Doc MacLean’s Dark Horse Blues Tour – Ireland 2026
Doc MacLean is a solo acoustic blues performer, storyteller and songwriter — Canadian-born, Georgia raised, Cape Town-based, and currently somewhere between Africa and Ballycotton, Co Cork. For much of the last decade he has been self-driving across southern Africa with a battered National guitar and a small PA, playing concert halls, shebeens, and sometimes places where things are burning by the side of the road. Dark stories. Deep roots. A journey.
Fifty years ago Doc was playing Charlie Patton songs in Son House’s living room in Rochester, New York. With musical partner Colin Linden (Bob Dylan, The Band, T-Bone Burnett, Nashville) he signed to Chicago’s Flying Fish label in 1976. Highlights included recording and touring with Sam Chatmon, Blind John Davis, Little Brother Montgomery, Sunnyland Slim, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee — and also supporting Muddy Waters, John Hammond Jr., and Johnny Winter. While his 2006 Narrow House album made with Larry Taylor (Canned Heat) and Steven Hodge (Mavis Staples) remains a touchstone, for much of the last decade Doc has been performing solo across three continents. Africa Blues. In Ireland he has recently supported local favourites Mundy and Dom Martin, and has appeared in concert at nearly all of its significant blues, roots and jazz festivals.
“Ireland has become one of my favourite places in the world to play– it’s filled with dark old stories of the kind that I love and collect.” (Doc MacLean)
“I’m always looking over my shoulder for the Third Policeman. I’m forever turning up in those lost counties that you can only enter from the folds of a worn, old paper map.” (Doc MacLean)
“My old National guitar is slowly taking on the patina of a decent Guinness, so I guess things are working out pretty good in Ireland!” (Doc MacLean)