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Check-out the calendar for this year's festivals. It would be great to catch-up with you at an outside stage somewhere in Canada this summer!

Here's a review of Junction City we found from Sing-Out! (US Publication):

Author: Mike Regenstreif

Junction City may be the second album y Little Miss Higgins--aka Jolene Higgins--but it's the first one I've heard and that made the little miss my favorite new discovery of 2007. Higgins grew up in Alberta and Kansas, with theatre training in British Columbia, and now makes her home in Nokomis, Saskatchewan, a small prairie town on the old Canadian Pacific and Canadian National railroad lines. Maybe it's the echo of those trains passing through town that inspires her to create music steeped in the traditions of such blues artists as Bessie Smith, Memphis Minnie and Big Bill Broonzy. She includes terrific versions of several blues classics including W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" and Mississippi John Hurt's version of "Frankie and Albert," but most of these songs are her own and she's as fine a songwriter as she is a singer and guitarist.

Small town prairie life inspires several of Higgins's songs. The album opens with "The Train's a'Comin' Down," an infectiously swinging tune in which she sings about having nowhere to be, about having dirty fingernails from working in the garden, about how she's thinking about putting on a play, and about hearing the train coming down the tracks. Sounds like a nice summer day in Nokomis for a songwriting former theatre student. Then, in "The Middle of Nowhere," which has a solo guitar groove reminiscent of Broonzy's playing in the 1940s, she talks about staying off the wintertime roads in the in the middle of nowhere; particularly when you might have had a drink or two too many.

Higgins gets fine support throughout the album from Foy Taylor on rhythm guitar. The album was recorded in Calgary and some of that city's best musicians, including producer Tim Williams, contribute to selected tracks.

Here's a great another great quote!

"Little Miss Higgins is a fresh and welcome addition to the Canadian blues scene. I love her selection of material, old school vintage sound and her enthusiasm. She has the respect of and holds her own with veterans twice her age. And I love that she's based out of Nokomis, Saskatchewan.”

-Holger Petersen (CBC Radio)