JP Lepage has had a long relationship with the blues, dating back nearly 40 years. Scoring his first blues albums from former high school teacher, now well-known music historian, John Einarson, JP embarked on a quest to find the essence of the style. A dedicated student of the idiom, he has followed a path that has taken him from his home in small town Manitoba to the cities of southern Canada and back, gaining a wealth of experience and a deep understanding of the blues along the way. Einarson had this to say about his former student: “JP was born a blues disciple. He knew what he wanted to play and delved in with the zeal of a man on a mission to discover himself in the music that spoke only to him. I was there then, and I can hear it now in his playing and singing. He has never deviated from the path the blues set out for him, and remains ever true to it today.”
JP’s style is influenced by many of the ’40s and ’50s era guitarists and blues singers like T Bone Walker and Guitar Slim, Johnny Guitar Watson and BB King. He has studied the blues greats from the 4 corners of America and all the intersections. His range is diverse – from back porch country blues to sophisticated, uptown swing – but all is informed by his life-long dedication and respect for blues tradition. He has devoted more than half his life to this music, and plays it with honesty and conviction. JP makes his home in Morden, Manitoba these days, but he cut his teeth in blues clubs and festivals from Detroit to Ottawa with The Windsor Dukes, featuring Kelly Hoppe (formerly of Big Sugar). The Dukes recreated an authentic-sounding style that stood out. JP’s tenure in that band gave him the opportunity to share the stage with a number of blues greats, including Lazy Lester, Pinetop Perkins, George Wildchild Butler, and Louisiana Red and to open shows for Kim Wilson, Luther Tucker, Ronnie Earl, Duke Robillard, and Albert Collins, to name-drop a few.
Returning to Manitoba in the mid 1990s, JP quickly fell in with harp-man, Dave Mowat and the Curbside Shuffle before establishing his own band with veteran piano player, Harri Vallitu of the consummate 70’s Winnipeg blues group, Houndog. The JP Lepage Band has been firmly entrenched in the Manitoba blues scene ever since, often billed along side Winnipeg greats Brent Parkin, and Big Dave McLean, who has called JP “one of the most soulful, passionate blues jewels to come out of the Canadian mines yet” The JP Lepage Band continues to perform in various configurations; trio, quartet, quintet, or sextet, and occasionally performs supporting vocal superstar, Miss Jayme Giesbrecht as her Soul Revue Band.