Biography

TRACY K BIO
A rich and powerful vocalist and a harmonica player of the highest order (Zicazine 2016) Tracy K’s exceptional stage presence is fortified by her high energy music, with a heavy nod to contemporary and traditional Blues styles. She is considered one of Canada's only female award winning harmonica players. Her latest release ’What’s the Rush?' (September 2016) hit number one on Canadian Roots and Blues charts. Accolades from the media about her harmonica playing, dynamic vocals and original songs followed.
As a performer Tracy K has brought audiences to their feet at Jazz/Blues/Folk festivals and concerts including the Regina and Saskatoon Mid-Winter Bluesfests, Thunder Bay Bluesfest, Toronto Blues Society’s Womens Blues Revue, and Winnipeg BBQ & Bluesfest. With her duo and band she has shared playbills from Canada to the Caribbean with musical greats including John Sebastian and Koko Taylor and opened for icons James Cotton and Ramblin' Jack Elliot. Tracy K has had the distinct honour of performing her originals in concert with the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra in 2010 and 2015. She was featured at the Toronto Blues Society’s Harmonica Workshop, and was First Runner Up in their Talent Search. Her awards also include Winnipeg Blues.com Female Vocalist and Harmonica Player of the Year. Tracy K was twice a quarter finalist at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, TN in both the band and solo/duo categories, where she enraptured the bustling Fed Ex International Showcase crowd at the New Daisy Theatre, shrinking the room down to feel like an intimate venue.

An accomplished songwriter, two of her songs won International Songwriting Competition awards and an Ontario Independent Music Award for Best Blues. Tracy K wrote a song for the Hollywood film Scared Silent, for CBC’s Canada Reads, Ontario Rocks, and was featured on CBC’s Canada Live. Tracy K has been featured numerous times in print, television and radio interviews and reviews from around the globe with each of her four releases, which are all mostly original music. Her music is heard internationally on radio and satellite including acclaimed shows like CBC’s Saturday Night Blues.
Born in Beausejour, Manitoba she was raised on sixties radio and her brother’s hippie records. She started her professional career at twenty five while living in Toronto, singing and playing harmonica and percussion on recordings and live session work. She moved back to Beausejour in the 1990s, started a family and eventually her solo career, inspired by local blues greats Big Dave Maclean and Brent Parkin, and contemporaries Rita Chiarelli, Sue Foley and Suzie Vinnick. Tracy K released her first album in 2000, and after playing the 2002 Inaugural Blues Festival in Thunder Bay, she made it her home. Working contracts as a special needs educational assistant, she supported her three kids while she released two more albums - one with her excellent Right Hand Band and one with her accomplished acoustic duo partner - and picked up seven awards.
Tracy K took some time after her mother’s passing in 2010 and the empty nesting of her grown children. She would move back to Manitoba in 2014 into her childhood home, taking some time to settle in. In 2015 she was invited to be on Ruf Records release 'Blues Harp Women' and 'Mary4Music’s Keeping the Blues Alive Vol.6'. Tracy K is now enjoying progressive success since release of her fourth album 'What’s the Rush?' which remains charting months after it’s release. She and her duo partner have a Home Routes tour in 2018 and international tour plans keep developing for Tracy K in band and duo formats. Although it’s only her fourth release in her substantial career she’s been anything but stagnate and the proof is in the pudding. She’s a class act with the energy of someone half her age, and a life’s worth of experience under her belt to sing about.
AWARDS:

International Blues Challenge – Regional Winner, Memphis Quarter Finalist, Band 2014
International Blues Challenge – Regional Winner, Memphis Quarter Finalist, Duo 2013
International Songwriting Competition – Blues Award 2007
International Songwriting Competition – Performance Hon. Mention 2007
Ontario Independent Music Award – Best Blues Song 2007
Toronto Blues Society Talent Search – First Runner-Up 2007
Winnipeg Blues.com – Harmonica Player of the Year 2006
Winnipeg Blues.com – Female Vocalist of the Year 2006
Winnipeg Blues.com – Electric Act of the Year – Nomination 2006

PAST PERFORMANCES (SELECT LIST):

