, then home in Vancouver on September 10 at the Hollywood Theatre.
Honeybear formed in 2023, though the members had already spent decades crossing paths on tours across Canada and down the West Coast. The band's origin traces back to the pandemic, when the group found itself jamming outdoors in parks, running amps and PA systems off jerry rigged motorcycle batteries just to keep playing live music together. That same instinct, chasing the sound over everything else, still defines the band, described by music blog B-Side Guys as sounding "like The Teskey Brothers collaborated with the ghost of Muddy Waters."
'The Cure' expands that sound well beyond the original quartet. Across 11 tracks, Beaty and Brumelle's songwriting is joined by rotating keys from Mike Kenney and Cindy Fairbank, drums from Geoff Hicks and Tim Watson, pedal steel from Scott Smith, horns from Jerry Cook, Jocelyn Waugh, Adam Kyle and Gregory Dent, and background vocals from Dawn Pemberton and Colleen Rennison. The album was recorded across two studios, with Jeff Zipp behind the board at Light Machine and John Raham recording at Afterlife Studios, before Zipp mixed the record and Doug Krebs handled mastering, the same team responsible for the warm, horn laced sound the band has built its reputation on.
The album's early single, "Just Your Fool," offers a preview of what's ahead, a classic blues ballad built around devotion that may not be entirely returned. Written by Beaty and Brumelle and produced by Zipp, the song is a riff on the Slim Harpo classic "Raining in My Heart" and has already passed 100,000 streams, proof that there is still a real appetite for horn driven, human sounding music made the old way.
That appetite has followed the band since its 2025 debut, 'I Was Wrong,' which has surpassed nine million streams on Spotify with 200,000 monthly listeners, landing placement on official Spotify Editorial playlists including Retro Soul, The New Retro and Best Blues of 2025, along with airplay from CBC, NPR, CKUA and indie and co-op stations around the world. The band has become a festival favourite at Rifflandia, Barnside Harvest Fest, Vancouver Jazz Festival, Calgary Blues Fest, Kitchener Blues Fest, Wapiti and Starbelly, and has sold out club dates across Canada from The Horseshoe in Toronto, Upstairs in Victoria, Rainbow in Ottawa to the Ironwood in Calgary.
The industry has taken notice as well, with Honeybear recently nominated for a Blues Music Award from the Memphis based Blues Foundation, a Blues Artist of the Year nomination from the WCMA, a spot on the Vancouver Sun's "10 Artists to Watch in 2026," and Roots Music Canada's New Discovery of the Year.
With 'The Cure' arriving September 4, Honeybear, the Band brings its road-tested chemistry and growing cast of collaborators into its most fully realized record yet and invites fans out to hear it live at both release shows.
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