They say there are only three singers who can properly do justice to the Marty Robbin’s chestnut "Devil Woman." One of course is Marty himself. The other two are Billy Cowsill and Stewart MacDougall. Luckily for us, Cowsill and MacDougall will be playing together this weekend and we can hear it for ourselves.

Although they’re longtime mutual friends, fans and collaborators, this is the first time MacDougall and Cowsill will perform together in a duo format (at the Uptown Folk Club this Friday). Both of these tremendous, talented artists have careers with deep roots.

Cowsill was a child star during the ’60s. His family’s band The Cowsills were the model for TV’s The Partridge Family; the actually-related family were a far superior band but passed on what could have been first virtual television show. The mom and five kid Cowsills went on to have a huge hits with "The Rain, The Park, the Other Things" and "Indian Lake," but their biggest chart topper was "Hair," the title and theme song to the Broadway hit musical.

Billy Cowsill immigrated to Canada from the States and had a healthy solo career during the ’70s; in the ’80s he formed the excellent vocal roots-pop band, The Blue Shadows. Cowsill now spends his time with Calgary’s Co-Dependents. To hear him solo or in a duo is a real treat, because you can really hear how deep inside the music he gets.

Stewart MacDougall was a little kid with a big voice when he came to us from New Brunswick, and fortunately he never left. Singers such as Merle Haggard, who MacDougall touts as the singer who gave him "hope that white people could sing," inspired his rich, warm, beautiful baritone.

He’s been the keyboardist, musical director and singer with acts like Laura Vinson, k.d. lang and the reclines, Ian Tyson and the Chinook Arch Riders, The Grand Old Uproar, the Cowtones and the Great Western Orchestra. MacDougall’s newest Colin Lay produced album, Ghost Trains, is slated for release in September 2003.

Stewart MacDougall and Billy Cowsill play the Uptown Folk Club at Woodcroft Community Hall (13915-115 Ave), Friday, Mar. 28. Doors at 7:30 pm; opening act the Twisted Pickers go on at 8:00 pm.

Octogenarian guitarist David "Honeyboy" Edwards is the real deal, considered one of the last living links to Robert Johnson: Honeyboy played with the legend the night he died. Historians consider his statement that a jealous husband poisoned Johnson most plausible. This colourful character and elder statesman of the blues plays here next week.

The delta country-bluesman was born in Mississippi and began playing at the age of 14 on street corners. In places that ran the gamut from boats to brothels to house parties, Honeyboy gigged with the likes of Homesick James, Big Walter Horton, Yank Rachell, Charley Patton, Son House, Tommy Johnson and Robert Petway. The dirty ’30s saw Honeyboy move to Memphis, where he played with Will Shade, Memphis Slim, Roosevelt Sykes, Big Walter Horton, and Little Walter Jacobs. In the ’40s, he began touring the world and recorded for over a dozen labels, starting with Alan Lomax at Stovall’s Plantation, as well as Sun Records and Chess records, among others. In 1953, Honeyboy moved to Chicago where he remains today as one of as one of the city’s best slide guitarists. There, he recorded and performed with Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Sunnyland Slim, and Howlin’ Wolf.

Ain’t nothing like the real thing, and to hear this legend in the cozy confines of the Sugar Bowl (10922 - 88 Ave.) will be a real treat. The Tuesday, Apr. 1 show in this 60-seat room sold out immediately, but fear not – a second show on Wednesday, Apr. 2 has been added.

Tickets are $15, on sale at Blackbyrd Myoosik and at the Sugarbowl, call 433—8369.