Ken Wallis Chats With Chuck Jackson About The Tim Horton's Southside Blues & Jazz Festival
- Ken Wallis
- 34 minutes ago
- 4 min read
The Southside Shuffle is entering its 27th year and it’s been honoured as one of Ontario’s top festivals numerous times. Chuck Jackson founded the festival in 1999 with just four headliners, The Legendary Downchild Blues Band, Fathead, Jack de Keyzer, Jake & The Blue Midnights, plus 33 bands throughout the village. Over the years, the festival has featured an estimated 5,000 bands and more than 20,000 musicians.
Ken Wallis interviewed Chuck Jackson for the radio show BluesSource Canada. The following are excerpts from that interview, edited and amended for clarity and brevity.
Photo Credit: Ken Wallis.
Ken Wallis
The 27th Annual Tim Horton's Southside Blues and Jazz Festival is just around the corner, September 5th, 6th, and 7th. It takes place in Memorial Park in Port Credit and joining us is founder and Artistic Director, Chuck Jackson. Chuck, how are you doing today?
Chuck Jackson
I'm doing great my friend.
Ken Wallis
It just seemed like yesterday that we were talking about the 26th annual festival and all of a sudden we're onto the 27th. That leads me to think that you've probably been working for a whole year on this festival.
Chuck Jackson
We certainly have and you know, we're really proud that this year it's an all-Canadian show. We've got so much great talent here in Canada that it's just going to be, I think one of our best.
Ken Wallis
When do you start working on the next festival? I mean, is it right after the other one wraps?
Chuck Jackson
Pretty much, we end up doing our party for the volunteers and we have to do all our bookkeeping and stuff like that. And we start to go after grants for the following year. I usually start booking and getting ideas in the new year. So it's pretty much an all year-round thing.
Ken Wallis
And you do some very special things to promote the festival. The Beggar's Banquet comes to mind, but this year you had a contest for the audience to guess who the big Friday night act will be.
Chuck Jackson
And we had good response to that. We had to wait until mid-July to announce and we had a lot of guesses. Everybody was trying to bribe me to let me tell them who they were so they could win free tickets. I told them, I'll give you a hint we booked Paul and Ringo. But we're waiting to see if the other guys could join in or not.
Ken Wallis
I love it. Oh, that's really funny.
Chuck Jackson
But yeah, it’s The Sheepdogs and we're happy to have them. We have The Sheepdogs headlining on Friday, we have Big Sugar on Saturday and of course, the Hogtown All-Stars extra large on Sunday.
Ken Wallis
Hogtown and not Downchild closing out the festival, but really it's still basically Downchild in many ways. So it's going to be a new tradition started.
Chuck Jackson
Yes, it is. There are five members of Downchild playing in the band. We've added Teddy Leonard, who everybody knows from Fathead, a Juno award winner, we've added Cheryl Lescom and Quisha Wint to do background vocals. And we've added Allison Young to join the Horn section, which already consists of Pat Carey and Howard Moore. So it's going to be a big show and we will be honouring Downchild. We'll be doing some Downchild songs that I wrote and some off Gary Kendall’s tunes that he wrote for Downchild. And of course, a whole bunch of Hogtown All Stars songs from our album, Hog Wild.
Ken Wallis
So tell our audience a little bit about what goes on. You've got more than one stage going.
Chuck Jackson
Yeah, we have. We have 3 stages at the Memorial Park. Of course we have the main stage for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, over 50 acts playing on the stage. Then we have the Liuna Street Shuffle on Saturday afternoon, which is free and we have about 20 bands playing on the street and in the bars and restaurants in Port Credit. So basically we have over 100 bands playing over the weekend.
Ken Wallis
That's amazing when you think about it, the organization that must go into selecting those bands and signing them up must be huge. And Chuck, do you handle most of that?
Chuck Jackson
I pretty much do all of it. Some of the bars hire their own, but I'd certainly give suggestions and help out with some of their bookings because some of the clubs like Roc’n'Doc’s and Shore and places like that, have music all weekend all year round. But some of the other clubs don't. So they need assistance sometimes.
Ken Wallis
Where would folks go to find more information about the schedule and tickets and everything else?
Chuck Jackson
You can go to southsideshuffle.ca. Our full program is on the website that you can download and of course we'll have programs at the event. Jeff Jones is responsible for that. It's a full colour program. of about 60 pages. And what we ask people, when they go to our website, you can subscribe to our newsletter and you'll get more information all year round as we're doing other events throughout the year.
Ken Wallis
The other thing that's always struck me every time I go to this festival is the number of volunteers that are there working.
Chuck Jackson
Our volunteers and our Board of Directors, who are also volunteers, work all year around. Altogether we have about 300 volunteers and a lot of them have been with me for the 27 years. We were all young people back then.
Ken Wallis
Hey, as long as you're having fun, you're young. That's my philosophy.
Chuck Jackson
The music keeps everybody together. The volunteers love it. They get to meet new people, they make friendships over the years, becoming a volunteer. They find out more about other events, like Kitchener and Orangeville.
Ken Wallis
Well, again, September 5, 6 and 7th, the 27th annual Tim Horton's, Southside Blues and Jazz Festival, can't wait to be there. Chuck, thank you so much for your time. We'll see you that weekend.
Chuck Jackson
Thanks, Ken. And we always enjoy your help with everything that you do for the Blues and total respect from here my friend.
Ken Wallis
Thank you. I'm honoured.
