Garret T. Willie has earned his plaid, a doubly difficult task for a 23-year-old, and a triply difficult task in blues, a genre with a storied history and an ageing demographic. You need enough blue in your lungs to sing about, and enough grit between your fingernails that your hands can also sing through the guitar. Cutting his hands and teeth in the forestry industry, at his home of Alert Bay and Kingcome inlet off the coast of BC with ancestry in the Namgis and the Tlingit First Nation, he understands a hard day’s work, as well as the workday that begins after the first one ends, either studiously studying guitar, or creating and painting traditional wood carvings. Starting off his blues journey as a kid in his bedroom memorizing AC/DC riffs, Willie noticed patterns in the music, and traced them back to Chuck Berry and B.B. King. This historical music connection links the blues to the present where Willie is currently staging rippling, furious and punchy sounds that are reverent and researched.

Willie impress you? Certainly. He has carved a place for himself in the complicated canon of the blues, mapping the history to earn his authentic place in it, avoiding mimicking the distinct regional styles wherein he doesn’t have a connection.

— Liam Prost