Cook's hot stuff

There's something different about Jordan Cook - his voice.

He used to be a "blues boy." Now he's graduated to "blues teen," following in the sneakered footsteps of people like Jonny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

Heck, there's always room for one more.

The 15-year-old Grade 9 student from Saskatoon - the youngest of MacLean's magazine's "100 Canadians to watch" - leads his band at Blues on Whyte until tomorrow.

Cook's going to have a heck of a "What I Did on My Summer Vacation" essay to write this fall. With bandmates S.J. Kardash and Danny White, he is on his way to the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland next month. If all goes as planned, he'll be sharing the stage with Van Morrison and B.B. King.

"You bet I'm excited," Cook says - even though he doesn't have a clue what songs he's going to play. "I think we're just going to go out there and do it."

After several years of honing a high-powered rock 'n' blues sound and earning rave reviews from coast to coast, major labels are said to be interested. But would Cook be getting all this attention and acclaim if he weren't 15 years old? Probably not, he admits, but once audiences see his band perform, the age issue doesn't matter.

As for the eerie Wide Mouth Mason similarities - they're both from Saskatoon ("everyone keeps saying it's our water"), they're both trios, they both play electric blues, they're both managed by Norm Sharpe - Cook insists he's taking his own direction. The blues is a jumping off point, he says, for a style of original music that's never been done before.

"I don't like giving it a name because it's our own music," he says. "We're trying to invent something new, which is a really good thing because it's different than what anyone else is doing. Some days, it's heavy and some days it's not so heavy. It changes every day. We're trying to mix it up and give you a sound and stories you haven't heard before."