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Legendary Blues Band on their way to Red Deer!

Published

5 years ago

7 minute read

From The Central Music Festival Society – Click to buy tickets now.

By Mark Weber

The Legendary Downchild Blues Band 50th Anniversary Tour

Few absolutely nail the magic and mystery of the blues quite like the Downchild blues band, a legendary group that is marking 50 trailblazing years in the music biz.

Presented by the Central Music Festival Society, Downchild is slated to perform at Red Deer’s Memorial Centre Oct. 30th.

As noted in their bio, Downchild catapulted to international acclaim as inspiration for Dan Aykroyd and the late John Belush’s smash film The Blues Brothers. In fact, two Downchild tunes – Shotgun Blues and (I Got Everything I Need) Almost were covered on the Blues Brothers 1978 disc Briefcase Full of Blues.

The band is led by founder Donnie ‘Mr. Downchild’ Walsh on guitar and harmonica, singer Chuck Jackson who also plays harmonica, tenor sax man Pat Carey, Michael Fonfara on keyboards, Gary Kendall on bass and drummer Mike Fitzpatrick.

Jackson, who signed on with Downchild 30 years ago, noted that the band made tremendous headway right from the get-go as there weren’t a lot of blues bands criss-crossing the continent in those early days.

“Everyone can identify with the blues,” he added of the genre’s unfading and historic appeal. “Everyone has their bad days in different ways. And originally, blues music was meant to help you get over your blues and pick you up and to help you forget about your troubles,” he said, noting that Downchild is known for the band’s ‘jump blues’ style.

Essentially, it’s an up-tempo feel that weaves in elements of swing, and also often features sax or brass.

As to the band’s astounding longevity, Jackson points out that really, the essence of the group hasn’t changed a whole lot over the years. “The band knows what it does. We write all our own music, and of course a lot of it has to do with our leader Donnie Walsh ‘Mr. Downchild’.”

Also, there’s a cohesiveness amongst the members that keeps the vision front and centre as well. “We’ve got a great relationship, and we just stay true to what we are. We play the blues, we don’t (stray) from that, and we’ve got great fans. Really, we have generations of fans – we’ve got grandparents that bring out their grandchildren to see us!

“We’ve played everywhere across Canada and beyond – it’s been amazing, it’s really opened up the blues all around the world.

“We’ve played in Central America, the United States, Canada, Europe – there was a time I never had any idea I would get to play the blues in Costa Rica or Jamaica or Norway or France.”

As mentioned, it’s that connection to their loyal fan base that also means the world to them. “We sign autographs and CDs after the shows and everyone is so happy that we are still continuing after 50 years,” he noted with gratitude. “They will tell us stories about how we played at their high school graduation, or how we played at a company Christmas party – so we’ve really got a great, great fan base and it’s always wonderful to see everyone.”

As for Jackson, that vocal ability started to surface when he was just a kid – singing in church choirs.

There were the jams and just getting together with like-minded folks to play and sing and pass the time. “People entertained themselves – we didn’t have 120 stations on the TV.

“Lots of families had instruments and would sit around and play. People would come over and dance, so it was quite different then compared to what it’s like nowadays.”

Jackson was raised by his grandparents, pointing out that his grandpa played the spoons and was also a square dance caller. So music was in the blood, and those early influences left an indelible mark on a young Jackson.

It wasn’t long before he was honing his own skills as both a vocalist and a harmonica player, too. “That was my introduction to music. When I was in Grade 9, of course we were all wanting to be the next Beatles,” he added with a laugh. He started his first band with a few high school buddies, and it was around the time he was 16 that he discovered the blues.

A new path was struck.

“I had to check into it, so I started buying old blues albums,” he said.

These days, Jackson couldn’t imagine a better road to have traveled, what with the explosive shows, the joy of collaboration, the life-changing friendships and opening for legendary artists from B.B. King to the Bee Gees to Joe Cocker.

They also kicked off this year’s anniversary shows with a performance at the Toronto Jazz Festival in front of thousands that also included none other than Aykroyd and Paul Shaffer.

