LOVE YOU, BUDDY: Ben Sures remembers Harpdog Brown
We may pay our respects to the late Harpdog Brown on what would’ve been his 60th birthday – through one of his favourite bandmates: Ben Sures – who plays live on Jan. 28 at the Elks Lodge in Red Deer, which happens to be Ben’s second show to support his new album, The Story That Lived Here. The two had played that venue together before.
Harpdog died suddenly on Jan. 7, 2022 at his home in Lacombe, Alberta. It’s been clear ever since what a wide swath he cut through the Canadian blues scene. Love him or not, he certainly was a charismatic character! Ben puts it nicely, “He was very puzzling to me initially. I have spent my life trying to find my authenticity whereas Harpdog spent his life inventing and essentially becoming Harpdog. On some levels I would say we both arrived to the same place.”
Ben and Dog played together off and on since they met in the early ’90s – as Ben tells it, “I basically took over the audition calling songs from his set list. He was impressed and recognized my knowledge of blues music and old fashioned way of playing. That was the same house where I sat in with him and Sugar Blue. Harpdog kept rolling and lighting fatties and I got to play old blues music with the harp player the Stones recorded with! I just needed a gig that would get me back to Winnipeg and I didn’t have the fare for the Greyhound, but it turned into a few decades of a great musical relationship.”
In classic form, Dog took Ben into his circle and blues-branded him “Charlie Trouble.” Dog always cultivated the best players. Ben’s name in Yiddish literally means “Son of Trouble.”
“He was family to me,” says Sures. “I used to find him exasperating when I measured my life being Harpdog’s guitar player, but later on as we both matured I was happy to have been part of the journey with him, and looked forward to every gig.”
He goes on, “He was a champion of Canadian blues. He loved to talk it up on stage. He was proud of his original songs and the songs that he covered by his friends. He had slogans he would say to the audience, for instance with his tumbler of scotch and ice held high in the air he would belt into the microphone, with sweeping vocalization, ‘When the Dog drinks, everybody drinks!’ He really evolved emotionally in the last decade or so, becoming more affectionate, and appreciative of his musician friends, he genuinely appreciated all those he had worked with and known for a long time, signing off his emails and conversations with, ‘love you, buddy.'”
This must be a weird time for Sures, who wants to draw attention to his brilliant and sad new album The Story That Lived Here, being released on Jan. 21. Yet various media (like this) have been focusing mainly on his relationship with Harpdog. It’s almost as if he’s being upstaged, one last time.
Ben’s new music lives up to expectations. In a comfy folk combo vein replete with mando and fiddle, No One Will Remember You is a stand-out. As for the sentiment: Sure, it may be true but does it help in day-to-day life? It does not. Doomy moody themes also prevail in End of the World, the perfect pandemic song to open the record. Also probably true in some cases is Boring People, asking the rhetorical question, “Are we just boring people that do boring things for kicks?” Again, we don’t think about it. Flashes of joyful remembrance like Library Ladies and Father’s Shoes flesh out yet another deep, honest, and musically-satisfying collection from one of the kings of Alberta folk music. Who also just happens to play a mean blues guitar – and stands in a long, illustrious list of Harpdog Brown’s chosen musician friends.
Details on Sures’ upcoming Alberta tour behind the new album can be found here.
Photo by Mike Bradford (at the Elks Lodge, Oct. 30, 2021)
