BLACKFOOT – Strikes Toronto!

BLACKFOOT – Strikes Toronto!


By Martin Popoff

Florida rock legends BLACKFOOT recently tore up Toronto, playing the up and coming The Rockpile club in the west end of the city, a perfectly laid-out, intimate venue (with a prison theme!) that will likely be seeing much more action in ’11 as spring and summer kick in.

Bravewords.com caught up with bassist and founding member Greg T. Walker shortly before the band hit the stage and by all accounts, things are busy for the boys.

“We are scheduling dates right now,” begins Walker. “The end of March, we’ll still be in the states, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, 26th, 27th, that run, and the very next day I believe is a Monday. I’m not sure about these dates - I’m thinking it’s the 28th - we fly to Oslo and do a cruise, board the ship Tuesday and play Tuesday night. Now, we’re not going to complete the whole thing. It docks in Kiel, Germany, so we’ll get out there and drive to Hamburg and fly to Spain, and we’re just going to stay there for about 2 ½ weeks. We’ve got five dates in Finland and a couple in Spain, France, and we’ve got a couple one-offs in like Belgium; several in Holland. I’m not sure how many at this point. There are a couple of other packages that people are offering us, like seven shows.”

Somewhat surprisingly, it seems that southern rock is a universal language. “Yes, well, even a long time ago, especially in Central Europe, there was a lot of kids waving the rebels flags, the miniatures,” notes Greg. “I never noticed anything out of contrast, if you will. It looked like you were in Macon, Georgia. No, it’s been great, and they are still doing that, and they are very loyal, the fans there. I mean they are here too, of course, but the Europeans tend to adopt you for life, if they like you. If they don’t, that’s too bad (laughs).”




Do you do they almost treat you guys as representatives of American culture?

“Well I think they treat most American bands that way. The same way we did when the British invasion took off, when we were growing up. There’s just something about… it didn’t matter how good a band they were, if they were from England, they were cool. But probably, yes. If you’re going to categorize a certain genre of music, from America, southern rock might be among the top - that stands out.”

And for some reason, France seems to really be into southern rock… “Yeah, yeah, they’ve got a magazine, Bands Of Dixie; I know those guys. And there are bands over here that go over there, and they wouldn’t draw very well in this part of the world, but go over there, and they’re like big, huge.”

Asked about any plans or even inclinations toward a new record, Greg figures, “Always, yeah, of course. We continue to write, all the time - that’s just what musicians do. And on occasion we throw a new song into the set, and see what kind of response it gets. If it gets really great response, we’ll keep it. If not, we’ll pull it and try another one on another night. Yep, of course, we always continue to write. Who knows? One of these days…”




Blackfoot’s set later on the night demonstrated all too clearly that even though they were charged with executing a club gig, this was a band fully capable of carving up arena rock audiences with the likes of THE WHO back in those heady heavy metal times for the boys from Jacksonville.

“That was certainly among the best,” reminisces Walker. “The Who, DEEP PURPLE… I mean, both those bands treated us like we were really something, you know what I mean? AC/DC, another band like that - world-class band. We were coming up through the ranks. You know, we were making some noise, we had some charted songs at the time, but the respect… One of the most fun tours we ever did was NAZARETH. Whoa, we just had a blast with them. Actually, we’ve tour with everybody at one time or another, and I don’t mean two or three nights, I mean tours. You know, 30 to 40 dates, 55, 60 dates, and it was incredible. And I don’t think we’ll ever see that again. You know, I really don’t, unfortunately – and I miss it. I miss not being able to get on the bus. I want to be out for nine months (laughs).”

For more info on Blackfoot visit Blackfootrocks.com.