Winnipeg BBQ & Bluesfest (2012,14,16)
Winnipeg Jazz Festival (1999 - 2005 inclusive)
Saskatchewan Mid-Winter Blues Festival, Regina/Saskatoon, (2005,08,15)
Women’s Blues Fest Minneapolis (2003)
Live from the Rock Music Festival, Red Rock, Ont. (2003,06,09,12,14)
Thunder Bay Blues Festival (2002, 03, 05, 08, 11, 13, 14)
Great Woods Music Festival, Beausejour, MB (1998-2003 inclusive)
Toronto Blues Society's Harmonica Workshop (2003)
Women's Blues Revue – Toronto ON (2002)
Women In Blues International Showcase - Memphis Tennessee (2013,14,15)
Fed Ex International Showcase - International Blues Challenge, Memphis Tennessee (2014)

ALBUM RELEASES:

What’s the Rush (2016)
Canned Heat (2011)
Old, New, Borrowed & Blues (2007)
Welcome to my Fantasy (2000)

COMPILATIONS:

Blues Harp Women – Ruf Records (2015)
Keeping the Blues Alive Vol.6 – Mary4Music (2014)

SINGLES:

Science of Being Distant – CBC Radio One Bandwidth
3 Singles for Prairie Fire Project – Canadian Diabetes Foundation (2003)
Rock This House – licensed to Zernick Von-Sertner Films, L.A. (2002)

QUOTES:

"This is outdoor-festival music, tailor-made for a big stage and (even) bigger crowd." - Rainey Wetnight, Blues Blast Magazine, 2017
 
“A proponent of the Winnipeg music scene, this hard driver has no aspirations to be Janis or Bonnie Raitt, she’s simply a blues-rocking babe that knows how to bring the awards home.” - The Midwest Record, 2017
 
"What’s The Rush? has grit and soul, and is rough around the edges in just the right places.  As a singer Tracy K is like Bonnie Raitt and Koko Taylor, and she blows some of the best blues harp this side of Little Walter.  Production at Winnipeg’s award winning Bedside Studios by Len Milne is perfect - rowdy, deep and intimate. Throwing this on is like walking into the middle of the best party ever. Stunning." 5+ rating - Gonzo Okanagan Music Reviews, 2016

Canadian "mojo mama" Tracy K has been around the proverbial block; while What’s The Rush? is just her fourth album, it feels like the work of a case-hardened musical veteran. Ms. K gets her personal stories across with style. The engineering by Len Milne at Winnipeg’s Bedside Studios is razor-sharp: it's obvious she and her compadres didn’t rush through these tracks, but instead gave them enough attention to make the grade. - Jeff Monk, Winnipeg Free Press, 2016

"There’s only eight tracks here but I’d rather have quality than a CD stuffed full of filler so this works a treat.  She has a very listenable voice and there is an insistent groove to her music that works really well. Also, she can blow a mean mouth harp." - the Rocker UK, 2016

"This lady has more than thirty years of music experience and that is evident. The songs are well-written and well-considered, each of them are little stories. And they are all wrapped in beautiful blues and boogie." - BarnowlBlues, NL, 2016

“…a powerful and rich vocalist and a harmonica player of the highest order… Navigating between folk blues, pure juicy blues and blues that is tinged with pop, Tracy K pulls no punches.” - Zicazine, 2016

"Tracy K effortlessly delivers moodfull and melodic songs and is blessed with a heavenly beautiful and lovely voice. With a certain brute force she tempers her timbre, but displays a presumptive vulnerability. She is also a very talented harp virtuoso." (translated) - Keys and Chords, 2016

"Next to her beautiful voice, she is also a gifted harmonica player. It is easy to understand that Tracy K must have a large and loyal fan base in her home country, with Europe and the rest of the world to follow very soon." (translated) - Rudolf’s Music 2016

"Her harsh and raspy vocals and 'smokey' style of harmonica playing just fascinates, and the accompanying musicians created original musical expression, deeply engraved feelings and atmosphere of the best traditional blues, and urban blues in general. This completely justifies all the saliva glistening assessment made by numerous music critics." - Soundguardian, Mladen Loncar, 2016