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Blackburn Brothers

The Blackburn Brothers are a Canadian blues band composed of a core group of three siblings, Duane Blackburn (lead vocals, organ, piano), Brooke Blackburn (guitar, vocals, composition), and Cory Blackburn (drums, harmony vocals). Additional band members include Robert Blackburn (guitar, vocal harmonies, composition), Howard Ayee (production, bass), and cousin Nathan Blackburn (bass) who can be heard on studio recordings. Longtime horn section bandmates are Neil Brathwaite on tenor saxophone and Ted Peters on trombone. The band’s bass guitarist is Andrew Stewart. Formerly known as “Blackburn,” they are a “generational family band [that] plays traditional blues and R&B with a contemporary take.”

History

The Blackburn Brothers formed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1996. Their music synthesizes the blues with R&B, soul, and funk. Their musical lineage traces back to Canada’s 1950s blues singer Bobby Dean Blackburn—the father of Cory, Duane, and Brooke—who has performed in the Toronto music scene for over six decades.

A strong political ethos weaves through the entire Blackburn Brothers opus, shedding light on Black Canadian history, the Civil Rights Movement, and the current lived realities of those in the African diaspora. Their compositions evoke their family’s past, as in “Bobby’s Blues,” a 2024 Blues Music Award Song of the Year nominee off the 2023 album SoulFunkn’Blues (Electro-Fi Records). “Bobby’s Blues” recalls Bobby Dean Blackburn’s experiences of poverty and anti-Black racism in mid-twentieth century Toronto. The band’s cover of the 1996 song “Sister Rosa” by The Neville Brothers, also appearing on SoulFunkn'Blues, celebrates pivotal moments in the 1960s’s American Civil Rights Movement. The struggle against racism reverberates in tracks about current social issues like “Freedom Train” and “Little Sister” (SoulFunkn’Blues, 2023).

“As you listen, you’ll hear how The Blackburn Brothers have distilled over sixty years of Black music across mostly strains of funk, R&B, and soul with enough blues for good measure to forge their own style,” explains acclaimed blues artist Shakura S’Aida. Critic Eric Thom for Exclaim! also holds that the Blackburn Brothers embrace the past while “delivering a tightly confident sound that's altogether new again.”

The Blackburn Brothers trace their ancestry back to Black Americans who escaped slavery by migrating to Canada through the Underground Railroad in the mid-nineteenth century, and this is a central theme of their music. They are fourth-generation Canadians, established in Owen Sound, Ontario by forefather Elias Earls who was born enslaved in Kentucky, US in 1792 and fled north to Canada. The band’s lyrics often depict the central tenets of anti-racism, Canadian Black history, and pan-Africanism.

Blackburn Brothers’ first album Soul Searchin’ (Arctic Records Canada) was released in 1997 and its single “Africa” made it to #4 on the Top 50 Energy 108FM music radio charts. In 2010, they released their second album, Brotherhood (Make it Real Records), and won the Maple Blues Award for Best New Band. That same year, the band was chosen to represent Canadian blues music at the International Blues Challenge (IBC) on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. The IBC is the world’s largest gathering of blues musicians. Their performance at the competition caught the attention of Rolling Stone magazine senior editor David Fricke who talked about the Blackburn Brothers on Channel 4 Memphis Morning TV.

In 2015, Blackburn Brothers released Brothers in This World (Electro-Fi Records) which earned them a JUNO nomination for Blues Album of The Year, and charted at #1 on the American Roots Music Report (RMR) the week of May 28 (and over several months in 2015 and 2016). The following year, the band received the 2017 Coup de Coeur Award from the Tremblant International Blues Festival. In 2023, the Blackburn Brothers were inducted into the Canada South Blues Society Hall of Fame.

The Blackburn Brothers’ 2023 album SoulFunkn'Blues (Electro-Fi Records) has garnered international acclaim, with reviews and features in several prominent music publications including Billboard, Living Blues, CBC Music, Blues in Britain, Blues Matters Magazine, and Blues Blast Magazine. Additionally, the album has received three American 2024 Blues Music Award nominations for Album of the Year, Soul Blues Album of the Year, and Song of the Year (a new precedent from a Canadian band), and a 2024 JUNO Award nomination for Blues Album of the Year. Considered the highest honour on the Canadian Blues scene, Blackburn Brothers collectively earned a record-setting nine nominations in the 2024 Maple Blues Awards including Entertainer of the Year and Electric Act of the Year. Locally, the band has received support from Canadian arts institutions and are played regularly on Canada’s CBC Radio and JAZZ.FM Radio.

SoulFunkn’Blues made it to #1 on the RMR charts the week of its release and sits at #43 in the RMR’s Best of 2023 list. It remained in the top 10 on the North American College & Community Blues Radio Charts (NACC) from September to February 2023. It was #3 on Amazon’s Top 100 US Blues Albums and debuted at #5 on the iTunes Top US Blues Albums the week of its release.

The Blackburn Brothers cultivated their onstage performance in the 1990s at the Bamboo Club in Toronto where “they were part of Toronto's street culture representing a lineage of unmistakable nocturnal hedonism.” Decades later, they headline various Canadian blues festivals, playing the Calgary International Blues Festival in 2022, Montreal Blues Festival and Vancouver Island Musicfest in 2023, as well as the Ottawa Blues Festival and Edmonton Blues Festival in 2024. They have toured internationally for decades, playing the Pennsylvania Blues Festival and Connecticut Mystic Blues Festival in 2016, and the Panama Boquete Beaches Jazz & Blues Festival in 2024. They are known for their on-stage performances, and are considered a staple in the Canadian blues festival circuit. As John Valenteyn for Maple Blues Magazine writes, “New Orleans has the Neville Brothers; Toronto's Blackburn similarly fires up live shows with scorching soul power.”

Over the years, the Blackburn Brothers have performed alongside renowned musicians including Mavis Staples, Dr. John and The Nite Trippers, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Kenny “Blues Boss” Wayne, Shakura S’Aida, and Cedric Burnside. Additionally, they've shared the spotlight with esteemed Canadian artists such as Sarah McLachlan, Colin James, The Bros. Landreth, and Liberty Silver.

They are credited for contributing theme music to Disney Junior Canada’s Justin Time television series.

Legacy

As American blues singer and actress Shakura S’Aida writes in the liner notes of Soul Funkn’Blues (Electro-Fi Records), “the blues that the Blackburn Brothers create is part of their inheritance, a legacy that began with Elias Earls. It is authentic and always about a message of history, freedom, legacy, family, Black unity and love.”