By Marc Loison 
A major figure of contemporary Chicago blues, Toronzo Cannon keeps following a singular path. A bus driver for years and a privileged observer of everyday urban life, he has shaped a blues that is deeply rooted in reality, fed as much by the streets of Chicago as by the giants who came before him. Back in France to promote his album “Shut Up and Play” – an evocative and straight-to-the-point title – he talks about his late start on guitar, his influences, the importance of writing original songs to keep the genre alive and the way his songs extend the political legacy of the blues.
Interview recorded at the Megève Blues Festival 2025.
🎙️ Toronzo Cannon in interview
Hello Toronzo, it’s a pleasure to meet you. When did you come to France for the first time? Do you remember?
I think the first time I came to France was in 2011, maybe.
Under your own name, but you also came once as part of the Chicago Blues Festival tour, a few years ago, right?
Yes, in 2022.
Tell us briefly about your beginnings in the blues. What pushed you to pick up a guitar and start singing blues for the first time?
Well, I started late. I was in my twenties when I picked up the guitar…
That’s late?…
Yeah, I mean some people start playing when they’re ten or eleven, you know. But I couldn’t play basketball anymore, so I wanted to do something else. My sister bought me a guitar because she was learning piano. She bought me my first guitar when I was in my twenties. I had a job, but I wasn’t making enough money to buy one. So she got me a guitar, and one of my first inspirations was Bob Marley, but also a guy named John Cougar Mellencamp.
I loved the acoustic sound of Rain on the Scarecrow, that kind of thing… And then all the music from the 80s. I listened to new wave… I listened to a lot of pop: Devo, Blondie, and so on. But I was also listening to Chaka Khan, Al Green, that kind of stuff.
Prince as well, maybe?…
A lot of Prince, oh yes. I was young, late teens, early twenties… So my sister bought me a guitar and I practiced playing little Bob Marley riffs, because I wanted to be in a reggae band. Playing in a band came later. I did that for about a year and a half, and it was really great…
You worked for many years as a bus driver in Chicago. How did you balance that job with your musical career? And why did you keep it for so long?
The music business can be unpredictable. I knew that if I drove that bus forty hours a week, I would get paid. (laughs)
Every Friday…
Yes. And sometimes the music would complete my income, because at that time my wife had stopped working. So the music helped make up for that loss of income. I would play gigs to pay the bills or to take care of my needs, on top of my job as a bus driver. I worked Monday through Thursday, ten hours a day, then I played on weekends. Sometimes during the week, but mostly on weekends.
You’ve sometimes been compared to Buddy Guy. You played a Buddy Guy song tonight… In all the excitement of the show, I also heard some influences of Lonnie Brooks in your music, and even of Luther Allison. What do you think of those comparisons?
It’s flattering to be compared to the giants. (laughs) It’s good that people understand my ambitions, but I hope they also hear what I’m trying to do. In blues it’s sometimes really hard to have a sound that’s just yours… You have to be influenced by your influences. You have to reach for those giants. But it’s hard to create your own signature sound, that makes people say “Oh, that’s Toronzo Cannon! Oh, that’s DK Harrell!” Take Jimmie Vaughan, for example. He reminds you of Freddie King and others like him, legends like Jimmy Reed, for instance. We’re all influenced by our heroes, but I love being compared to the giants, even if it’s just when my name is said in the same sentence. (laughs)
Today, what does Chicago represent to you specifically, as a bluesman?
It means you’ll be given a second chance. People say “OK, we know the giants, Muddy Waters, Lonnie Brooks, Koko Taylor, Jimmy Reed, J.B. Hutto, Earl Hooker… We know all the big names of Chicago blues.” The blues world listens to you carefully when you say you’re from Chicago, because there’s a strong reputation, a certain authority, and a legacy you have to live up to. Being from Chicago means you’ve got to have guts. You need that.
How do you see the Chicago scene evolving these days, especially for the younger generation?
Sometimes, you have to say it, a lot of young people think blues is just about broken hearts. “Oh, my woman left me…” that kind of thing. I like to say I write songs that bring a fresh breeze into the blues. It’s still blues, but you have to present it in a way that speaks to young people too. Take John the Conqueroo: today it sounds very rock, but it’s a blues theme. Muddy Waters was already playing it. Sometimes you have to reinvent it to draw younger listeners in and, hopefully, they’ll move towards the traditional style afterwards and think “Oh yeah, it’s the same thing.” For me, the most important part is the story and the message.
