When Mark Sterling brings his love for the blues to Red Deer, he’ll be tipping his hat to the masters.
Not just Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson, but also Jimi Hendrix, Bill Withers and others who were influenced by the early Mississippi Delta blues.
Sterling said he was always impressed by the music’s raw honesty. Original blues artists, such as Waters and Johnson “weren’t trying to be big stars,” he said, and their music wasn’t recorded as a commercial venture but by documentarians who were capturing it for posterity.
“It was unconscious. Real artists were playing it and what always appealed to me is how relevant it is,” said Sterling, who performs on Saturday, March 26, at The Matchbox.
The Edmonton-based singer/songwriter is probably best known for playing guitar with the mid-1990s Juno-nominated folk band Hemingway Corner — a group he still performs with occasionally.
Although he’s dabbled in a lot of different musical styles, Sterling said he keeps returning to the blues, finally recording a whole album of it in 2008, called Take From It What You Need.
Eight out of the 12 songs are Sterling’s own, including I Should Have Seen It Coming and Step Into the Light.
The former, done in the Delta blues style of Waters or Johnson, is about anything that catches you by surprise — but shouldn’t, said Sterling. “It could be about a relationship or it might be about something else. I don’t like to write too literal. I like to write more ambiguously, in metaphors.”
Sterling said the latter was inspired by his blues hero, John Hammond, for whom he had a chance to perform it in 2003. “I told him he was the influence for the song, and he said, ‘That’s so nice’. . . It really made my day.”
Sterling likes to think of himself as a conduit, of sorts, introducing new generations of listeners to a musical form that originated a century ago.
While many people assume the blues is The Blues Brothers style of R&B, Sterling likes to correct that impression.
“I like the real old-time guys, who are more related to folk singers. There was no pretentiousness to what they did, they were just singing their songs.”
For someone whose formative years were spent in the 1980s, with its over-produced music, Sterling said the scratchy imperfection of early Delta blues records carried much appeal. “They are like discovering a great black-and-white movie.”
Besides performing his original songs, Sterling plans to play a wide variety of blues, including some selections from Hendrix, Withers and other artists who performed “right up into the ’70s.”
Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. concert are $27.50 from The Matchbox box office.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com