He’s Canada’s next big thing in down-and-dirty, classic-rockin’ blues guitardom

It had been just 24 hours since nascent west-of-the-West-Coast guitar hero Garret T. Willie made his Toronto debut with a properly hot set at the 2023 International Indigenous Music Summit and Garret T. Willie was … well … hot. Very hot.

“It’s so f–kin’ hot out, man,” sighed the 23-year-old blues-rock singer, songwriter and six-string dynamo, who hails from Cormorant Island, a four-kilometre-square chunk of land between the northeast tip of Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia. He opted to chat in the air-conditioned lobby of the Delta Chelsea on a recent sweltering day rather than do the interview across the street in College Park.

“I was told it was gonna be hot. I didn’t really know much about Toronto. Up until two years ago, I thought Vancouver was the biggest city in Canada, you know? I thought that was it. I’m a boy from the country. But I was told it was gonna be hot over here and, yep, it’s hot over here. I felt it as soon as I got off in the airport and started sweatin’ right away. So that’s been a little difficult.

“But it feels pretty good to be where I’m at. I still don’t, I guess, really recognize where I’m at a lot of the time. I kind of feel like I’m just here to play.”

Where Willie is “at” is at on the verge of becoming Canada’s next big thing in down-and-dirty, classic-rockin’ blues guitardom.

Old beyond his years — as is often the case with kids who grew up in this country’s hard-done-by First Nations communities — he’s got an impressively multi-dimensional debut album in the can entitled “Same Pain” due for release this September; shares enthusiastic management with Randy Bachman and DJ Shub; and will follow up his blazing Indigenous Music Summit appearance with a high-profile gig opening for American guitar god Kenny Wayne Shepherd in South Dakota on Saturday.

Things are happening for Willie, and he and his new handlers know the trick is simply putting him in front of people and showing them the goods. Because, man, this young gentleman, who started teaching himself Angus Young solos at the age of eight, can really rip it up on the guitar.

That comes through on “Same Pain,” a strong first foot forward — co-written and produced by Parker Bossley of, ahem, Hot Hot Heat fame — that effortlessly veers from scorching blue-collar blues in the Stevie Ray Vaughan/George Thorogood vein to tear-jerking, country-tinged blues to Stones-y “Sticky Fingers” shambles. But the record only whets one’s appetite for seeing what this six-string warrior can do live because, after all, onstage is where this kind of stuff is really meant to happen. And Willie didn’t disappoint during his curt TD Music Hall set during the summit, even though he and his crack three-piece band (including talented U.K. import Brett Smith-Daniels on second guitar) could have done with an extra half-hour to really open up and show off their penchant for hard boogeyin’ jams.

The big-voiced Willie was pleased with his first big splash in the centre of the Canadian musical universe.

“It felt good. While we were up there playing, it was like ‘Yeah, these folks didn’t know what they’re gonna witness.’ I knew they weren’t expecting it — maybe some of them were — but it just felt good,” he said. “It’s kind of like when we start playing and we start singing, the hook’s in the water, you know? So I start playing and I start singing and, when somebody bites or the crowd bites, I look at Brett and I’ll give him a solo and that’s when you’re set to pull ’em up.

“I know what I bring to the table, I suppose,” he added confidently. “My voice has been earned over time and I know what I have. And I don’t mean to say that with a big ego, just by having knowledge of what I have and how to use it. I will not apologize for my talent. In a good way.”

The blues is a tough idiom to navigate if you’re not of African-American extraction, of course, but if anyone has the right to take on a music with its roots in racial oppression and economic and cultural marginalization with some authority it’s probably an Indigenous Canadian. Willie, however, doesn’t think about it in those terms too much and he’s leery of using his background as leverage.

Indeed, he admitted he was of two minds about participating in the Indigenous Music Summit at all, preferring to pal around with his bandmates and roam Toronto instead of sitting in on, say, seminars about racism in the music industry.

“I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. But the way I look at it is if someone doesn’t want to work with me because of my race, I really don’t want to work with them, either,” he shrugged. “And if I can’t make it, maybe it’s not racism. Maybe I’m just not good enough.”

One has the suspicion Willie is good enough for the long haul, if only for the reason he’s been hell-bent on singing and playing the guitar for a living since he first wowed the crowd at the Alert Bay Music Festival with a couple of AC/DC covers at just 10 years old. He’s been preparing for his moment in the spotlight his entire life, and he wasn’t prepared to let geographical or cultural boundaries stop him from getting there.

“Yeah, it feels that way. One hundred per cent. Ever since I was small,” he said. “It’s just always what I’ve wanted to do since seeing, like, a DVD of Stevie Ray Vaughan playing at the El Mocambo, which I got to see today and that was pretty cool. We drove past it. But ever since I picked up the guitar I always kind of felt that it was just what was gonna happen. I didn’t see any other way, you know?”　　

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