Your lyrics are often very personal, with social or political references. Is it important to you that blues also deals with today’s realities?
Yes, because that’s already what people were doing back in the 50s and 60s. Singing your blues is therapeutic, because someone in the audience might be feeling the same thing. If there’s a connection, it’s like the pain is shared. If I say I have a pain in my shoulder and I sing a whole song about it, someone in the crowd will have a pain in their shoulder too, and it’ll make them feel better. They’ll feel understood because they’re going through the same thing. So there’s a connection. They think: “OK, I’m not the only one feeling this…” And again, it’s therapeutic because it’s a transfer of emotions, the fact of being seen, understood, and hearing that message.
There’s this song, “The Chicago Way,” on your album “The Preacher, the Politician, or the Pimp,” released in 2017. What message did you want to get across?
Yeah, I always try to write like that. You know, blues has always been a socially conscious music. When people were picking cotton, they would sing and pass messages to others in the fields. So blues has always been a music with a message, where things are sometimes hidden. It may sound nice to the ear, but when you really listen to the lyrics, it’s often sad. Sometimes it touches you and makes you understand somebody else’s pain, in another city or another country, what they’re going through at that moment.
So yes, I wrote The Preacher, the Politician or the Pimp because I was driving a bus on the west side of Chicago. It was pretty rough. I would cross different neighborhoods, not always easy ones, but with good people living there. They were just in a tough environment, without the means to live somewhere else.
I also wrote a song called The Pain Around Me. It was inspired by the people I saw every morning on the bus. They would say: “Hey, how you doing, Mr. Bus Driver?” before heading to work at five or six in the morning. I was already there, because I came in early too. I took them to their first shift. They were good people, but they lived in complicated neighborhoods.
I wrote that song so that somebody in California, for example, could understand what’s going on in Chicago. It’s a bit like we’re the media, telling the truth about other cities or countries. Even in tough neighborhoods, there are good people, and they deserve to be recognized.
“I would have to be blind and deaf not to see what’s going on around me”
Your latest album, “Shut Up and Play,” came out last year. Does it mark a shift in your sound or in your approach to the blues? And what themes inspired you?
You know, I would have to be blind and deaf not to see what’s going on around me. You know how we Americans are seen in the world, and how things have changed over my lifetime – and I’m only 57. I’ve never seen Americans’ attitude so tense. It’s like a big dark cloud, people are angry… Half of the country wants one thing, the other half wants another. Some things seem unfair to me; they don’t match the laws and the society I grew up with when I was twenty. Things are changing in America, and not in a good way.
And to me, blues is a socially conscious music. Again, blues is the people’s music. If I didn’t tell these stories, French people, German people, people from other countries might think everyone in America is happy. But no, not at all. Some of us think this way, some of us sing this way. You see what I mean?
I wrote a song about my daughter. I was going through a divorce at the time. It’s called Message to My Daughter. For me, it was like a last letter, a real letter I was writing to my daughter in case I died. In case she didn’t want to talk to me anymore. We got through it. She lived with me for two years. Then we talked and reconnected. But the pressure of divorce on young people… Some thought that song was too personal, that I shouldn’t have put it on the album.
And I thought: “There are men and women going through this all over the world, getting divorced and no longer receiving love from their child because one parent says this and the other says that…” So I wrote from that point of view. And again, someone thought I shouldn’t put it on the album because it was too personal.
But I thought: “You want me to sing about cheating, about me cheating on my wife and talk about that? That’s acceptable? But a message to my daughter is unacceptable?” We recorded it. I think you understand what I mean…
What does Alligator Records say about that?
Again, there’s always someone in the audience who’s going to point it out. When I’ve sung that song – and I’ll do it again in an acoustic version – people have come up to me and said: “That’s me, I know those lyrics”, because they’ve gone through a divorce too. Fifty-two percent of Americans get divorced. So there are a lot of people thinking: “Wow, that happened to me too.” It’s a tough situation.
