Doc McLean

jojo man blues tour…

Telling songs and singing stories. This blues came from the Mississippi delta. But before that, it came from Africa. Passed down from mouth to mouth. More than music. A placement of the human spirit. Doc’s early mentors were the grandchildren of slaves. And now: this continuing journey between the dreamscapes and the songlines: between the blurs of the Highway and the sounds of the wheels: The JoJo Man: naming unnamed roads: witching for water.

The JoJo Man Blues Tour– Doc MacLean’s sixth African tour– will see him travelling over 20 thousand km by land before launching north for an epic, second tour leg: festivals and concerts across Ireland, UK and Europe. The 2023 version of the “World’s Biggest Little Blues Tour” –comprising over 100 shows across 8 countries–will finish in western Canada in October.

more about the artist…

Over a performing career which spans nearly half a century, Doc MacLean has appeared at many of the world’s most significant folk, blues and roots music festivals, but he is perhaps best known for his relentless touring habits, and for his rejection of a First World music business that would reduce blues to a colourful genre.

In recent years, MacLean has driven over 100 thousand km across southern Africa, taking it for his own. He’s now played almost all of its largest festivals, smallest juke joints, coolest theatres, and best regarded presentation stages. The thing that has been carried is again returned. “No venue too large, too small, too grand or too humble.” Even places lost in the folds of the map.

Writing from the dark side of the road, Doc MacLean remains a songster from the delta tradition. A traveller. Gifted as a youth by the grandchildren of slaves, MacLean now sings his own stories and tells his own songs in his own voice. His mostly resophonic, finger style slide guitar pays sonic homage to Patton, House, and Big Joe Williams, while moving forward in a roots-based, yet contemporary context.

Supported by The National Lottery through the The Arts Council of Northern Ireland