Mike Boguski - Detour (2020)

Mike Boguski is Blue Rodeo’s keyboardist, a position he’s held since 2008. But like others in the group, his musical ambition extends beyond furthering the legacy of Canada’s roots rock institution.

On his new album Detour, Boguski teams up with Canadian jazz heavyweights, bassist Roberto Occhipinti and drummer Davide Direnzo, to put new spins on some familiar songs. Taking a stripped-down approach that hearkens back to classic Blue Note recordings of the 1940s and 1950s, the trio take on standards such as Miles Davis’ “So What” and Horace Silver’s “The Preacher,” to a range of tunes by Blue Rodeo, along with an original piece paying tribute to Ramsey Lewis, one of Boguski’s heroes.

Mike explains, “With the Blue Rodeo material, I thought back to my one semester at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and a quote I once read from Keith Jarrett about it. He said, ‘Be careful, going there will change your music.’ So with that in mind, I set out to do what I know with this album, but in a jazz way. What I know is Blue Rodeo. I’ve spent pretty much my entire career for the last decade with those guys, so it makes sense to try and express their music in the way that I hear jazz.”