If the recent snap from hot sunny summer to one frosty fall is dampening your spirits, the band who inspired the Blues Brothers has a melancholy tune or two for you.

Downchild Blues Band is on its way to Kelowna for one of the first stops on a 40th anniversary tour, which will see Blues Brothers comic and musician Dan Aykroyd join them on stage in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

The band members still see Aykroyd once or twice a year, according to founding band member Donnie Walsh, who can lay claim to providing the inspiration for one of those famous Blues Brothers personas.

In a telephone interview with the Capital News this week, he explained how the band met Aykroyd and comedian John Belushi at their gigs and how that meeting eventually lead to the Blues Brothers Saturday Night Live skit which became two movies.

“My brother was the singer at the time and he was chubby and I was skinny and played the harmonica,” said Walsh as he described how he and his bother became the iconic characters depicted in the stories.

The Blues Brothers famously brought forth the “briefcase full of blues,” after which Aykroyd and Belushi named of their first album when the characters and their fictional band began to take on a life of their own.

The briefcase was actually a take on a dumpster find for Downchild, according to Walsh who says the concept came from a case picked out of the trash by a bandmate who gave it to Walsh to carrying his things.

The he comedians often finished work earlier than the band, Walsh said, then came down to the bar where Downchild played to watch their gigs and unwind.

And those late-night sessions set the stage for an impressive set of accomplishments.

Both Aykroyd and Belushi launched successful careers off the characters and Downchild wound up with a pretty lucky run of it too.

They’ve a string of albums to their name and Walsh was said to be instrumental in founding the Jane Vasey Memorial Scholarship Fund in honour of his late girlfriend, the namesake of the fund and former keyboardist in the band.

In the 40 years he’s worked as a musician, the only time he’s ever taken a break from writing music was after Vasey’s death, he sad. She performed with the band from the mid-1970s to 1982, when she died of leukemia.

One of his first songs back, It’s been so long, paid tribute to what it felt like to have the music taken from his life and find it again in the process of writing a song.

The scholarship fund is used to help build young talent, particularly for aspiring young keyboardists and pianists.

Walsh said he believed the up-and-comers have done a wonderful job of creating a thriving blues scene within the country.

“Mostly I’ve noticed a lot of the younger guys are delving further back into blues, to learn a lot of the history—before everybody played fast and loud,” he said.

With the American Idolization of music, Walsh feels many people have turned away from the mainstream music scene and it’s left bands like Downchild with a whole new audience of fans.

Of course, with a library of work that spans four decades, even the band gets rusty from time to time so the prep work on a tour like this 40th anniversary event is pretty substantial.

“You kind of have to dig out the old songs and play it all, listen to the nuances,” Walsh said.

“I’m really happy playing the music I play. The fans come out and have a great time.

“I’m very happy and extremely lucky that we’ve been able to do this for a while.”

The band plays the Kelowna Community Theatre Tuesday, Oct. 20.

Tickets are $41.25, information available by calling 250-860-1470.

They released their latest album ‘I Need A Hat’ on Oct. 6.

jsmith@kelownacapnews.com