Big Creek Slim

Big Creek Slim is the stage name of Marc Koldkjær Rune, a Danish bluesman from Ikast in central Jutland who has devoted his career to the raw, unvarnished sound of pre-Second World War Delta blues and early Chicago blues.

Born in 1984 into a non-musical family, Rune discovered his voice as a child and took up guitar as a teenager. At thirteen he fell for the black American blues of Muddy Waters and Lightnin' Hopkins, which struck him as more genuine than the pop idols of his peers. He played in other styles first, including Irish traditional music, before taking the name Big Creek Slim — a reference to the large stream near his hometown — to match the traditional blues identity he had adopted.

The Mississippi road

In 2008 he travelled to the American South to learn the music at its source, playing street corners and bars in Clarksdale and Memphis and spending long stretches at Teddy's Juke Joint in Zachary, Louisiana. His guitar style is deliberately unpolished, built on fingerpicking techniques he learned from James "Chicken Scratch" Johnson.

His recordings appear largely through the Copenhagen label Straight Shooter, run by his collaborator Peter Nande, and include Hope For My Soul (2015), Keep My Belly Full (2016), Bad Luck Child and Good Mill Blues (both 2017), First Born (2018), Ramblin' Big Creek (2019) and the 2021 pair Migration Blues and Twenty-Twenty Blues.

Awards

He has won the Danish Music Award for Best Blues Album three times, in 2016, 2017 and 2019, was named Danish Blues Name at the 2016 Copenhagen Blues Festival, and took the 2026 Danish Music Award for Best Danish Blues Release with Who's That Snitch. He has lived for extended periods in Brazil and tours Scandinavia and northern Europe through the summers, seeking always to innovate within the old rather than dilute it.

Danish Music Award Best Blues Album 2016, 2017, 2019; Danish Blues Name 2016; Danish Music Award Best Danish Blues Release 2026