It’s a topic that a lot of blues musicians don’t touch. They’d rather talk about their breakup, but there are already too many songs about that. Sometimes I have to write a song about what I did, about the reasons why my wife left me. And then women are like: “Oh?” and they understand what I’m saying. So that’s another part of the audience that’s being reached.
I try to fill in the gaps in blues, those topics we rarely talk about, like insurance, for example. I don’t have any insurance right now. I’m one of the uninsured Americans. I don’t have health insurance in Chicago, or in Illinois. So until I get one, I go on like this. Sorry…
I have two questions about technique and guitar. What guitar do you prefer to use on stage? Do you have a favorite model or a particular setup?
At home, I sometimes play my Les Paul. It’s easy to carry. But when I travel, I try to use a Fender Stratocaster because you know they can get knocked around. They’re not fragile instruments. As a left-handed player, if my guitar breaks, it would be hard to find another left-handed one. So I try to take one that’s both sturdy and playable, even if I prefer to play my more expensive Gibsons and other guitars at home.
“I didn’t know I was left-handed until I picked up a guitar”
Did you first try to play on a right-handed guitar?
No. I didn’t know I was left-handed until I picked up a guitar. I used to watch a lot of Bob Marley videos, and one of the first riffs I learned was from Redemption Song. Watching the video, I picked up the guitar and noticed the lowest string was at the bottom. I thought: “Oh, wait… it’s supposed to be at the top!” (laughs) I was only in my twenties, so my sister and I took the guitar to a luthier and he set it up left-handed. So I didn’t realize I was a left-handed guitar player until I actually picked up the guitar. (laughs)
Your playing is very expressive. Do you have a particular technique to make your guitar “talk” that way?
Just pressing the string hard enough to get the sound, that’s it. You press the string to get the sound, OK? To the right pitch. You’re trying to pass an emotion, what you feel, to the audience. If there is a… not a pain, but you know… you press the string, more and more, until it screams or moans. Basically, you’re trying to pull different sounds out of it.
You’ve said that the only way to keep blues alive is to write new songs. Is that your philosophy?
Oh yes. Writing original songs. I love Muddy Waters and all those other artists, but I didn’t go through their struggles in the 30s, 40s and 50s. They have their story, I have mine. One of my latest songs, Keeping the Heart in a Cold World, is about me waking up and going to work. But it’s a fictional situation: the company is shutting down, like so many do nowadays in the United States.
I imagine a guy who’s been working at the same place for twenty years, he gets to work and his boss tells him: “We have to let you go, the company is moving.” And he goes: “Wow, I’ve got to go home and tell my wife!” Or he might find another job before going home and keep on working.
There are a lot of situations like that, still today in the United States. Just like back then, people are two years away from retirement. If two years go by and the company closes, everything falls apart. You’re left with nothing, just a few savings. It’s a struggle… That’s the blues.
How does the European audience react to your music? Do you notice any differences compared to the American audience?
No, to me the themes are universal. When I talk about a colonoscopy, everybody is surprised. You see what I mean? Getting older, midlife crisis… We get older and go through things, especially health issues, things we have to take care of. It’s a universal topic, you know?…
You play at a lot of international festivals. Is there a show or a moment on stage that particularly stands out for you?
Every time I come to Europe, or anywhere else, even in America, when people ask me to get on a plane and travel ten or twelve hours to play in another country, it still gets to me. Because at first, I didn’t even want to play guitar. It was just because I couldn’t play basketball anymore. I would go to jam sessions, hang out with friends… I didn’t intend to travel the world and make it my job. It was just something I loved doing: spending time with other musicians. We’d talk, then go home, I’d take the bus… and suddenly people asked me: “How many songs do you know?” Club owners would ask me the same question. I would answer: “Uh… four!” (laughs)
So they told me: “When you know twenty or thirty, come back, we’ll have a gig for you.” That’s when I started taking it seriously…
How do you see the future of the blues? Do you think it can still reach today’s younger generation?
Yes, yes, and it will. I’ve always said that. Ray Manzarek from The Doors said the same thing. Ray Manzarek explained that there would be no American music without the blues. It would be something like minuets. Beyoncé wouldn’t exist. Neither would the rappers. Everything comes from the blues. The movie Sinners shows that very well. You see the African roots, then slavery in America… Then roots music, R&B, hip-hop: it all comes from the blues.