“It’s everything. It just keeps you going. People tell us what we add to their lives, and you just can’t replace that wonderful feeling. Sure, we have our days when we spend the whole day on a bus and we are dead tired. But as soon as you get onstage, you see the audience and you just light up.

“Being able to play the music I love and entertain the wonderful people across Canada and around the world is certainly a dream come true and one I will continue to follow.

“We are just going to keep going until we can’t anymore.”

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After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

JK Rowling dares Scottish police to arrest her over new ‘hate crime’ law threatening free speech

Published on April 2, 2024

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

‘If what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment,’ the ‘Harry Potter’ creator said.

Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling is striking a defiant tone in the face of a new Scottish law that many fear will effectively criminalize free speech on subjects such as biological sex and “gender identity.”

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, passed in 2021 but only now taking effect, consolidates various preexisting “hate crime” statutes while also creating a new offense, “threatening or abusive behaviour which is intended to stir up hatred” on the basis of age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity, or variations in sex characteristics.

As covered by The Guardian and The Scotsman, various individuals and groups have raised objections to the law, including MP Joanna Cherry, who predicts it “will be weaponized by trans rights activists to try to silence, and worse still criminalize, women who do not share their beliefs”; said the Scottish Family Party, who says it will mean the “death” of free speech; and the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents and Scottish Police Federation, who fear it will overtax police forces inadequately trained to handle the influx of new offenses.

Scotland First Minister Humza Yousaf, who championed the law, insists that abuse will be prevented by a “very high threshold” for prosecuting cases and protects freedom of expression in a variety of ways, including a “reasonableness” defense. Ex-Tory MSP Adam Tomkins claims that simply “asserting that sex is a biological fact or that it is not changed just by virtue of the gender by which someone chooses to identify is not and never can be a hate crime under this legislation.”

Such assurances hit a snag, however, when calls to prosecute Rowling under the law prompted Scotland’s Community Safety Minister Siobhian Brown to walk back her initial assurances that “misgendering” would “not at all” violate the law, The Telegraph reported. “It could be reported and it could be investigated,” she said, “whether or not the police would think it was criminal is up to Police Scotland for that.”

On Monday, Rowling shared a lengthy Twitter/X thread of examples of “trans women” (i.e., men) and pro-LGBT activists she suggested were now a “protected category” despite their violent, abusive acts and/or hateful behavior, using the hashtag #ArrestMe to effectively dare the authorities to persecute her.

“The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex,” she wrote. “For several years now, Scottish women have been pressured by their government and members of the police force to deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, repudiate biological facts and embrace a neo-religious concept of gender that is unprovable and untestable.”

“I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment,” Rowling added.

Rowling, whose Potter novels are the best-selling book series in the world, has long been known as a doctrinaire liberal on most issues, in 2007 going so far as to retroactively add a same-sex relationship to the backstory of Harry’s mentor Albus Dumbledore, despite the character’s sexual attraction not being referenced in the books themselves or their film adaptations (until briefly being alluded to in the third film of the Fantastic Beasts spinoff series).

Even so, Rowling has been deemed a bigot by pro-LGBT activists for refusing to go along with the notions that gender is a social construct that may be changed at will, or that life-altering surgical or chemical “transition” procedures are appropriate for confused minors. In recent years, despite intense cultural pressure, she has only grown bolder in opposing the transgender lobby’s detrimental impacts on children as well as actual women.

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Entertainment

Elon Musk funds conservative actress Gina Carano’s wrongful termination lawsuit against Disney

Published on February 11, 2024

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

‘As a sign of X Corp’s commitment to free speech, we’re proud to provide financial support for Gina Carano’s lawsuit,’ said X’s head of business operations.

Actress Gina Carano is suing Disney-owned Lucasfilm for wrongful termination from Star Wars: The Mandalorian, and Elon Musk is paying her legal bills  

Carano was fired in 2021 after she posted to social media, including X (formerly Twitter), conservative opinions on hot-button issues such as gender pronouns usage, Black Lives Matter, election fraud, the COVID-19 lockdowns, and mask mandates.  

Disney “bullied Ms. Carano, trying to force her to conform to their views about cultural and political issues, and when that bullying failed, they fired her,” explained Gene Schaerr, Carano’s attorney, in a statement.  

