BLUES, BLUES, BLUES: Colin LINDEN

Colin LINDEN

⬇️ COLIN LINDEN ⬇️

(Colin Kendall Linden)

DISCOGRAPHY 1981-2021 (17CD/DVD)

BIOGRAPHY

Colin Kendall Linden (born 16 April 1960) is a Canadian guitarist, songwriter and record producer. Linden plays acoustic and electric guitar, specializing in slide guitar, country blues, and ragtime fingerpicking. He frequently collaborates with country and folk performers. He is a member of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings with Stephen Fearing and Tom Wilson. He has worked with Bruce Cockburn, Lucinda Williams, T-Bone Burnett, Kevin Gordon, Colin James, Emmylou Harris, Leon Redbone, Rita Chiarelli, Chris Thomas King, The Band, Keb' Mo', Charles Esten and Bob Dylan.

Linden was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. When he was still an infant, his family moved to White Plains, New York. The ten-year-old Linden heard rock performers in New York venues, such as Van Morrison, the Flying Burrito Brothers, James Taylor, John Mayall, Johnny Winter and Taj Mahal.

When the family moved back to Toronto, Linden became interested in performers such as Taj Mahal, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Howlin' Wolf. When Howlin' Wolf played at Toronto's Colonial Tavern, the then-11-year-old Linden spent three hours talking with the elder bluesman.

He began performing at a local coffee house, the Fiddler's Green Coffee House, singing and strumming a guitar alongside his two older brothers Jay and Harley. By 1973, Linden began learning how to fingerpick. When Linden met David Wilcox, Linden decided to learn how to play slide guitar. Wilcox gave 140 blues albums to young Linden, to help Linden to learn about blues styles.

Paul Mills, the producer of Sylvia Tyson's Touch the Earth show, at the Winnipeg Folk Festival and an outlet on CBC Radio for acoustic roots music, booked Linden in 1975. At the Winnipeg Folk Festival, Colin met Mississippi bluesman Sam Chatmon, and later that year made a pilgrimage to the U.S. to meet South Detroit's Sippie Wallace. North Carolina's Peg Leg Sam, and Mississippi's Son House.

In 1976 Wilcox had asked Linden to join his band, the Teddy Bears, which meant that Linden had to learn to play the electric guitar. In 1977, he played solo gigs and did his first western Canadian tour, which was booked by Holger Petersen. In Edmonton, he met then 13-year-old Colin James, also a budding blues performer. In the late 1970s, Linden formed his own group, the Group du Jour, which played a mix of covers and a few Linden originals, and a group called the Lucky Charms, which was featured on his first album "Colin Linden Live!!!!!" (1980). In 1979, Linden recorded the Sam Chatmon album..... (Wikipedia)

Colin Linden Live!