IN CONCERT
Jim Byrnes (opening act Babe Gurr)
When: Saturday, 7: 30 p.m.
Where: Mary Winspear Centre, Sidney
Tickets: $36.50 (250-656-0275)
Dislike country music? Don't tell Jim Brynes.
"Some people say, 'I like all music. Except that country stuff, you know?' Well, f---them," joked the Vancouver singer-guitarist this week.
Byrnes has something invested in this semi-serious opinion. In September, he released I Hear the Wind in the Wires, a sonic journey delving deep into classic country. The disc, recorded for Vancouver's indie Black Hen Music label, features Byrnes's soulful interpretations of songs popularized by Buck Owens, Ray Price, Hank Williams and other country legends. There are a few not-so-country offerings as well, such as Nick Lowe's Sensitive Man and Tom Waits's House Where Nobody Lives.
Byrnes will sing some of these songs Saturday night at Mary Winspear Centre, accompanied by guitarist Steve Dawson (who happens to be Black Hen's founder).
In music circles, 64-yearold Byrnes is renowned as a raspy-voiced blues and soul man. In the mid-1980s, the Juno-winning musician was a favourite on the club circuit, notching up to 300 dates a year (one of his early albums was recorded live at Harpo's - now Upstairs Cabaret - in Victoria). Byrnes has also had a successful acting career, appearing on such TV series as Wiseguy and Highlander: The Series.
A blues-soul artist venturing into country music may be a radical shift, but Brynes believes that's a load of bunk. Dividing music into pigeonholes is a wholly artificial thing, he says.
As Byrnes points out, many blues/soul artists delved into country. He tells the story about how musicologist Alan Lomax visited the American South in the early 1940s. There, he recorded blues singer Muddy Waters for the Library of Congress. Surprisingly, seven of Waters' tunes were songs originally by Gene (The Singing Cowboy) Autry.
There are many such examples. Soul hero Ray Charles released Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music in 1962. Blues singer Johnny Shines once told Byrnes that Robert (King of the Delta Blues) Johnson was the best country singer he'd ever heard. Even Howlin' Wolf's howl was an attempt to imitate the yodel of country singer Jimmy Rodgers.
Or so Byrnes says. "If you take an R&B tune, like a Percy Sledge song or an Otis Redding bal-lad, and you take the organ and the horns off and put a pedal steel guitar on it, it becomes a flat-out country song. It's so intertwined."
The notion of a country album came to Byrnes while touring with Dawson. During one long drive, they played Buck Owens and George Jones continuously on the car stereo.
"I said, 'Jesus, I love this stuff,' " he recalled.
Growing up in St. Louis, Byrnes used to sneak into clubs to see blues heroes like Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed. Country music was part of his musical education as well. He remembers watching TV broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry, studying how the musicians made chord changes. As Byrnes says: "Some of my guitar lessons were from Ernest Tubb and Porter Wagoner."
Tellingly, one selection from I Hear the Wind in the Wires is Big Blue Diamonds. Byrnes first heard it in 1962, when it was a hit for R&B singer Little Willie John. Further research revealed it was also recorded by country crooners such as Tex Ritter, Jimmy Dean and Tubb.
"It's a song that really exemplifies what I'm talking about. All those boundaries are so ridiculous, you know," Byrnes said.
"We'll be mixing it up [at the Mary Winspear Centre]. Like I say, it all fits together for me."
