Start Time:8:00 pm
Doors Open:7:00 pm

A two-time Juno Nominee, Jason Wilson is the only artist to be nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award and a Canadian Reggae Music Award. The new album, Auld Acquaintance, pays tribute to those he has performed with including musical legends UB40, Alanis Morissette, Dick Gaughan, Aswad and Dave Swarbrick.

Special guests this evening are Fergus Hambleton (Sattalites) & The Two Bobs! (Marley done folk, Dylan done reggae!)

Jason Wilson is the only artist to be nominated for both a Canadian Folk Music Award and a Canadian Reggae Music Award. He won the latter. Wilson is also a two-time Juno Awards nominee and a bestselling historian. Born to Scottish immigrants, Wilson grew up in Downsview, Ontario and has since amassed over 2,000 performances across North America, the UK, Ireland and the Caribbean. Jason’s dynamic band Ashara features legendary Jamaican-Canadian guitarist Carl Harvey, bandleader to Toots and The Maytals for forty years. The new work, Auld Acquaintance, is a “covers album” with a very curious twist. On it, Wilson pays tribute to the many musical legends he has performed and recorded with over the past four decades. The album honours folk icons Dave Swarbrick, Dick Gaughan and Stephen Fearing, reggae giants UB40, Aswad, Jackie Mittoo, Jo Jo Bennett and Messenjah, and famed Canadian chanteuses Alanis Morissette and Amanda Marshall. The attendant show features several funny, self-deprecating vignettes which help to explain how Wilson – despite having worked with artists that have cumulatively sold over 180,000,000 albums – has largely managed to evade fame.

An Adjunct-Professor of History at the University of Guelph, Dr. Wilson is the author of eight books including the Ontario Historical Society’s Joseph Brant Award Winner King Alpha’s Song in a Strange Land: The Roots and Routes of Canadian Reggae (UBC Press, 2020) and the national bestseller The Toronto Maple Leaf Hockey Club (McClelland and Stewart, 2016). Wilson is also a recurring expert on various television programmes including the Canadian Screen Awards nominated Cursed Histories. He has made appearances across various networks including CBC, Discovery, TSN, NatGeo, ESPN, CTV, UKTV, Global, CityTV and NBCSN. Wilson and his wife Alana live with an assemblage of furries in Stouffville, Ontario.