For almost twenty years, The Mighty Duck Blues Band has thrilled Niagara audiences with their Saturday afternoon blues. The gigs feature veteran blues artist guests from around Canada and the band has established itself as one of the most prolific ensembles in existence. The release, Duck Soup, featured the talent that audiences have come to expect on a regular Saturday afternoon basis.
Ken Wallis interviewed Gary Kendall for the radio show BluesSource Canada, which can be listened to on our podcast page here at The Sound Cafe.
The following are excerpts from that interview, edited and amended for brevity and clarity.
Ken Wallis
Gary Kendall
Ken Wallis
Gary Kendall
The band got started, I think about 2006. Some of us had been playing in a Niagara region band called Mojo Willie and Blues of Fire, and that was coming to an end. And Dave Curry, the late Dave Curry, was offered as he put it to me, he said I got a friend in St. Catharines who owns a bar called the Duck. Actually, it was called The Golden Pheasant. But nobody calls it that, they call it The Duck. And he wants us to come in the fall with a four-piece band of you and I, Jim Casson, and Canada Dave Torosian as a Saturday afternoon Blues series with special guests each week. And Dave asked me if I was interested, and a working musician never passes up the chance to have a residency gig.
So that's when we started. Dave was the instigator and the founder of that band. Sadly, we lost him in December of 2023, but he's the one who tagged the band as The Mighty Duck Blues Band, and he and I, Jim Casson and Dave Torosian started that off with bringing in different special guests. Canada Dave Torosian retired in 2021 from music and was replaced by Lorraine Ingle on keys. And as mentioned, we lost Dave Curry in December of 2023.
We're still very close to Denise Curry, she was an integral part of the Mighty Duck movement, along with Dave. I mean, it was Dave and Denise, and I look at it as their band. And now we have the Dave Curry Memorial Music Fund. We did give a bursary to a graduating student from Laura Secord High School. And Teddy Leonard had been Daves's sub whenever Dave couldn't make it to the gig so Teddy obviously became the new guitarist. And so now the band is myself, Jim Cason, the original rhythm section with Teddy Leonard on guitar and Lorraine Ingle on keyboards. And we have a fabulous line up of special guests coming up.
Kicking off on October 26th we have Jerome Godboo, and then followed by rockin’ Johnny Bergun from Chicago. Bill Durst is coming , Johnny Max, Spencer MacKenzie. Mightyduckbluesband.com has the full list on there.
Ken Wallis
Gary Kendall
There are no advanced tickets. Just show up at the door at Joe Blo’s Rock and Wok, in St. Catharines. It's on 2 Pelham Road, very easy to find just by going to our website or by checking us out on Facebook. We have a Facebook group that you can join and follow us there, and we'll always do weekly updates on who the guest is that week. And then of course, we have our complete poster that is published regularly with the full lineup from now until January 1st. Somewhere around early December, we'll start working on the New Year. We know we have a couple of things in the New Year already in place. Our Mardi Gras party and of course we always do at St. Patrick's Day party with Johnny Max. We'll go right up into the middle of May. We always stopped the weekend before the holiday weekend in May. This year we've condensed it a little bit, it's a shorter series now and we're starting later. We've dropped Boxing Day show to give everybody a day off over Christmas. We've kept our New Year's Day show. We used to do a Thursday before Good Friday gig but we're not doing that show any longer, but we're keeping St. Patrick's Day and the Mardi Gras party for the special events, along with New Year's Day, where, as mentioned, Chuck Jackson will be with us.
Ken Wallis
Gary Kendall
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