Teenage Blues Phenom Jake Soberlak Announces Debut Album 'I'm In Trouble' + B.C. Tour

 

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

Danny Marks And BLUZ FM Mark 25 Historic Years As One Of Canada's Most Influential Blues Radio Programs

 

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 Vintage Soul Quartet HONEYBEAR, THE BAND Announces New Album 'The Cure' With Two Album Release Shows

 

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.

1974 JUNO Award Winner Cathy Young Was Here All Along, and Now She's Back With the Most Personal Song of Her Life

Long before playlists and streaming numbers, before most of today's music industry existed at all, Cathy Young was already a fixture of Toronto's legendary Yorkville scene, standing shoulder to shoulder with the artists who built Canadian music history. She's been credited as a Juno winner, immortalized on one of the tallest music murals in the world, and quietly worked alongside icons for decades. And now, with her deeply personal new single "I Don't Want to Lose You," Cathy Young proves she was never gone. She was simply waiting for the right story to tell.

Young first burst onto the scene when her debut album, 'A Spoonful of Cathy Young,' was named a Billboard Pick of the Week, an early signal of a talent that would soon become impossible to ignore. She won the Juno Award for Best New Artist in 1974 and returned the following year as a nominee for Best Female Vocalist, cementing her place among Canada's brightest new stars at a moment when the Canadian music industry itself was still finding its footing. She performed as Mary Magdalene in Robert Stigwood's production of Jesus Christ Superstar, lent her voice to award winning video games including entries in The Black Mirror series, and toured the world across the United States, Mexico, Hong Kong, Cyprus, Thailand, Australia, the Caribbean, and Hawaii. In 2017, she was honoured with a place on Toronto's towering 22 storey mural of music icons along historic Yonge Street, a permanent tribute to the scene she helped define. Her story has since been documented in Music from Far and Wide: Celebrating 40 Years of the Juno Awards and in Bill King's Talk: Conversations in All Keys, and she was inducted into the Friar's Music Museum in Toronto.

For all of that history, Young has never been the kind of artist who simply rests on accolades. She has spent decades quietly recording, mentoring emerging talent, and staying connected to the music community that shaped her, even as the industry's spotlight moved elsewhere. That makes her return now, with a song this personal, feel less like a comeback and more like an overdue arrival, a legend who never actually left, finally ready to share a story only she could tell.

"I Don't Want to Lose You" was written by Young in 1974, though she says at the time it was written to no one in particular. "Songs just come to me when they come," she explains. "They come in a rush, and if I don't stop whatever I'm doing, even sleep, and write, I will lose it forever." It would take 50 years for the song to find the person it was truly meant for.
That person was a fellow musician Young first met briefly at the Juno Awards decades earlier. Their paths crossed again years later when she recorded backing vocals for his band, then drifted apart until an unplanned social media post changed everything. "One day, almost on a whim, I posted a photo of a horse drawn Cinderella carriage on Facebook and wrote, ‘Now all I need is a groom’," Young recalls. "It wasn't something I would normally post. In fact, I nearly deleted it, but something told me to leave it." He saw it. His reply was simple: "I'm here! I'm here!" What followed, Young says, was the beginning of a beautiful love story.

Not long after reconnecting, Young sang him the song she had written half a century earlier. "When I finished, he looked into my eyes and quietly said, ‘How could I not love you,’" she says. "From that moment on, the song belonged to us." The lyrics themselves carry that same plainspoken devotion: "So come and put your arms around me, tell me you love me, tell me you need me, and no one else will ever do. I've given you my everything, and even more, I've opened up my heart and let you in."

Young went on to join him on what would become his final tour before he passed away suddenly from a heart attack. "In an instant, my world changed forever," she says. "I truly believe he was my soulmate. This song is my tribute to him, to the extraordinary love we were blessed to share. I know that one day we will meet again. Until then, I will carry him in my heart and celebrate a once in a lifetime love that not even time can erase."

Written by Young and produced by John Zych, Ann Hunter, and Dennis Nieves, "I Don't Want to Lose You" is released through Bronte Road Music, with a new EP on the horizon. It arrives as both a deeply intimate tribute and a reminder that one of Canadian music's true trailblazers, a woman who shared stages and studios with legends and helped shape an entire era of Yorkville's music history, is still very much writing her story, one unforgettable chapter at a time.

https://www.facebook.com/Cathyyoungtoronto

https://open.spotify.com/intl-es/track/6Socr1AG0kEFGs7CnibABW?si=b9b3c3591b4242c6&utm_source=mistmail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1974-juno-award-winner-cathy-young-was-here-all-along-and-now-she-s-back-with-th&nd=1&dlsi=b77021864bbe4f09

Tony Rust and The Mudhorse

 

It`s been quite a wait since Tony Rust and The Mudhorse`s released their last single "Can`t Believe My Eyes", which was released at the very start year, 1<sup>st</sup> January 2026! So it`s a bit of a welcome back for the band, with a new track "Nevada Dust", a track the band have been play in their live set for sometime. A new album is still forthcoming, as there`s no release date, but the band has signed to a label, with an album planned for end of 2026/beginning of 2027, ear marked for release.

Nevada Dust

A psychedelic rock track inspired by the sound and atmosphere of 1960s Spaghetti Westerns.

The idea for Nevada Dust came to life during a trip through the Nevada desert a few years ago. We’ve been playing this song live since 2023, and after all these years, we’re finally excited to share the studio version with you.

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/Tonyrustandthemudhorses

https://www.instagram.com/tonyrust/?hl=fr

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR9iS_5A_MIn5-yyCOiKVWQ

 https://tonyrustandthemudhorses.bandcamp.com/

Advent Horizon

This week see`s the release of the 3<sup>rd</sup> single "Gravity" from US based progressive rock group Advent Horizon`s new studio album "Falling Together" which was released on 15th May 2026. The response to the album has been fantastic within progressive rock/metal circles, in the few months of release. The first single`s "Past Life Parable" released back in March and Faith`s Window in April, the band have really been on a roll of releases. There`s been lots of shows for the band in-between and even a live stream concert back in May. I hope you enjoy the sounds that this band create and feel your listeners might enjoy this very talented band.           

     

Gravity is a gripping two-part Prog Metal mini-epic which features a dreamlike intro, leading into a hard-hitting, riff-filled banger led by Grant Matheson on lead vocals. Conceptually, Gravity talks about how positions of power in so many areas of our lives are so often used to manipulate the people through fear. This is true of Religious and Political leadership, but also in the context of relationships, careers, and more. The phrase "Gravity is what holds us together, we are one when we are all afraid" sums this up nicely. 

https://www.adventhorizonmusic.com/the-band-v2

AMARAX

 

We are AMARAX! Birthed in Perth Western Australia and bringing back the true spirit of the 80's heavy metal packed with shredding guitars, killer riffs and soaring vocals. if Dio and Doro had a kid, this would be it! we're not here for f#@k spiders or chase modern trends. we're about staying true to the sound that defined a generation. Loud, bitchin and unapologetically metal.

 

https://www.facebook.com/amaraxofficial/

https://www.instagram.com/amaraxofficial/

https://www.youtube.com/@amaraxofficial

https://open.spotify.com/track/2Pme2F6tVxw08FtDNhdvX5?autoplay_ok=1