It may come as a great surprise to the legion of fans who appreciate and admire the blues-infused musical stylings of Canada’s Colin James that the talented and esteemed 51-year-old native of Regina and former protégé of Stevie Ray Vaughan has never released a true, complete and comprehensive blues album.
He’s released blues songs, songs with blues riffs or lyrics, but they were always mixed in with straight ahead rockers or contemporary ballads. But it’s going to happen at some point later in 2016. The recording for the as-yet untitled work is nearly complete, and perhaps a song or two from it will be performed as James and his band hit two big Ontario stages in the coming days – on April 1 (no foolin’) at Casino Rama near Orillia, and at the NAC in Ottawa on April 2.
“At the end of my last tour the band was kind of hitting on all cylinders and we just ran in and recorded the album. I have never made a blues record where I wasn’t thinking about doing something contemporary for radio, so everything I have done, especially in the early days, was half contemporary and then a bit of blues thrown on the record. So I thought why don’t I go in and play some blues on a record with the guys in my band and do some songs that I have always liked. That was the thinking and we’re still finishing it up. I think we might do a couple more songs. And it’s all cover material, but not the usual blues covers. I am covering stuff from early Fleetwood Mac to Jimmy Rogers,” he said.
“I am not trying to do the American Songbook kind of thing – the cliché stuff. I am sticking with songs that I think are great and have meant something to me. Over the years so many people have said that I needed to make a full-on blues records, so that’s kind of the thinking. My stuff with the Little Big Band were basically blues albums but they got kind of lumped in with the swing craze that came along, but I still think they were solid blues records. I think this new record is more straightforward, where people can put it on and hear some serious blues from me.”
While James has had a string of hit songs throughout his illustrious 28-year career with rock and contemporary pop songs like Five Long Years, Just Came Back, the Big Band-inspired Cadillac Baby, Let’s Shout and more recently, Into the Mystic, he hasn’t been motivated to create ‘hits’ preferring to explore the various aspects of his muse and follow his artistic heart.
“I have never really been driven, career-wise, by album sales. And now we’re part of an era where there has been an implosion of the business anyways, where people aren’t buying music, they’re just buying subscriptions to iTunes or streaming services, where they can get it for nearly free. But I still like to create, and I still like to release full albums of material. It’s nice to be able to put out a collection of 10 to 14 songs that represent where I was at a point in time, what my creative head space was. And I have never really judged whether an album was successful based solely on sales. These days it’s hard to judge on a big commercial scale unless you’re able to sell a zillion records and no one does any more,” he explained.
“For me it’s about doing something I am proud of. It may be something that exercises some creative muscles I haven’t tried before, or maybe it’s about writing that one song on a record where you say, ‘oh yeah, I really love that song.’ And hopefully I just feel really good about myself, my process and the outcome. Obviously I want other people to like to too, but you want to know that you’re trying to open up some new creative approaches for yourself as an artist.
“When I was younger it was all about getting on the radio. Now it’s kind of like I want to make a record that people can put on, leave on, and not run across the room and just skip to the single.”
James’ most recent album, Hearts on Fire, released in the spring of 2015 saw him taking a quieter, moodier, more reflective tone. It was recorded in Nashville and utilized the skills and talents of some of the top session musicians in Music City USA, which was a first for him. It also featured a renewal of his vibrant working relationship with his good friend and talented musician/songwriter/producer Colin Linden.
It is one of a number of great musical partnerships James has had over the years, including Linden’s Blackie and the Rodeo Kings bandmate Tom Wilson (Junkhouse) and also with The Odds co-founder Craig Northey.
“There has been talk of the four of us maybe doing something. When I was younger record company people always wanted to send me down to Los Angeles and work with people I had never met in my life and I always found that experience to be extremely stressful – and generally speaking, extremely unproductive, apart from a few people I worked with who were great. It was stressful on me, it was stressful on them too and I found there would be so much money spent and we’d come back with this thing that nobody was really happy with,” James said.
“Whereas when I met Tom and Colin and later Craig; not only are they people that I work well with, but they have become some of my best friends in the world. So it’s a more natural thing to work with them. We have built up a rapport over the years and a relationship from seeing each other out on the road all the time. With Colin and Tom, when we get together to write it’s always relaxing and productive and because of that, we always seem to come up with stuff together. I don’t think we have ever come out empty handed from a writing session. And not only that, we usually come up with two or three good things at a time. And I have done whole records with Craig and he’s also extremely talented and a great guy.”
James sees himself first and foremost as a working, touring musician, who feels most at home in front of a live audience. That’s his bread and butter and how he’s built and solidified his reputation as one of The Great White North’s most respected and prolific roots/blues/Americana musicians.
And it’s also why he has been able to sustain a steady, successful career for three decades, during some of the most tumultuous, paradigm-shifting times in the history of the music industry.
“I suppose it’s because my love for music has never diminished. Despite all the changes in the business over the years – and some things have been quite frustrating at times, including some awkward suggestions that didn’t suite me and having to be political with the record company or something,” he said.
“But at the end of the day, I am a massive music fan. And I still await my favourite artists’ new records like I always have and look for inspiration from them. I can’t wait to get a record I can really sink my teeth into and really come to love, because it doesn’t happen every day. I started this because I wanted to even remotely consider myself to be a working musician; that was my hope. And I guess that’s what I’ve been. I love lots of kinds of music and still love experimenting and trying new things. As much as there is such frustration in it, I still love the process of creating new music. I always wanted to be a lifer and I think I will be.”
In recent years, to expand his audience and repertoire of concert venues, James began playing more stripped, acoustic shows. The Rama concert will be a full-on rock experience, but the Ottawa show will be a hybrid version, somewhere in between full electric and acoustic.
“I have an acoustic show that I do and it’s broken into two sets and is a little more laid back. But for the Ottawa show I decided to hire a rhythm section, which is kind of what I did at the Montreal Jazz Festival last year and what I have done many times before. And it works out really nice having a mix between the two. It still allows for a lot of acoustic material but if I want to turn it up a notch, I can,” said James.
“It’s funny, years ago I did acoustic shows and when I started doing them I really enjoyed it. It caused me to have to relate to the audience a little more, talking and telling stories and explaining things. And I tell you, I didn’t really want to do that. For years I was the guy who pretty much only said, ‘hey, how you doing tonight’ and then ‘thank you, good night,’ that was it. So it was a good growth experience for me as a performer because it puts you at easy too when you have a chance to kind of explain things and put the songs and ideas into perspective. And plus you can do a few more ballads and get a little more low key and intimate, which is nice.”
For more information on the Casino Rama show, visit https://www.casinorama.com/Live/Artist/Colin-James.aspx.
For more information on the Ottawa show, visit http://nac-cna.ca/en/event/12278
For James’ website, click here http://www.colinjames.com/
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
