Teenaged bluesman Jimmy Bowskill has already recorded with Jeff Healey and jammed with Dickey Betts

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON APRIL 30, 2008

By Steve Newton

The blues-rock world lost one of its most unique stylists with the passing of Toronto guitar wizard Jeff Healey in March. Before he moved on to that big jam in the sky, the 41-year-old accomplished great things, including discovering a young guitarist from Peterborough named Jimmy Bowskill. Bowskill was just 11 years old when Healey heard him busking on the sidewalk outside a Toronto watering hole.

“Someone told us there was like a regular jam there every Thursday,” remembers Bowskill, on the line from a tour stop in the B.C. interior. “My dad called ahead and asked if I could get in to do some jamming and they said, ‘No, your son’s 11 years old, and it’s a bar.’ But I wanted to meet Jeff anyways, so I went down and played out front. He came out and introduced himself, invited me in for a tune. It was awesome, man.”

Healey and Bowskill wound up trading licks on Robert Johnson’s “Kind Hearted Woman Blues”, and Healey would go on to play trumpet on Bowskill’s 2002 debut, Old Soul. Continuing his habit of sidling up to guitar heroes, Bowskill has also shared the stage with Dickey Betts of Allman Brothers fame.

“We were openin’ for him, and his guitar player, Dan Toler, heard our set,” he recalls. “We played ‘Southbound’, man. It was awesome.”

These days, not only is 17-year-old Bowskill jamming with the greats, he’s keeping up with his studies too. He’s finishing his final year at Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School’s integrated arts program where he’s made the honour roll.

“I have good teachers,” he says. “They shorten my workload.”

Nowadays, Bowskill and his high-school buddies are heavily into blues-based acts like Led Zeppelin and the Black Crowes, the influence of which can be heard on his new, self-titled release. As well as riff-driven blues-rock, the Jimmy Bowskill CD heads into Bob Marley territory with “Black Sea Star”, an original reggae tune inspired by a girl he met while touring in Ukraine.

His personal favourite on the disc is “Nine”, an acoustic instrumental he recorded on a nine-string guitar he fashioned out of an old Radio Shack six-string.

“I liked the vibe when I wrote that song,” he reports.

Bowskill–who plays an early (5 pm) show at the Yale on May 4–has also discovered the Les Paul legacy of former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green, whose “Rattlesnake Shake” is the CD’s sole cover. Other acts being played in the promising picker’s tour van include Freddie King, the Band, and Scottish folksinger Hamish Imlach.

“I was listening to him today,” says Bowskill of Imlach. “He did a tune called ‘The Klan’ that’s about the KKK and how evil they are, you know. It’s an amazing song, man.”

I’m pretty sure he meant to say “awesome” just then.

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