Travels with Charley 

500 word bio

Smart, emotional songs…Stonesy country-blues…Hawaiian ukulele and steel soundscapes…mystical prog-folk. Travels with Charley inhabits a musical niche you’re unlikely to have come across before. But it’s a natural process: any time multi-instrumentalist Doug Cox and songwriter Steve Mitchell sit down to play music together, Travels with Charley is what happens. But how that came to happen…well, that’s a story. 

Childhood friends who sang and played guitar together, Steve Mitchell and Jackie Janzen had found themselves in musical purgatory by 1991, playing grubby Vancouver coffeeshops for scones and $25 each.  One Thursday night in Victoria, where she had relocated for a summer job, Janzen met a talented blues guitarist/vocalist at a neighbourhood open mic. Doug Cox, Janzen discovered that night, was the real deal: he could sing and play, knew his blues, country and folk, and got paying gigs. Invited onstage to sing with the band, Jackie knew she had to make the opportunity count.  “Angel from Montgomery, Bonnie Raitt version?” she asked Cox, “Key of E?” 

The next day she called Mitchell: "I’ve found the missing piece of the puzzle."

With Cox in tow, the fledgling trio released its debut six-song 1992 cassette under the name Jackie Janzen & Travels with Charley.  Janzen and Mitchell decamped from Vancouver to Victoria, BC, where Cox worked, trimmed the bandname to Travels with Charley, and won a residence at the George & Dragon Pub.

In mid 1993, the trio emerged from the studio with Uncle Herb’s Amusements, a rustic effort that seamlessly fused Laurel Canyon-inspired introspection and bluegrass. In the next year, the band added bassist James Young, won rock radio station Q FM’s Rocktoria contest, and began writing 1995’s even more musically adventurous Red Rome Beauty.   

The following 18 months brought a dizzying mix of heady success (the Vancouver and Owen Sound Folk Festivals) and struggle (Janzen’s temporary departure; Mitchell’s health issues). Back to a trio format, TwC toured to Arizona and then broke up for good after the release of a now incredibly rare covers cassette, Tuesday Afternoon (1996). 

Mitchell returned to Vancouver crestfallen, convinced that the entire project had been a failure. After marrying, he played bass in The Paperboys for five years and eventually resurfaced in Nashville as a country songwriter. Meanwhile, Cox flourished, earning recognition the Junos & Grammy awards for projects he was involved in, and CD of the Year mentions from both Downbeat and Acoustic Guitar magazines. Still, Cox privately held a conviction that TwC was some of the best work he’d ever done. 

And then, radio silence.

Then, on a John Prine tribute show in 2024, Cox and Mitchell plugged in and made music together for the first time in 31 years. The consensus? Magic.

In early 2026, the duo reunited for a four-concert tour of Vancouver Island. Driving between shows, the men were brainstorming names for the project when Mitchell mentioned his wife’s suggestion that they revive the Travels with Charley moniker. Cox, to Mitchell’s surprise, was 100% on board. 

In March 2026, after obtaining Jackie Janzen’s blessing for the project, TwC returned to the studio and recorded the core of the band’s comeback album, The Journey, with Janzen coming out of retirement to provide vocal stylings on several songs.