Mendelson Joe – Bluesman, Outsider, Truth-Teller

Mendelson Joe was never just one thing. Over the course of six decades he carved out an eccentric, fiercely independent career as a blues guitarist, songwriter, painter, political gadfly, and cultural irritant in the best sense of the word. Born Birrel Josef Mendelson on July 30, 1944, in Toronto and raised in Maple, Ontario, Joe began playing guitar at age eleven and was writing and performing blues by the time he entered the University of Toronto. He graduated with a degree in Arts in 1966, but music had already claimed him.

In 1968 he co-founded McKenna Mendelson Mainline with guitarist Mike McKenna, bassist Denny Gerrard, and others. The band quickly became one of Canada’s premier blues-rock outfits, earning respect at home and in Britain with their explosive live shows and the cult LP Stink (1969). Mainline’s gritty authenticity stood out at a time when Canadian rock was still fighting for legitimacy, and the group’s reputation has only grown with time.

After Mainline first dissolved in 1972, Joe struck out on his own. At first recording as Joe Mendelson and later adopting the permanent stage name Mendelson Joe, he developed a solo career that was as uncompromising as it was unpredictable. His gravelly voice, idiosyncratic phrasing, and stripped-down approach gave his blues a confrontational edge. Over the next four decades he released more than a dozen albums on labels ranging from small independents to Anthem, often collaborating with musicians like Ben Mink, Colin Linden, Gwen Swick, and the Shuffle Demons. Songs like “Dance with Joe” and “Addicted” captured his off-kilter humour and blunt social commentary, while his live shows—sometimes just him and a guitar—were equal parts performance art and sermon.

In 1975 Joe stumbled across a discarded paint set and began experimenting. What started as curiosity became a second career. His painting style—bright, naïve, and unfiltered—was as distinctive as his music. Portraits of friends, musicians, and political figures carried both tenderness and scorn. Some works were whimsical landscapes or erotic studies; others were searing indictments of political leaders. His notorious image of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney with his face rendered as buttocks remains one of Canadian political art’s most enduring provocations.

By the 1980s his work was exhibited widely, including a solo show at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris. His long-running Working Women portrait series, begun in 1982, eventually encompassed hundreds of women from all walks of life, from household names like Margaret Atwood to local advocates and unsung heroes. He also published several books of paintings and essays through ECW Press, blending art, polemic, and autobiography.

Joe’s activism was never separate from his art. He protested weekly outside Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario against nuclear power and government corruption, wrote furious letters to editors, and used his paintings and songs as political weapons. To him, art was inseparable from truth-telling, and he wielded it without compromise.

By the 2000s, Joe had retreated from Toronto to rural Ontario, continuing to paint, record, and speak out. Even as health issues limited his ability to perform guitar later in life, he kept creating—landscapes of Muskoka, portraits of neighbours, blunt depictions of leaders he despised. “All art is political,” he once said, and he lived by that creed.

Mendelson Joe remains one of Canada’s most singular artists: uncompromising, confrontational, and deeply human. Whether through his raw blues, his vivid canvases, or his relentless commentary, he held up a mirror to the country and dared it to look.
-Robert Williston