Donnie Walsh has experienced a lot of things in his over 53 years of playing the blues, since forming The Legendary Downchild Blues Band in 1969 with his brother, Hock Walsh. Perhaps none more rewarding than getting the call that he will be inducted into the North Bay Musicians & Entertainers Hall of Recognition on September 1, 2022, at Downchild’s performance at the Capitol Centre in North Bay as part of the Capitol Centre Bluesfest.
“It’s really exciting to be inducted to the Hall in North Bay as it’s where, as a kid, I started to actually listen to music and began to play guitar” states Donnie Walsh.
Donnie spent his formative years in North Bay, when his parents moved to the city in 1957 and bought The Lakeview Inn in West Ferris, Ontario, now part of North Bay, as it was known then. It was at the infamous Lakeview Inn where Donnie and Hock discovered music on the jukebox. “At 11:30 every Saturday night it was closing time” says Walsh. “People would load up the jukebox throughout the night to play well past the time we shut down for the evening. Hock and I would sneak in there on Sunday mornings and plug it back in and listen to hours and hours of great music by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bill Haley and the Comets, Louis Prima, and Keeley Smith, to name a few. It was around this time that I got a steel guitar one Christmas and quickly exchanged it for a regular guitar. Then I took guitar lessons for almost a year from local guitar legend, Russ Smith, who played guitar on a TV show with Irwin Prescott and His Mellowtones.”
He attended grade 7 and 8 at Tweedsmuir Public School in West Ferris and then spent two years at Algonquin Composite Collegiate in North Bay, before heading to Toronto in 1962. Two year later, Walsh began his journey to becoming a full-time musician, forming Downchild in 1969 with Hock, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Downchild has long been known as the inspiration for Hollywood stars Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi’s hit film The Blues Brothers. In fact, two Downchild songs “I Got Everything I Need (Almost)” and “Shotgun Blues” are found on The Blues Brothers smash album Briefcase Full of Blues.
Downchild has released 19 albums, including their 50th Anniversary Live At The Toronto Jazz Festival recording (featuring special guests Dan Aykroyd, Paul Shaffer, David Wilcox, Kenny Neal, Gene Taylor and Erja Lyytinen), won 2 JUNO Awards and over 26 Maple Blues Awards.
Donnie Walsh wrote Downchild’s song “I’ve Got Everything I Need (Almost)” that was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019, where he joined some of the greatest songwriters of our time, including Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen.
Downchild is a Canadian blues institution with an international reputation. They have shared the stage with blues icons B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and John Lee Hooker to name a few and have performed around the world, leaving fans thoroughly entertained wherever they go. The band continues to perform regularly and are currently on The Longest 50th Anniversary Tour Ever!
