Post Messenger Recorder -

My Sweet Patootie to play at Belleville's Music in the Park on Tuesday, July 7, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at Library Park in downtown Belleville.

My Sweet Patootie is contemporary roots and ragtime at its best; bringing tight harmonies, monstrous guitar, sizzling fiddle and percussion together in one perfect package.

Founded in 2007 by Canadian Folk Music Award winners Sandra Swannell and Terry Young, the trio has a growing international reputation.

From original swing to funky fiddle-tune arrangements to exquisite ballads, they deliver a must-see show that Driftwood Magazine describes as "two parts exemplary musicianship, one part vaudeville comedy". 

Their vintage-style song writing is rooted in folk, americana and jazz; heavily influenced by the likes of Chet Atkins, Lenny Breau, Les Paul & Mary Ford and the Andrews Sisters.

Throw in a penchant for light-hearted satire and their love of artists like Patsy Cline and Hank Williams and you get a sound that Young likes to call "Green Acres for the New Millennium."

Terry Young is described by Penguin Eggs as an "acoustic guitar god."  BBC critic James Harrox calls his playing "virtuosic," while FATEA magazine describes it as "jaw dropping." He has taught advanced finger-style guitar clinics and has written about his technique for Chicago's Plank Road Folk Music Society Magazine.

He is a talented multi-instrumentalist who toured from 1999 - 2009 with the group Tanglefoot; performing on guitar, mandolin, banjo and pennywhistle. Terry is a classically trained singer and holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Western Ontario.

Sandra Swannell is a classically trained violinist/violist, but her style owes much more to the influences of Joe Venuti and Stephane Grappelli.

Her diverse musical background ranges from recording with Canada's legendary Stompin' Tom Connors to writing a series of musical sketches for string orchestra. She was the principal violist of the Georgian Bay Symphony and fronted the Celtic art-rock band The Shards before joining the group Tanglefoot in 2005.

Sandra has taught violin/viola clinics for festivals, schools and community orchestras for many years, as well as her own private studio.

The band's name "My Sweet Patootie" is a slang term of endearment, which became popular in the 1920s meaning a "hot dame" or a "sassy sweetheart." Several ragtime titles from the jazz-age reference the expression, as do the lyrics of "Everybody Loves My Baby" (1924) by Spencer Williams and Jack Palmer.

More significantly for Young and Swannell is "Sweet Patootie Blues" (1928) by Arthur "Blind" Blake, who was well known for his complex and intricate finger picking. The name was chosen to capture the vintage flavour of their music as well as the satirical edge in much of their song writing.

MSP released their third album "Good Day" in May of 2013, their first full-length album as a trio. Peter Cowley's review in FATEA magazine describes it as "infectious good humour and superb playing and singing, a delightful combination of jazzy guitar, Hot Club violin, luscious strings and horns and harmony vocals." The CD was produced, arranged, engineered and mastered by Young & Swannell at their own Nowheresville Studio located in an historic one-room school house near Meaford, Ontario.

"Good Day" is their most ambitious project to date and features each member's skills as multi-instrumentalists, yet still remains true to their live sound as a trio. Other recordings are Patootified!" (2010, self produced) and "Nowheresville" (2008, produced by Canadian gospel-blues legend Ken Whiteley).

Wayne Simpson

The trio has performed thousands of shows, including theatres, festivals and clubs in Canada (Ontario, Manitoba and British Colombia), the United States from the eastern Seaboard to the Midwest, and the United Kingdom.

My Sweet Patootie is played regularly on CBC, NPR and BBC Radio. They have performed live-to-air concerts on; the nationally-syndicated WFMT "Folkstage" in Chicago, IL; WVBR's "Bound for Glory" in Ithaca, NY; and BBC's "The Drift" in Blackburn, Lancashire.

High on the Niagara Escarpment, surrounded by sheep and dairy farmers, My Sweet Patootie creates songs that celebrate the quirkiness of rural and small town life.

Whether it's cheeky finger-snapping swing or moving ballads, their songs have a universal message of living a simple life with charity, thrift, humour, thankfulness, stewardship, community and a passion for one's work.