Calgary blues musician Kirby Sewell plays final shows at the Attic this weekend
After 33 years in Calgary's music scene, Kirby Sewell is saying goodbye with farewell performances at the Attic in Inglewood before relocating to Mexico.
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Kirby Sewell, a Calgary blues and R&B fixture for 33 years, is playing his final shows at the Attic in Inglewood this weekend — Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Aug. 22-24 — before leaving the city he's called home since 1989.
Sewell arrived in Calgary at 21 to study opera at what is now Mount Royal University, but found himself drawn to modern music instead. His early career was eclectic: in 1993, he released a cassette-only Christian rap album called Blow Thru Your Heart & Shake You Up while part of a Christian-rap duo called A.C.T.S. of God. He was also briefly a contributor to the a reporter, writing a column focused on Christian music. But over the decades, he evolved into the blues and R&B player the city knows today, leading the Kirby Sewell Trio.
"An artist needs the room to breathe," Sewell said. "You need to know you can take risks. This financial environment that has happened since COVID as well as the fact that there is no monetary value to our music, it makes it very difficult for the artist's brain to do something."
At the end of September, Sewell will embark on a three-month musical and personal journey across Canada before moving to Mexico or beyond. The trip will include a pilgrimage to Detroit's New Bethel Baptist Church, where Aretha Franklin grew up and sang gospel, and stops in Chicago, Nashville, Muscle Shoals, Memphis, the Mississippi Delta, and New Orleans — cities central to the blues and R&B history that shaped him. He also plans to take his father's ashes to Pokemouche, a rural New Brunswick community where his great-great-great grandfather once served as the British Magistrate.
While personal, musical, economic, and professional reasons drive his departure, Sewell does not plan to return to Calgary. He aims to be in Mexico by Jan. 1, with Panama as a waypoint "not really as the end of the trip, but as the beginning of whatever comes next." For now, the Kirby Sewell Trio's three farewell performances at the Attic mark the end of his 33-year tenure in the Calgary music scene.
Before you go
When are Kirby Sewell's final shows at the Attic?
Kirby Sewell plays his last performances at the Attic in Inglewood on Friday, August 21, Saturday, August 22, and Sunday, August 23, 2026.
Where is the Attic located?
The Attic is located in Inglewood, a neighbourhood in Calgary.
