Thursday, April 24 • 8 PM
Market Hall PAC
Colin Linden’s life story reads like a Coen brothers script—equal parts myth, music, and the occasional guitar-fueled epiphany. In fact, he played on the soundtracks of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Inside Llewyn Davis, which means if Hollywood ever made a film about his life, it would already have a killer soundtrack and a suspicious number of beards.
The movie would kick off with a wide-eyed 11-year-old Colin meeting his blues idol, Howlin’ Wolf, at a matinee in Toronto. He wasn’t alone—his mom tagged along, armed with a camera and mom-level audacity. The bluesman and the boy chatted for nearly two hours while Wolf sipped coffee, puffed on cigarettes, and casually passed the torch of the Delta blues with the kind of gravitas normally reserved for Jedi masters: “I’m an old man now, and I won’t be around much longer. It’s up to you to carry it on.”
Fast-forward a few decades, and Colin’s still carrying that mission—along with the original photo in his wallet and a Sears 5/8” socket wrench in his pocket (because apparently, the blues runs on Home Hardware). He took Wolf’s words to heart, hitting the road at 12 and leaving home soon after, apprenticing under delta legend Sam Chatmon. His musical pilgrimage led him through Detroit, Chicago, Memphis, and just about every juke joint between here and the Mississippi Delta, collecting blues lore like most people collect fridge magnets.
Over a 45-year career, he’s worked with everyone from Bruce Cockburn and Bob Dylan to Rhiannon Giddens and the Pistol Annies—basically, if you can name them, he’s played with them, produced them, or at least borrowed a pick.
