In the spring of 1996, Ralph Stordeur, John Pervis and Rick Penner (the owner of the Windsor Hotel) organized a society called The Blues Scene with the intention of drawing attention to the Winnipeg's talented but under-rated community of blues players. It was their hope that musicians like Big Dave McLean, Brent Parkin, Gord Kidder, Lepage and others would eventually receive better recognition and compensation for their devotion to their chosen profession. The first step for the Blues Scene, then, was to put on a gala blues showcase at the regal old Walker Theatre.

Attended by nearly a thousand people and recorded for national broadcast by CBC radio, the Wang Dang Doodle was an enormous success. It was so much of a success, in fact, that the live recordings were used to put together a CD representing the night's entertainers. And when the CD was released in the summer of 1997, the local press reviews were particularly kind to J.P. Lepage. Consequently, Stordeur, Pervis and Penner decided to back Lepage in producing a CD of his own. That project is, at the time of this writing, just heading into post-production.

"It's exciting," says Lepage. "This project is going to have quite an array of stuff on it. I've tried to make a real traditional-sounding record in the past with the Dukes, one where we had a vintage sound. But we weren't working in a vintage studio, and we weren't working with vintage gear, or with an engineer who knew anything about that kind of stuff, so, you know, it didn't work too well. Now, with this one [the new CD] I just decided that all I wanted to do was make a good record.

This time I wanted to focus more on the songs themselves, to make them as good as I could. And this is a good record for me, because it represents a lot of the styles that have influenced me. Most of it is original material, but it's all inspired by music from across what you could call the blues spectrum. Whether it's Fats Domino-style rock and roll or R 'n' B or Chicago blues or big band swing or even country, it's all based on blues. I feel real good about this record because of the variety. And the songwriting, I think, is a solid cross-section of the best stuff I've ever done. The songs on this record sort of tell stories, I guess you could say, about me, and about what I believe in."

Like other blues players who have come before him, Lepage uses his music to help him understand his own life as well as the lives of others around him. He takes his music seriously. But he also has fun with it. Anyone who has heard him play knows that he is not afraid to take chances, to test his phrasing abilities and to be as dynamic as possible.

A disciplined student of the blues, J.P. continually stretches his own boundaries in search of ways to get closer to the truth of each song he plays. And his diversity is astonishing. He performs with an easy sophistication, moving effortlessly from the simple honesty and raw sound of country blues to the rollicking grooves of "uptown" swing.

"I sing city blues," the legendary Lonnie Johnson once said. "My blues is built on human beings on land, see how they live, see their heartaches and the shifts they go through with love affairs and things like that - that's what I write about and the way I make my living. It's understanding others, and that's the best way I can tell you. My style of singing has nothing to do with the part of the country I come from. It comes from my soul within. the heartaches and the things that have happened to me in my life - that's what makes a good blues singer."

Without question, J.P. Lepage is a good blues singer.

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