Is it possible to still be underrated at age 71, and after a five-decade career in which you’ve inspired just about everybody in Canadian blues?

Big Dave McLean is about to offer an emphatic “yes” with This Old Life, an album that’s poised to finally shine the light of mass acclaim on his mighty talents as a singer, harmonicist and slinger of the National guitar—skills that, among his many other accomplishments, once led Billboard to proclaim “He’s done more to shape the Western Canadian blues scene than perhaps any other artist.”

And now everybody gets to hear why. The new record is a 14-song collection of immediately indelible, classic blues, combining supremely authentic covers of tunes by legendary artists like Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters and Little Walter with three new McLean originals that can stand proudly with the best the art form has to offer.

 The bar is set by leadoff track “Well, I Done Got Over It,” a rendition of the 1953 Guitar Slim nugget that shows McLean’s soulful, gravelly rumble of a voice is perfectly suited to the archetypal lament of a good man done wrong: