vocals, acoustic guitars, fiddle

Bill was raised in a musical family in rural Alberta. When he was 2 years
old, he was known to sleep behind the piano at country dances. His parents played dance music in community halls in beautiful farming country. The love of nature and of music and of people gathering for celebration has been with
him for his whole life.

Bill loves to collaborate with friends (musicians). His most recent
collaboration is with Eivør Pálsdóttir from the Faroe Islands. He produced
and performed on Eivør's third solo CD, 'eivør'. The recording won double at the Danish Music Awards Folk in 2006. Other collaborations: with Alan MacLeod, Shannon Johnson, Hans Staymer and Andreas Schuld, and Lester Quitzau & Madagascar Slim, as well as his solo projects, have all attained award status in Canada.

A multiple Canadian Juno Award winner, Bill has received international acclaim for his recordings and live performances. A mainstay on the international roots scene, life on the road is reflected in Bill's music - powerful rhythms and soulful songs, steeped in World Beat, Blues, Cajun, Celtic, Folk, Flamenco, Funk, Poetry and more...

vocals, slide guitars, acoustic and electric guitars, kalimba

Lester Quitzau hails from Edmonton and comes from a Dutch/Danish family. The Canadian city was also the place where he paid his dues. A fixture in the bars on the citys North Side with hard-drinking blues bands like the Slipping Lizards or Yard Dogs, Lester has come out as a blues player on his own with the JUNO-nominated album A BIG LOVE from 1996. On this record, he successfully presented his own version of the blues with original music marked by a sense of innovation and deep blues feeling. Lester Quitzau is certainly not a blues purist but a sensitive modern player, whose work is dominated by a sense of texture, space and openness. Inspired by the honesty of the blues, hes not interested in music as a museum piece but in the authenticity and timelessness of the blues as a musical force of the present.

vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, valiha

Totally in line with the blues tradition, this man from Antananarivo/Madagascar has chosen a moniker as his "blues name". A Toronto resident since 1979, Randriamananjara Radofa Besata Longin (thats his full name) is a good example for a truly bi-cultural artist. The musical worlds of the African island have only been discovered in recent years, with high-profile Western artists like Henry Kaiser and David Lindley travelling there to dig up and present traditional and modern Malagassy music to the world. A beautiful music that is certainly part of Madagascar Slims genetic make-up as well. An expert in the popular "Salegy" dance style featuring intricate fingerpicking patterns, his life was changed forever when coming across the music of Jimi Hendrix. He has been inflicted with the blues virus ever since. Speaking of his own music, Slim likes to use the expression "Malagassy Blues". An expression right to the point, as his playing features blues riffs and African rhythms going hand in hand. His 99 solo effort OMNISOURCE made waves on the Canadian blues and world music scene and he received a JUNO award for it. On TRI-CONTINENTAL, the man is also featured playing the vahila, a special zither from Madagascar made from bamboo. As is the case with Hawaiian music, traditional music from Madagascar draws on highly individual open tunings most of the time.