It often takes decades for an artist to really get the feel for the blues as a distinct style of music that sounds better when it’s a little loose, and Alberta’s Blue Moon Marquee has put in the hard miles required to get that feel just right.

With four full-length records and thousands of miles of highway in their rearview, Blue Moon Marquee returns to Alberta with multiple accolades from throughout the Canadian blues community to their credit, and their fresh full-length, New Orleans Sessions, a record that has the sound and feel of another era, some kind of chitlin barrelhouse freestyle on the road to a new life in Chicago. Blue Moon Marquee gets it just right, the sauntering, steamy heel drag of the smoky, dimly lit barroom, and the jump and swing of the big bandstand, swaying and shuffling while the moon hangs low over the riverside.

Theatrical and energetic, the road-honed sound of Blue Moon Marquee represents a vintage era of the blues—before histrionics took away from the feel—when all it took was a jumpy groove, some sultry charm, and a bourbon-coated voice to shake up the floorboards.

- Mike Dunn