Blackie and the Rodeo Kings

It was in late fall 1995 that Canadian roots icon Colin Linden, Tom Wilson, then lead singer and songwriter of Canadian rock heroes Junkhouse, and Stephen Fearing, the Irish-Canadian poet laureate of Canadian folk music, first came together in the basement of Linden’s Toronto apartment. The somewhat disparate threesome were all long-time fans of the criminally unsung Ontario-based singer-songwriter Willie P. Bennett. What brought them together on that chilly evening was they were starting rehearsals and pre-production for what was planned as a one-off tribute album that would shine a light on the wonderful body of work that Willie P. Bennett had written over the course of his two decade career.