The suit explains that at one point, Disney/Lucasfilm demanded that Carano “participate in a Zoom call with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and 45 employees who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, going so far as to say that her willingness to endure such harassment and humiliation was a ‘litmus test’ for her.”  

Following her termination by the entertainment giant, Carano’s agent, United Artists, and her entertainment attorney, dropped her as a client. 

Elon Musk is making good on his promise 

Elon Musk has followed through on the promise he made last fall to fund the legal bills of people treated unfairly by employers over their posts on X/Twitter.      

“As a sign of X Corp’s commitment to free speech, we’re proud to provide financial support for Gina Carano’s lawsuit, empowering her to seek vindication of her free speech rights on X and the ability to work without bullying, harassment, or discrimination,” said Joe Benarroch, X’s head of business operations.  

Carano announced her lawsuit on X on Tuesday: 

After my 20 years of building a career from scratch, and during the regime of former Disney CEO Bob Chapek, Lucasfilm made this statement on Twitter, terminating me from The Mandalorian: “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm & there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural & religious identities are abhorrent & unacceptable.”    

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” explained the MMA fighter turned actress. “The truth is I was being hunted down from everything I posted to every post I liked because I was not in line with the acceptable narrative of the time. My words were consistently twisted to demonize & dehumanize me as an alt right wing extremist. It was a bullying smear campaign aimed at silencing, destroying & making an example out of me.”      

“Artists do not sign away our rights as American citizens when we enter into employment,” she added.  

The 59-page civil suit, which was filed in California federal court, begins with a clever, iconic Star Wars-style introduction:  

A short time ago in a galaxy not so far away, Defendants made it clear that only one orthodoxy in thought, speech, or action was acceptable in their empire, and that those who dared to question or failed to fully comply would not be tolerated. And so it was with Carano. After two highly acclaimed seasons on The Mandalorian as Rebel ranger Cara Dune, Carano was terminated from her role as swiftly as her character’s peaceful home planet of Alderaan had been destroyed by the Death Star in an earlier Star Wars film. And all this because she dared voice her own opinions, on social media platforms and elsewhere, and stood up to the online bully mob who demanded her compliance with their extreme progressive ideology.

Defendants’ wrath over their employees’ social media posts also differed depending on sex. Even though “the Force is female,” Defendants chose to target a woman while looking the other way when it came to men. While Carano was fired, Defendants took no action against male actors who took equally or more vigorous and controversial positions on social media.

But the rule of law still reigns over the Defendants’ empire. And Carano has returned to demand that they be held accountable for their bullying, discriminatory, and retaliatory actions—actions that inflicted not only substantial emotional harm, but millions of dollars in lost income.

The lawsuit cites many examples of appalling social media posts by other Disney/Lucasfilm personalities that went unaddressed and unpunished:  

In several social media posts, original Star Wars star Mark Hamill made comparisons of Americans who support President Trump with Nazis while also asserting that Trump is the KKK’s candidate. 

Co-star Pedro Pascal, who played the role of the Mandalorian, often expressed positive views on the Black Lives Matter movement, LGBTQ+ rights, and protests for abortion rights. He also compared Trump to Hitler.  During Pride Month, 2020, he posted two Disney-owned Muppet characters, Bert and Ernie, drawn as activists waving a transgender and LGBTQ+ pride flag and promoting “Black Lives Matter” and “Defund the Police.”  

Co-star Pedro Pascal’s June 27, 2020 social media post. Schaerr-Jaffe LLP court filing on behalf of Gina Carano

Disney even rehired Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn in 2019 after terminating him in 2018 for horrific social media posts years earlier such as “I like when little boys touch me in my silly place,” and “The Expendables was so manly I ****d the ***t out of the little pussy boy next to me! The boys ARE back in town!”  

Yet Disney failed to offer to reinstate Carano, and turned a blind eye to Hamill’s and Pascal’s offensive posts.  

“I would love to pick up where I left off & continue my journey of creating & participating in story-telling, which is my utmost passion & everything I worked so hard for,” said Carano on Tuesday.  “It has been difficult to move forward with the lies & labels stuck on me, backed & encouraged by the most powerful entertainment company in the world.”  

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