Meet Canadian roots music artist Lester Quitzau, a mellow guy who throws down a heavy groove. In a field where intangibles like feel and integrity count for so much, Quitzau has forged an exemplary career.

What began with a solid blues apprenticeship in the funky working-class bars of Edmonton has grown into an eclectic and constantly evolving musical journey for the guitarist, singer, song-writer, composer and producer.

Whether he's coaxing languid, hypnotic sounds from his slide guitar in an intimate solo concert, or improvising freely with musical partners like Bill Bourne and Madagascar Slim, the Very Electric Trio, or his latest work with Mae Moore, a hard-won honesty underscores every note.

At seven years of age, held willingly captive to a daily onslaught of vinyl by his rocking older brother, Lester Quitzau developed a curious notion about the family stereo. He thought Led Zeppelin was actually inside. It turned out, of course, that skinny English rockers had not really taken up residence in the Quitzau living room. Still, there must have been something about those haunting guitars and swampy rhythms that helped Quitzau grow up to be the blues-rooted, obsessively creative musician he is today. Born to a Dutch mother and a Danish father on September 21, 1964, Lester grew up in the working-class north side of Edmonton, Alberta. Then a rapidly growing city of some 350,000, Edmonton might have had a blue-collar soul, but it always possessed a disproportionate interest in music, theatre and art.


His mother occasionally strummed an old Harmony guitar, and before long, Lester picked it up and taught himself his first song: Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water." Although he would come to be ridiculed by his Bay City Rollers-loving schoolmates, he stuck to his heavy roots. By 15, Lester had scraped up enough for his first electric guitar, a Les Paul copy. Each day after school his buddy hauled a drum kit in a shopping cart over to the Quitzau garage, where they would annoy the neighbors with unholy Rush covers well into the night.

Pure blues came later, around high school. It began when a hip friend turned him on to John Lee Hooker. "With a cool name like that," reasoned Lester, "it had to be good."Damned if it wasn't. But the major blues influence of Lester's young life came at a skanky, cinder-block hotel called the Ambassador, long a mecca for twelve-bar legends direct from Chicago as well as the tight, inventive groups that helped make blue-eyed blues a Canadian specialty-bands like Downchild Blues Band, Dutch Mason and David Wilcox.

Meanwhile, Lester worked at odd labor jobs and traveled sporadically. Musically frustrated, however, he eventually moved back to Edmonton and formed a trio called the Slippin' Lizards. They knocked together some Muddy Waters and Otis Rush, then worked their way up to a regular gig at another funky blues bar, The Commercial Hotel. "We played everything way too fast, but we had tons of energy. The audience really liked it, and because we always brought our north side posse, the bar loved us."

Lester's wild years, the early '80s, weren't utterly debauched. He also hooked up with Canadian snowboarding pioneer Ken Achenbach, and got heavily into the then-emerging sport. For a time, Lester was even a sponsored rider, meaning, in those primitive days, that he got the occasional free board. At the premier event of the 1985 season, the Mt. Baker Banked Slalom, Lester came fifth, not bad considering he was the only competitor without steel edges.


Being in a hard-partying bar band and commuting to the Rockies kind of wore Lester out. Luckily, he joined a mellower band in 1987. The Yard Dogs were older bluesmen who taught Lester about taste. More importantly, Lester was taken under the wing of bassist Farley Scott. "Farley was sort of like my Zen master," recalls Lester. "It wasn't just the licks and the business that he taught me. He got me out of the north end drinking scene, got me eating a macrobiotic diet, living healthy."

A half-decade as a Yard Dog was enough, though. In 1993, he and a girlfriend moved to the West Kootenay region of British Columbia, a place where the tradition of hippies moving back to the land is nearly as old as Lester himself. It was at that time that he wrote and recorded his first solo album, Keep On Walking. It was a classic collection of slide-inflected folk-blues, but it also revealed a rich voice and an undeniable songwriting talent. To support the record, Lester toured relentlessly throughout the mountainous province, barrelling down logging roads on his BMW R100 motorcycle, two guitars on his back and a saddlebag filled with CDs.

Lester began to work on his next album. If anybody expected a second chapter of mournful blues played on a Dobro, they would have been disappointed by 1996's A Big Love. Here was a completely new side of the musician: electric, eclectic, lushly produced, and shot through with gritty urban riffs. Lester made the album a total creative project by ignoring blues preconceptions and letting his own muse run free. Critics raved, but Lester was most surprised about the number of them who read it as a ground-breaking blues experiment. To Lester, it was simply a matter of loosening his musical imagination. If you want to call it blues, go ahead. "I've always liked the honesty of the blues," he says. "But for me, it's important to be about what's going on now, not some museum piece."

To that end, he spent much of the last few years touring on the North American folk festival circuit which, like Lester himself, has been steadily expanding its musical mandate. Whether as a solo act or with the Lester Quitzau Band that he formed to tour A Big Love (Andy Graffiti, Brett Miles, Cris Byrne, Rob Vause and Jason Cairns), Lester has gained a reputation for holding audiences spellbound with his constant invention and supple musicianship. Touring Sweden and Germany in 1999, Lester proved that European crowds respond just as favorably.

Festival gigs are an agreeable mode for the still-searching musician. It allows Lester to break in new songs, new styles, and to collaborate with some of the world's most creative musical artists. Festival jams and workshops have enabled him to perform with artists like Charles Brown, John Hammond, David Lindley, Ellen McIlwaine, Kinnie Starr, Honeyboy Edwards, Johnny Shines, Martin Simpson, Colin James and Los Lobos.


The fruits of one of those collaborations was released in late 2000: Tri/Continental is the CD that teams Lester with folk- and Celtic-oriented Bill Bourne and African sensation Madagascar Slim. Recorded live in the studio, this eclectic album is reminiscent of some of Ry Cooder's recent work in that it involves assembling musicians who might not otherwise play together. Critics praised it, and the album went on to win a Juno in the Best Roots and Traditional category.

But Lester's own music remains his central passion. In 2000 he launched yet another musical chapter with a band featuring talented Edmonton musicians Lyle Molzan on drums and Greg Johnston on bass. Known as The Lester Quitzau Very Electric Trio, this is the group playing on Lester's long-awaited CD, released in January of 2001, So Here We Are. The album spent months on the Top 10s across the country.

Lester married the amazing, wonderful and most talented artist/singer/songwriter Mae Moore. They now live on Canada's west coast, are writing and performing together, recorded and released a beautiful recording entitled 'Oh My' (see reviews), and have a busy touring schedule with more recording plans ahead.

And so it goes for Lester Quitzau. As usual, he sums up his approach in a very simple, straightforward way: "Evolution. I just try to keep moving forward."

2004:
Western Canadian Music Awards nomination for Best Roots Recording for "Oh My!"

2000:
Juno Award Winner for Best Roots and Traditional Album - Group (Tri Continental)

1998:
Juno Award Nomination for Best Blues Record for "A Big Love"

1997:
Alberta Recording Industries Association Award for Best Blues/R&B/Soul Artist for "A Big Love"

1991:
Juno Award in 1991 for contribution to "Saturday Night Blues", CBC compilation