IN CONCERT
What: Jonny Lang and Mavis Staples
Where: Royal Theatre, 805 Broughton St.
When: Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $84.75-$117 at rmts.bc.ca, by phone at 250-386-6121 or in person at the Royal McPherson box office
Note: Lang and Staples also perform Wednesday in Nanaimo at the Port Theatre
The soulful howl that comes out of Jonny Lang — laced with emotion, seared with fury — has the timbre of a bluesman many decades his senior. Which is quite the accomplishment, given that Lang is just 37 years old.
The baby-faced native of Fargo, North Dakota, has been ripping stages to shreds since he was 12, which gives him a quarter-century of experience by this point.
He has the battle scars to prove it. On his song Snakes, from 2017’s Signs, he sings about those who preyed on him at a crucial point in his life, simply because he was famous. Lang was battling drugs and alcohol for parts of his early career, and though he ditched his vices for good when he converted to Christianity in 2000, the wounds of that era are still raw.
Lang started playing guitar in bands in Grade 7, but it didn’t take long for everyone to notice that his skills were beyond his age. That launched him into the world of music populated by adults. “The guys in my band were 25-plus,” Lang said.
Soon, he was picking up their habits, even though his career, which would include gigs with Buddy Guy, B.B. King and the Rolling Stones, was already on the upswing.
The father of five talked this week with the Times Colonist, in advance of his first performance in Victoria since 2008, about the perilous journey from a teenage blues wunderkind to devoted family man.
“If everybody had a plan, a blueprint for their life, it would be a lot easier,” Lang said. “Music and that world — being on the road, it’s a new city every day, with a lot of guys coming and going — it comes with its own unique set of snakes in the grass. But I would assume that everybody, no matter what their journey is or has been, comes with their own set of things that are equally as challenging.”
Lang takes a moment to consider and adds, with a laugh: “But there’s definitely a lot of things where I wish I knew they were coming.”
The resident of Ventura County, California, split time growing up between North Dakota and Minnesota, due to his parents’ divorce. He got married in 2003, after getting sober, and has been dedicated to his craft in a new way ever since. “It feels like it’s been a long time in certain ways, and in other ways, it’s a blink of an eye. But I still love it.”
His career went skyward with 1997’s Lie to Me and 1998’s Wander This World, albums that sold nearly two million copies combined and earned Lang his first Grammy Award nomination. (He would win the award in 2006 for best rock or rap gospel album.)
The singer-guitarist is back on the road in support of Signs, with dates alongside Staples ranking as his latest career achievement.
Though he has played one-off shows with the Respect Yourself singer in the past, he considers it an honour to spend a whole tour with the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, whose father, Pops Staples, was one of Lang’s childhood heroes. Staples will perform for an hour before intermission, with Lang and his four-piece band closing the show with a 90-minute set.
Staples and Lang, though separated by 42 years in age, both mine soul music for inspiration. That might shock some casual Lang listeners, who have come to associate him with the blues.
“All the terms and monikers we give to different styles of music, over the years they get more blurry to me,” Lang said. “We’ve got to categorize stuff at some point, for certain reasons, but soul music has become a lot of different things to me. The term soul just means you mean it. You can tell the person means it.”
He still gets bluesy in concert, offering covers of Tinsley Ellis’s A Quitter Never Wins, but he also tackles Stevie Wonder’s soul chestnut Living for the City.
Could it be, after all these years, that fans have him figured all wrong?
His setlist will offer no clues. Once a tour has started, he keeps the songs he selected in advance set in stone, with no room for changes, so he can work his act to a fine point.
“It does change from time to time, but I tend to get really comfortable once we find something that flows right. When you make a record, you try to select songs and put them in order of what makes sense with the energy and all that. Live, it’s a different thing. You have to go through trial and error and see what works. Once I find that, it’s hard to change.”
When it comes to solos — the bread and butter of both Lang and his bandmates, Barry Alexander (drums), James Anton (bass), Tyrus Sass (keyboards) and Zane Carney (rhythm guitar) — he’s more open-minded.
“I would say every song has room for that. It’s pretty loose. There’s a framework for each song, but I’m not a stickler. If somebody is feeling something and they want to colour outside the lines, I’m OK with that. They are welcome to swing for the fences if they want to.”
