Live Music Nightly

Blues at The Cove Series 2023/24 (SEE FULL ROSTER AT BOTTOM!!!)

Did you say Blues at…The Cove? Yes! Well, you knew that! For 17 incredible years of music, laughter, community and overall great times, Blues on the Rideau has been one of the longest running Blues music series in Canada!

Thanks to the team of James Doran and his wife Diane Leduc-Doran and their Choose the Blues Productions, thousands of ecstatic Blues and live music fans have flocked to The Cove Inn to enjoy evenings of all-out dancing to Canada’s greatest JUNO and Maple Blues Award winning Blues acts. We thank them for all of those years of partnership and honour them by dedicating the 2023/24 Series to them as we transition to Blues at The Cove, highlighting some of the best of the series of the years!

Imagine a warm, intimate venue setting in a historic waterside inn on the Rideau Canal featuring a tasty buffet dinner and a donation to a local charity and you have Blues at The Cove! Join us for the new season!

Call us 613.273.3636 or email thecoveinnwestport@gmail.com for reservations!

18th Season of Live Blues at The Cove Inn!

 Dinner, Show + Charity $100 +HST

Includes delicious full course buffet style dinner with served dessert, door prizes, dancing and donation to local charity.

Doors 6pm

Dinner 7pm

Show Sets 8:30-9:30pm + 10-11pm

ADVANCE RESERVATIONS REQUIRED
Call 613-273-3636 or email thecoveinnwestport@gmail.com 

BOOK EARLY! – ESPECIALLY IF YOU WANT TO STAY OVERNIGHT
(Well priced accommodation at The Cove, nearby B&B, AirBnb and Westport Station Motel)
MOST SHOWS SELL OUT WELL AHEAD OF SHOW DATES. The earlier you reserve the better the choice of seating location.

We look forward to seeing everyone again soon for another GREAT season Blues at The Cove

Co-Sponsored by: 

Black Dog Inn, Westport www.whatsonwestport.ca/profile/the-black-dog-inn/

Gristmill Place, Westport www.thegristmillplace.com

Upper Rideau B&B, Westport www.urbb.ca

Lake 88.1, Perth www.lake88.ca

Perth Brewery, Perth www.perthbrewery.ca

Rosehall Run Vineyards, Wellington www.rosehallrun.com

Village Green, www.facebook.com/villagegreenltd/

Kingston Sound Works www.kingstonsoundworks.com

To keep up to date on everything at the Cove, including Blues at The Cove, please join our Mailing List www.coveinn.com/mailinglist. Thanks and we look forward to seeing you again soon and keeping in touch!

Friday, April 19

Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar (Toronto)

 www.samanthamartinmusic.com

I’ve Got a Feeling – Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar (Official Video)

Proceeds from this show go to support Kick in for Kids of Rideau District High School

SAMANTHA MARTIN (From www.samanthamartinmusic.com)

“A POWERHOUSE BAND AND VOCALS THAT SHAKE THE FOUNDATIONS”

With the worldwide pandemic wrecking utter havoc upon the careers of many musicians, Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar elected to use their time off the road to record, mix and master their latest tour-de-force, the astonishingly powerful, funky and deeply soulful The Reckless One.

The follow up to 2018’s Juno-nominated Run To Me, The Reckless One represents another massive step forward for Samantha Martin as a songwriter, singer, arranger and band leader. Eleven of the album’s twelve songs were either co-written or solely composed by the multi-talented, multi-faceted artist. The one non-original, a funk infused cover of Bob Dylan’s “Meet Me in the Morning,” fuses Dylan’s lyric in a cataclysmic clash with the sensibilities of the Meters and the hurricane force of Howlin’ Wolf and Tina Turner at their rawest. It simply has to be heard to be believed.

Produced by Darcy Yates and Renan Yildizdogan, The Reckless One demonstrably builds on the strengths of Samantha Martin and Delta Sugar’s last album. Martin’s lyrics, set to a panoply of intoxicating, ear worm melodies, tend to focus on the vicissitudes of love: desire, disappointment and, when everything works out, emotional and sexual satisfaction. The album’s twelve tracks cover a lot of ground, including 12/8 gospel infused soul ballads such as “I’ve Got a Feeling” and “Better to Have Never,” funk inflected tracks like “Love is All Around,” stomping four-on-the-floor dance numbers epitomized by “Don’t Have To Be” and the Wall of Sound influenced “Sacrifice.” Over the course of the album the discerning listener will detect a panoply of influences ranging from Mavis Staples, Sharon Jones and Otis Redding to Booker T. and the MG’s and the Memphis Horns. One track, “All That I Am,” is even slightly reminiscent of early 70s Emotions.

Martin’s first recording was an EP entitled Fade, issued in 2004. A year later she moved to Toronto and in 2008 released her debut full length album, Back Home. The eponymously titled Samantha Martin & The Haggard followed in 2012 before Martin decided to form the gospel and soul-based Delta Sugar. 

Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar’s debut release, 2015’s Send the Nightingale, was a stripped-down affair consisting of Martin, her two co-singers, and two guitars. For 2018’s Run to Me, Martin elected to record her emotionally wrought material with an expanded band, augmenting the core of Delta Sugar’s gospel-infused harmonies with a full rhythm section, piano, organ and an ever-so-soulful horn section. The Reckless One continues in the same trajectory, further expanding the palate of sounds with vibes, mellotron, Wurlitzer, Hammond and Farfisa organs plus strings.

Send the Nightingale was a stunning achievement which garnered four Maple Blues nominations in 2016, was regularly featured on the CBC, topped the blues charts on Stingray radio and propelled the group onto the stages of all the major Canadian festivals and clubs coast to coast. Subsequent to the album’s release, Martin was nominated three years in a row as Female Vocalist of the Year at the Maple Blues Awards. Continuing to build on the group’s steam rolling momentum, in 2019 Run To Me garnered another four Maples Blues nominations, a Juno nomination (Canada’s Grammy Awards) and paved the way for Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar’s assault on European club and concert stages. Starting with a blitzkrieg attack consisting of 42 club dates in six weeks in early 2019, three tours and a year later the group was being booked at a number of major European festivals.

Martin is the lead singer, songwriter and focal point of the group. A dynamic front woman, she possesses a stunning voice that is capable of summoning up tidal waves of spine-tingling emotion in one instance while delicately bringing out the nuances of a gut-wrenching lyric in the next. A torrid force of nature, night after night she takes audiences to emotional peaks while leaving them stunned with her sheer pin-you-against-the-wall power.

While Martin is a powerhouse unto herself, the vocal alchemy of Delta Sugar is not the work of a single talent. In combination with what she likes to term her “co-vocalists,” the vocal blend that Delta Sugar produces is pure, unadulterated gospel-tinged, neuron-tingling magic where the sum is even richer than the already soul-melting parts.

The first single from Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar’s stunning new album, The Reckless One, is a four-on-floor stomping dance track entitled “Don’t Have To Be.” Sporting a melody that will have listeners singing along, the track features swirling Booker T-inspired organ, a swaggering horn line and Samantha Martin’s trademark hurricane-force vocals. Irresistibly catchy, the song has been filling dance floors every night since she started performing it.

Blues at The Cove Series 2023/24

FULL ROSTER