Artist:     Jim Dan Dee

Album:     Jim Dan Dee

Label:     Self Released

Release Date:     10.19.2018

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The blues and rock saxophone is usually a lead instrument. It’s perfect for solos and for sweetening a chorus, only to recede into the background when the need has passed. Canadian blues/rock band Jim Dan Dee sees another opportunity, though, using the sweet sax of Jason “Bobby” Sewerynek to fatten their rhythms. The result is familiar-sounding blues-influenced rock with a surprisingly dark, haunting sound on their self-titled debut album.

For instance, “When You Move Like That There” has the classic “Boom Boom” John Lee Hooker beat, but the addition of Sewerynek’s sax, playing along with the guitar, gives the track a huge, thick sound. But it also gives Jim Dan Dee a different sound, which can be hard to carve out of a genre that relies on so many classic riffs. Also helping things is how well Sewerynek blends with the delightfully ragged guitar of singer/guitarist Jim Stefanuk. When the two are locked in, they create a freight train of rhythm. However each has ample time to showcase their solo talents, too.

Stefanuk’s guitar solos share a mania with Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. The off-kilter nature of his solos, and of many of the band’s rhythms, give some of the tracks a fun, sea-sick sway. “Killer,” with its dizzying slide guitar riff is a perfect example of this, as is “Walkin’ Shoes,” a spacey blues.

The blues came out of the American South, but British bands, like the Rolling Stones and Zeppelin, took it in a different direction. Perhaps it’s appropriate, in a globalist way, that a Canadian band finds a new sonic texture using classic instrumentation. Jim Dan Dee haven’t reinvented blues rock but they have an interesting take on it.

—Steven Ovadia