So imagine a star, Beyoncé or someone at that level, giving us a nod and saying: “I wouldn’t be singing my songs without the blues.” And when Buddy Guy appeared in the movie Sinners, it was the greatest thing I’d ever seen. Because it helps young people understand where the music they love comes from, thanks to artists like him, thanks to Buddy Guy. It was really great that he was in that movie.
Buddy Guy just turned 89 and you paid tribute to him on stage tonight!
Yes, I did. He’s the last of an era. He was there with Muddy Waters, he came to Chicago. Chicago took him in when he was 19…
He even played with Big Mama Thornton!
Big Mama Thornton, yes. He’s the last one. I know there are still artists like John Primer, and John Primer also played with Muddy Waters… I tell young people they have to know the history of the blues. It doesn’t all start with Stevie Ray Vaughan.
We can all have influences, but listen to what Stevie Ray Vaughan was listening to. We all have influences, that’s for sure. But Buddy Guy is the last of a generation. There are other bluesmen older than him, like Bobby Rush, for example. But here we’re talking about Chicago. Buddy Guy is the last one in Chicago who is still playing.
And every time he gets on stage, it’s an honor for me, because one day people will remember us and say: “We played with Buddy Guy!” That guy really brought it on stage. It’s great. Really great…
“Basically, I wanted to be a social worker”
If you hadn’t become a bluesman, what job would you have done?
Basically, I wanted to be a social worker. So I guess this is my way of being a social worker. (laughs) I did one year of social work studies, then I took a bus driver job because it paid better. I told myself I would take a year off. I wanted to make some money driving the bus, then go back to school. But the money was good… You start buying things: “Oh, I’d like a new phone! Oh, I want this!…” Because more money is coming in. And that one year turned into twenty-nine…
I have a slightly odd question. Which artist, living or dead, would you like to meet or play with?
I’ve already played with some of my heroes. Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Koko Taylor… I’ve played with Wayne Baker Brooks, Lonnie Brooks, Gary Clark, I’ve played with the younger ones… I really liked Little Jimmy King, he really opened my eyes. I was blown away. Little Jimmy King, Eric Gales’ brother, was one of the guys I dreamed of playing and jamming with. It was really great.
But I have played with most of my idols. I missed Albert Collins, because I came a bit late to the music scene. I missed Luther Allison… I wore out his videos.
He spent too much time in France! (laughs)
Yeah, but I wore out his tapes. I know Bernard Allison, so that’s pretty cool. But Albert Collins and Luther Allison, I miss them… And Junior Wells too. I miss them…
But you were born in 1968, so you were young!
Yes, Junior Wells was around, but I never saw him. I was on the scene, I was jamming, but I never saw him. It was like: “Wow, Jimmy, wow, Junior too…” So yeah, I miss them. But I still played with most of my heroes. Of course, if I’d had the chance to play with Jimi Hendrix, man, that would have been amazing… That would have been really cool…
Last question, what would your message be to the listeners of Blues Actu Radio?
I would tell them to keep playing original music, to highlight the stars of the blues, the STARS, because they truly are. The blues stars and today’s musicians. Of course, you have to mix them with the heroes and the influences. But I’d say we should focus on the newcomers who are trying to keep the blues alive. That would be great.
I know Slash recently did something with a lot of big names, you know, Samantha Fish, Eric Gales and many others. I would like Slash, if he really wants to dive into the blues, to let Eric Gales, Samantha Fish and lots of other blues players use their own songs. Not to cover Mojo Working. You can’t do Mojo better than Muddy Waters. You can’t do the legendary songs better than the giants who created them.
In my opinion, he should have put the spotlight on those new artists – Samantha Fish, Eric Gales and the others on his album – with their own original songs. We would still have had the name, it would still have been Slash.
So I hope a big star like him takes on a similar project and, because I’m proud of writing my own songs, that he uses them. That we get more exposure so we can play our songs with a big star like Slash, or Eric Clapton, or Keb’ Mo’, or other artists at that level…
Relive Toronzo Cannon’s full concert at the Megève Blues Festival
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