Colin James
Where: Mary Winspear Centre, Sidney
When: Tonight, doors 7 p.m., show 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: Sold out
Guitar slinger Colin James was at first unenthused about playing acoustic-style shows.
After all, James is the blues-rocker who blazed across Canadian stages with such high-voltage numbers as Voodoo Thing and Just Came Back.
“When we started doing acoustic shows four or five years ago, initially I didn’t like the idea at all. I’ve always considered myself an electric player,” 49-year-old James said.
But James — tonight performing an acoustic show in Sidney with guitarist Chris Caddell — soon changed his tune. Now he enjoys the format.
For one thing, the relaxed atmosphere of intimate shows allows him to tell the stories behind the songs. Working as a duo makes it easy to change set-lists on a whim. And the acoustic format allows him to play ballads that won’t fly on “an electric night when people just wanna rock,” James said recently from Vancouver.
Those lucky enough to have scored tickets to James’s sold-out concert tonight can expect to hear a few songs he’s never recorded. The rarities may include Running on Faith by Jerry Lynn Williams and John Hiatt’s Take It Down. He’ll also serve up familiar songs suited to the pared-down approach, such as Make a Mistake, Why’d You Lie and Into the Mystic.
“At the end of the day we try to hit some of the old hits — Just Came Back, for instance, we do kind of like a Delta blues song with a national steel guitar.”
James may also turn down the amplifiers on his next recording, which he aims to record next spring. His last release was a hard-rocking live album, Twenty Five Live, recorded last November during a sold-out run at Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom.
“I’m ready for a change-up, so this acoustic thing is kind of a harbinger of where I want to go,” James said. “But it doesn’t mean I’m not going to have drums or bass on the next record.”
Mentored early on by Stevie Ray Vaughan, Regina-born James zoomed to success in 1988 with his self-titled debut album. The fastest-selling album in Canadian history, it yielded the hits Five Long Years and Voodoo Thing.
A follow-up disc, Sudden Stop, included the song Just Came Back, which reached No. 3 on the American charts.
James was also an important player in the 1990s swing revival, releasing a series of jump blues recordings as Colin James and the Little Big Band. He’s now compiling a song list for another Little Big Band album (“I probably have about eight folders that are called Little Big Band 4”) but for now, that project is on the back burner.
He credits his family for shaping his early musical tastes. James’s mother and father were folkies who listened to everything from Odetta and Bob Dylan to the Staple Singers. When he was in his early teens, James focused on the mandolin, playing bluegrass and traditional Irish tunes.
“I know a lot of fiddle tunes on the mandolin,” he said. “I used to know hundreds of tunes on the mandolin, but I’ve forgotten most of them.”
