Blue Moon Marquee will perform Saturday, July 26.

Few bands are as well-travelled as duo Blue Moon Marquee, having shaken the dance floors of juke joints throughout Canada, the United States and Europe with their energetic brand of jump blues. A lean and muscular operation, A.W. Cardinal and Jass Collette are true believers, having so thoroughly absorbed the sounds of classic blues styles that their performances and records often feel torn from a different time.

Their latest full-length album, New Orleans Sessions, finds the duo adding saxophone and piano with a live-off-the-floor feel full of swagger and vigour, lyrically elemental, finding the sweaty, smoky vibe of an old roadhouse. In 2025, they continued their streak of Juno Award wins for Blues Album Of The Year that began in 2024 with their previous release, 2022’s Scream, Holler & Howl. That album saw their years of hard touring and growth win them well-deserved acclaim with awards and nominations across the Canadian music industry. Scream, Holler & Howl swept multiple Maple Blues Awards categories.

Relentlessly energetic, Blue Moon Marquee keep it as real as it gets, playing a brand of blues that honours the roots of electric music: rowdy and sultry, smoky and whiskey-soaked. Blue Moon Marquee’s deeply authentic sound begs you to close your eyes for just a second and picture yourself in another time and place: a humid, barely-lit, tiny room, with two crooners around a single microphone driving the whole joint into a lather with wild abandon.

- Mike Dunn