Picking up and leaving for a new town or city can be a challenge at the best of times. But for Toronto-based blues musician Ken Kawashima (aka Sugar Brown), leaving Chicago — often considered one of the blues’ hotbeds — for Toronto seems like a natural fit on the groovy and gorgeous new single “Toronto Bound,” the title track of his latest studio album.
The song, inspired in part from the 1954 blues song “Chicago Bound” by Muddy Waters’ guitarist Jimmy Rogers, is a lyrical trek of Brown’s journey over the last few decades. From his hometown of Bowling Green, Ohio to Chicago to Paris to New York City to Tokyo and finally to Toronto, Sugar Brown (who was given the stage name by James Yancy Jones, better known in blues circles as Tail Dragger Jones) 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
Oh, 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, NYC, Tokyo…and ended up in Toronto, where I’ve resided since 2002,” Brown says of “Toronto Bound.” The single was naturally recorded in Toronto, with Brown using all Toronto musicians for both the single and the album Toronto Bound. And nearly all of the album was recorded on one hot, sweaty late-summer day in, you guessed it, Toronto.
“True to my production principles, we recorded the album live off-the-floor and onto one-inch magnetic tape,” Brown says of the creative process. “This is like jumping onto a fast-moving train without knowing where it is going.”
“Toronto Bound” features Brown on lead 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 later iconic Muddy Waters’ drummer Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, Sugar Brown left Chicago to become a historical researcher and university teacher. In fact, 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,” Brown says, resulting in his 2011 debut album Sugar Brown’s Sad Day. Subsequent albums included 2015’s Poor Lazarus and 2018’s It’s A Blues World: Calling All Blues.
Having performed at various festivals, including the Montreal International Jazz Festival and the Edmonton Blues Festival, Sugar Brown has also regularly played at Toronto’s Grossman’s Tavern. Now Sugar Brown looks to take both “Toronto Bound” and the album of the same name to the masses. And judging by how appealing the classic-sounding lead single is, look for the song to be heard all over the place. Be it Ohio. Or Chicago. Or Paris. Or New York. Or Tokyo. Or Toronto.
