South Island Rhythm Kings

from November 2022 Issue 168

November Forecasts

South Island Rhythm Kings are a 4-piece blues band from Vancouver Island, steeped in traditional early blues.

At the nucleus of the South Island Rhythm Kings is the father and son team of Lazy Mike Mallon & Carson Mallon, creating a musical bond on early electric blues, along with their good friends, and long-time collaborators Todd Sacerty, and Pat Hetu.

Their latest, and second recording as the South Island Rhythm Kings Still That Way Today was released on July 8, 2022. Joining the group on bass and producing the recording is legendary bluesman Jack Lavin. The band has been enjoying the great airplay they are receiving in Canada, the USA, and all over the UK and Europe.

The band formed in 2018 from their mutual love of “no school like old school” blues. Their unique brand of entertainment delivers classic electric blues with engaging, high energy & beautiful harmonies that make you feel the music and get up and groove. South Island Rhythm Kings have had the pleasure of opening for such iconic bands as Harpdog Brown, Mark Hummel and the Lone Star Golden State Review, David Gogo, Big Dave Mclean, Jim Byrnes and many more. “It has been said the blues is a language we all speak. From an empty wallet to a cold side of the bed, we all experience the blues in some way. The expressions, or the dialects, that vary from region to region; the searing slide guitar of the Mississippi Delta, the swamp-ridden Louisiana blues, the uptown horn arrangements of Texas and the West Coast, and the soulstirring electrified harmonica from Chicago. These sounds have gone on to influence the world of music for decades. It is from these traditions that the South Island Rhythm Kings draw their inspiration. You will not find any meaningless virtuosity on this recording, only the pure expression of blues being reared on the stretch of Highway 1 from Nanaimo down to Victoria. “This is the blues of Vancouver Island” www.lazymikemallonmusic. net