Just Around Midnight

The Blazers were a Regina rock band built around Ralph Ell on lead vocals and guitar, Joel Dimond on guitar and vocals, Curtis Kautzman on bass and Ross Trofin on drums. They appeared on Streetrock ’89 with ‘Woman Like You’, written by Ell and Dimond and produced by the band.

By 1990 The Blazers had recorded Just Around Midnight at Inner City Sound Studios in Regina with engineer Warren St. Onge. The nine-song cassette mixed original rock and roots material with a version of Tony Joe White’s ‘Polk Salad Annie’. Ell and Dimond wrote the remaining songs, including ‘Ain’t Comin’ Back’, ‘My Baby Loves Her Money’, ‘Jailbird’ and the title track. Jim Folk contributed organ to ‘She Don’t Come Around’.

That year The Blazers won the Best Composition award at the Gold Fever Festival. They returned in 1991 and won the Gold Fever Festival outright, then travelled to Toronto for the Molson Canadian Rock Showdown, where they placed third nationally. SaskMusic records both accomplishments among Saskatchewan’s notable music-industry events of 1991.

The band continued working beyond the competition circuit. In 1992 they released their first music video, ‘Two Hearts’. The song later appeared on Memory Bay, a ten-song collection of Blazers material that was issued digitally in 2023. The same year also brought a digital edition of Just Around Midnight, expanded to ten tracks with the addition of ‘A Heart Never Lies’, a song not included on the original 1990 cassette.

The Blazers were part of a busy Regina live scene and developed connections beyond Saskatchewan. Bassist Curtis Kautzman later remembered the group opening for the Beat Farmers in Regina and encountering them again while touring in Alberta. Their music drew heavily from rock and roll, roots rock and rhythm and blues, a combination that suited both the bar circuit and the emerging provincial festival and showcase system.

Ralph Ell continued writing and performing after The Blazers. By 1997 he was fronting Ralph Ell and the Hardcore Troubadours with Neil Jardine, Dave Porter and Billy-Ray Houston. Their recordings included ‘If She Cries’, which received Regina radio play, and ‘One Heart’, used for a United Way campaign video. Ell also carried ‘Day By Day’, a song later associated with the Blazers’ Memory Bay material, into the Hardcore Troubadours repertoire.

The Blazers’ original run was relatively brief, but the surviving recordings document a Regina band that moved well beyond a single compilation appearance. From Streetrock ’89 through Just Around Midnight, the Gold Fever victories, the national Molson competition and the ‘Two Hearts’ video, they were part of Saskatchewan’s active independent rock scene at the beginning of the 1990s. Their 2023 digital releases have since brought a much larger portion of the band’s recorded catalogue back into circulation.

-Robert Williston