Ethan Askey & The Elevators release “Big Bad Bossman,” the spirited third single from their forthcoming album Outside the Lines, out now. The upbeat blues shuffle takes aim at every petty tyrant who ever mistook control for strength. Ethan wrote the lyric about a universal figure, any bully or leader whose insecurity and self-regard gets in the way of good living. Anyone can relate to the song about power dynamics and reclaiming your footing, set to a rhythm that refuses to sit still.
While it is the second track in the album sequence, the single is a good entry point for the album as it wears its blues lineage proudly. “Big Bad Bossman” stands squarely in the footprint of blues pioneer Jimmy Reed. Driven by frontman Ethan’s baritone vocals and tasty harmonica blowing, the song also features Keith Larsen’s explosive guitar playing over a locomotive rhythm section of drummer Ben Dunn and bassist Mike Honeyman, who keep the groove rolling.
The previous single release, “Zamboni Girl”, is another song written with a sense of humour and fun, and which also manages to pay respect to the blues masters by invoking several by name even though the subject matter of the song relates to ice hockey.
The singles land in good company on Outside the Lines, with its 11 original tracks that reach into folk, funk, swing and varying shades of blues. While the song compositions by Ethan and Keith are diverse in texture and delivery, Ethan’s thoughtful lyrics have threads running between them all: there are consistent themes of community, honouring others, finding inspiration in people and places, and squeezing life a little for the sweetest juice. His is a voice of someone who’s lived more than a little, reflected a lot, and who cares for others. At his most somber, Ethan offers us “Freakshow” (closing Side A of the vinyl release) which he describes as “a meditation on mindfulness in a dark time of doublethink”. Most joyfully, he describes the vibes of an annual roots and blues music gathering on Canada’s west coast in “My Heart Explodes”, with that song dedicated to the late, great Tim Williams.
The album’s roots run all the way to the source. A catalyst for the record was a January 2023 Road trip Ethan and Keith made through Mississippi and Tennessee, timed to the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, where the two northern souls soaked up dozens of bands, played some music, and reconnected with the spiritual birthplace of rhythm and blues. That journey sparked their songwriting partnership and is captured in the album’s earlier single “Clarksdale”.
To finish the album, Ethan and Keith travelled east from the Rockies to Ganaraska Recording Co., the Ontario farmhouse studio owned by Blue Rodeo guitarist Jimmy Bowskill, where multiple Juno Award winner Steve Marriner came aboard to mix the album and do some of the recording there. In that farmhouse setting, Ethan recalled magic happening: “The last time Suzie and Jared and I were together we shared the Baltic Blues festival stage in northern Germany, then at Ganaraska we picked up right where we’d left off.”
Venerated roots and blues artist Suzie Vinnick and rising talent Jared Sowan contributed powerful vocals to the almost gospel-tinged “Purpose,” a prayer for a life on this earth. The album title track and closer, “Outside the Lines,” has an entirely different feel from the rest of the album as it was captured at Ganaraska using just two vintage microphones on the stripped-down acoustic trio of Ethan, Keith and Steve.
This album displays an evolution in songwriting and thematic intent since Ethan’s 2022 solo debut, Walk When You Wanna Run, an independent release he created with studio musicians that earned steady radio play and the distinction of spending 150 weeks on the roots and blues charts worldwide. This new album reflects the chemistry of band members who collaborate with the ease of old friends. Ethan Askey & The Elevators may be just out of the gate together, but they carry decades of shared history: Ethan, Keith, Ben and Mike had performed together more than 20 years ago in other bands and on local festival stages before life sent them their separate ways. Now living near one another again, voilà! the band.
