Mike Stevens
Mike Stevens is a Canadian harmonica player and composer from Sarnia, Ontario, who came to bluegrass through Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys and has played the Grand Ole Opry hundreds of times. He founded ArtsCan Circle, which takes instruments and arts workshops to young people in isolated northern communities, and in 2025 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Stevens grew up in Sarnia and took up the harmonica as a boy; by sixteen or seventeen he was playing it up to twelve hours a day. In 1988, while playing a bluegrass festival in Georgia, he met Jim and Jesse McReynolds, who invited him to play their show after hearing him. He is on Jim & Jesse’s gospel album I’m Gonna Sing, Sing, Sing (Double J, 1990), recorded at Fox Farm in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, with Raymond McLain on banjo, Glen Duncan on fiddle and Roy Huskey Jr. on bass.
His own album Blowin’ Up a Storm (Pinecastle, 1992), cut at Music Row Audio in Nashville, opens with DeFord Bailey’s “Pan American,” played on harmonica alone, as is his arrangement of “Fox Chase.” On most of the other tracks Jesse McReynolds plays mandolin, with Raymond McLain on banjo, Michael McLain on guitar, Jimmy Buchanan on fiddle, Roy Huskey Jr. on bass and Mike Kennedy on drums, in instrumentals such as “Lee Highway Blues” and “Ida Red” and in the title piece, which McReynolds wrote. In 1992 Stevens also played harmonica throughout Jim & Jesse’s Tribute to Bill Monroe: The Father of Bluegrass Music (CMH, 1993), recorded at Reflections Studio with the same McLain brothers, Buchanan and Huskey.
He followed with two albums on his own Mike Stevens Music label. Life’s Railway to Heaven (1994), recorded at Music Row Audio, is a set of gospel instrumentals such as “This Train” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” with Jesse McReynolds, Bobby Hicks on fiddle, the McLains and Huskey; Colin’s Cross came out in 1995. Later collaborations include the duo albums Piggyback (2009) and Push Record (2011) with Matt Andersen.
His music has ranged across bluegrass, blues, country and folk, and he has performed across Canada and abroad. ArtsCan Circle sends volunteer musicians and artists to isolated Indigenous communities in northern Ontario and Labrador, and over more than two decades it has provided thousands of instruments; his tours in Canada’s North are the subject of three documentaries. He was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal for that work in 2015. His appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada, dated 17 April 2025 and announced on 30 June 2025, recognizes more than forty years of performing in Canada and abroad, including at the Grand Ole Opry. As of 2025 he lived in Point Edward, Ontario.
