GRAMMY Award-winning songwriter, guitarist and producer.
Linden’s latest solo album, bLOW, the first outside artist on longtime friend Lucinda Williams’ Highway 20 label distributed by Nashville-based Thirty Tigers, is his 14th in 40 years, but first electric blues release. The title song comes from being stuck inside a flimsy motel after a casino gig somewhere in Oklahoma or Texas as a tornado was about to hit, waiting for the walls to cave in, with his wife, the novelist Janice Powers, providing not only the opening verse quoted above, but the gurgling Hammond B3 organ left to him by his former bandmate, the late Richard Bell, played, in her own words, “like a deranged church lady.”
With a full schedule that includes fronting his other band, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Linden hasn’t missed a beat during Covid, recording tracks in his 1,000 square-foot, standalone home studio in his backyard, dubbed Pinhead Recorders. The new album features contributions from his lifelong Toronto collaborators, drummer Gary Craig and bassist John Dymond (the three refer to themselves as the Rotting Matadors), as well as Dave Jaques, a former member of John Prine’s band, on bass and Paul Griffiths on drums, who worked on the tracks originally for the movie. The album cover features a picture of Linden at age 22 onstage enraptured in the moment. (Linden says bLOW is the type of album he would have made if the era allowed).
The album’s title came from a drawing of an imaginary album cover done by his young nephew many years ago. Colin claimed, “I figured I’d wait until the right music came along to use the title... and this is it!”
