A big part of who you are comes from where you grew up. If you grew up in Chicago in the 1970s, there’s a very good chance you were exposed to the blues. Toronzo Cannon is one such person.

Music from the Windy City’s blues scene runs through Cannon’s life: from childhood visions of blues clubs to a hobby that turned into a vehicle that has taken him around the world.

Cannon will be showcasing his love of the art form at The League’s 13th annual Blues Bash at Baker Street Centre on Saturday, Oct. 14.

The League for the Blind & Disabled is a local nonprofit working for “full inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of life.”

Cannon is a master of his craft, and he’s found more time recently to engage with the music. He recently took a break from rehearsal to chat by phone and tell me his remarkable story and about his energetic shows.

“You should know that my show can be interactive sometimes,” he said. “Well, all the time. I’m a firm believer that if you are an entertainer, you have to entertain the audience, but you have to let them know that they’re there also. You have to leave something with the audience where there’s an exchange of sorts. That they know that they are there at a concert of mine and they can feel it. They should expect it to be fun and interactive.”

Right on schedule

Cannon didn’t take to music early like a lot of his peers. He got his first real guitar when he was 22, having bought it with his earnings as a full-time bus driver for Chicago Transit Authority. 

He started driving for the CTA to make enough money to go back to school to become a social worker. However, he quickly found he had a talent for the blues, and the music became his passion, while he continued to drive the bus.

“I’m thinking about all the passengers that used to get on my bus. Some of those songs that I wrote, I was writing from my experience of driving a bus,” Cannon said. “So, I would see these people, you know? My last album is called The Preacher, The Politician or The Pimp, and that was inspired from sitting on a bus and at a stoplight, and you see a billboard that says, ‘Vote for me.’ You see a storefront church, and then you see a pimp right there. While I’m sitting on the bus waiting at a red light, me with a visual mind, it’s like, ‘Wow, that’s a song right there.’ And I wrote it down and elaborated on it later.”

Cannon kept driving the bus while building his musical chops. He played as a sideman for a number of Chicago artists before forming his own band in 2001. 

He quietly built a solid catalog of high-energy blues before the release of his third album, The Chicago Way, in 2016. National and international media took notice of the polished and powerful sound. International tour opportunities beckoned, and Cannon scheduled his time off from bus driving around international blues festivals.

Learning and teaching moments

Playing across the globe has led Cannon to performing in front of very diverse crowds, which can be eye opening.

“Everybody’s got their own characteristics,” he said. ”All the different countries. Sometimes you can rock out more in Germany and Italy with the rocking blues as opposed to if you go to France and Belgium — they like the more traditional blues: Muddy Waters, things like that. I mean, Japan, they don’t mind if you’re traditional.  

“They’ve all challenged me, to even know the sensibilities of these various countries.  Those different countries challenged me to be the entertainer that I am now.”

Cannon’s band plays his original music, and he’s rightfully proud of his songwriting. It’s how he expresses himself. He’s a talented guitarist, but his lyrical priorities are clear. 

“Somebody told me a long time ago, ‘People go away from shows singing the songs, not the guitar solo,’ ” he said.

His lyrics are direct, insightful, and often ferocious. When he explained the source of his lyrical skills, the connection was clear.  

“I always attribute it to my trash talking when I used to play basketball,” he said. “You have to get in the head of the person to throw them off their game or enlighten them about who you are. You know what I mean?” 

After retiring from driving bus a few years ago, he recognizes the role he plays as he transitions to elder statesman.

“I’ve gotten young people asking me, especially if I’m headlining a place, they’ll ask me do I have any advice for a young guy coming up, because they see my story,” he said. “I’m driving a bus and still traveling the world, you know? But my only thing to young guys was, ‘Be original, write your own songs, and get a passport.’

“I’m in France, in a little village because it was a festival for that village. There’s this young dude from New Jersey that opened for me 10 months (earlier), and I had said, ‘Get a passport.’ Now he’s in France going to a little cafe with an acoustic guitar in the hotel that we were playing in. They had brought him over from the East Coast, too. But his job was just play in the area, just a little acoustic thing, but they still brought him in from America. So, he thanked me about telling him to get a passport and write original songs, because he hadn’t had a passport until then.”

It’s those interactions that keep Cannon going.

“I like the full circle moment,” he said. “I don’t want them coming to my grave and telling the story. You know what I mean? I want to be able for him to say, ‘Yeah, hey, Mr. Cannon, thank you.’ And (the young man in France) did. He did it in an interview, and I thought, ‘Man, that’s good that I impacted the young man like that.’ If he hadn’t had a passport, of course he wouldn’t have been over there in France.”

Helping people

That job on the bus line was supposed to get Cannon to his goal of being a social worker. He hopes he’s still making a difference with this part of his life direction.

“I just always wanted to be in the industry of helping people, you know? I mean, of course, driving a bus and, in some small ways, with the music — you know, people liking my music and all my songs,” he said. “So maybe I kind of got my dream — kind of. You know, I’m not the social work dude that goes to people’s houses, but hopefully one of my songs would penetrate.”

Cannon has paid the dues to play the blues. Miles and miles behind the wheel of a CTA bus aren’t the typical dues for a top-notch bluesman, but Cannon is anything but typical, especially when he looks back on his bus with a bit of wistfulness.

“You see the same people every day, but it’s cool because you develop relationships and friendships and stuff like that,” he said. “And when they found out I was a guy that’s playing blues all over the world, they were kind of proud for me to be their bus driver. They tell their friends, ‘Oh, that’s my bus driver.’ I never thought about it while I was doing it, of course, but when I sit back in retirement and look back, it’s like, ‘That was pretty cool.’ 

“That was pretty cool, the collective memories, you know?”