Montreal-born guitarist Steve Rowe has been playing the blues all his life. So how did Mr. "Little on the Shy Side" Rowe become a bluesman?

Says Steve, "I've always wanted to play the blues. I grew up on Chicago and British blues so you'll hear a lot of that on my first CD (Driving the Blues Away). The new CD (No Refund No Return) let me push the boundaries of a standard blues tune. The roots of jazz and rock are the blues. There are no limits and I can play a different solo every night."

Steve started his career back in the early 1980s and was notoriously known as the "The Undertaker". A black hat, black van, guitar-slinging kind of guy. Backing just about every blues headliner in Quebec, Rowe's unique laid-back personality combined with his energetic guitar style, complemented any vocalist lucky enough to have Steve fill in the blanks.

His biggest influences? "Well... Johnny Winter, Muddy Waters, all the kings," he grins. "And you can't forget Eric. I got to jam with Buddy Guy once and that was cool.

"Led Zeppelin got me into the blues at first, but when I was 15, my dad brought me to see Reverend Gary Davis. That guy was amazing! I'd just started to play guitar, and then I see this guy in his 80s playing blues, and it blew me away. I thought, I want to do that at his age."

One of Rowe's first bands (Skid Rowe) saw lead singer Bob Smith and Steve form a friendship that has remained to this day. Smith, the "lyrics man", provided the words for Steve's first CD. Says Steve of Bob, "Nobody knows me better than Bob. He knows that I have to believe in what I'm singing. That's why we work so well together."

Forming his first ensemble in the mid-90s, Rowe opened for the legendary Smokey Wilson in 1997 on Bravo's TV series "Café Campus en Blues". The senior blues man shook Steve's hand and proclaimed, "You're an honest bluesman." Those words have stuck with Steve, and that's what he has become known as, an honest bluesman.

Since becoming a regular feature on the Quebec blues scene, Steve has played every major festival in the province. One comment overheard at the 2002 Montreal Jazz Fest was, "Oh, Steve Rowe's playing? He's always good!"

And if the audience is not talking about his guitar playing, they could be referring to his tongue-in-cheek humor which comes through in songs like Lost Remote Blues, or Yes, Honey on his debut CD, to If My Cat Could Talk on the second release.

Rowe's approach is simple. "If I'm going to play blues," he says, "it has to mean something to me. The music has to suit the words, like Same Old Song has sexy lyrics. So we put a Latin-style rhythm to it.