It's the year 2003 and I'm here for the Alberta Sun at the Babylon Blues Fest in Baghdad, as working class a town any in the United States of Arabia.

At 78, the headliner, Canada's own Colin James, would look a little like a shiny white raisin up there, if it wasn't for his perfect swirl of jet black plastic hair sitting atop his head, under the transparent, solid ozone Stetson.

He looks around, knowing, like all R&B players his age, he's earned his due, and that's important. The whistles and ululating back up his confidence and he smiles. It reminds me of an interview I did with James, long, long ago, before the hips went, back in 2003, when he played a long-forgotten pub called Nashvilles's in Edmonton, May 3 of that ancient year. It went a little something like this, way back when he was only 38:

2003 FISH: You've got a built-in longevity, Colin; most blues guys grabbing headlines are old men.

2003 COLIN: It's proven to be kind of cool now. I'm coming in as a new guy, ironic for me. Some people don't know who I am, so I have to get out there and hustle. I'm just starting to get invites for gigs in the States. They're starting to come, instead of me having to track them down full-time. People down there are asking me, "How come you're not playing all over the States all of the time?"

FISH: But you landed a gig as a guitarist on the Chris Isaak Show. Tell me about that.

COLIN: I just did my second show. I'm the go-to guy when the regular guitarist can't make it. Cyndi Lauper was just on.

FISH: I used to have kind of an intellectual crush on her.

COLIN: For real? I ain't saying a word. It was a real trip playing down there. A woman I know hired me for their Vanity Fair party. She certainly didn't have to. Me and Fiona Apple played a few songs each. It was overwhelming for me, here I am playing in front of Brad Pitt. It's a strange forum to be playing, basically a bunch of stars talking really loudly over your music. Rosanna Arquette finally told everyone to pipe down. That was for Fiona Apple, though. I've seen a lot of famous people, but I'm having a conversation and Jon Voight walks by. Maaan.

FISH: You've likened your genre-hopping in the past to an actor switching roles. Are you a guy who's easily bored?

COLIN: I'm like anyone. You pick a job for your life, mine being music. I've been playing for 20 -some years now, arguably on the road, I'm gonna dip into the da duh da duh da duh (blues riff) thing every five o six years. I kind of said after the Little Big Band II album I'd like to do two rockier records back to back. So I'm doing that now. I've got lots of time, right?

Yeah, those were the good old days, the dawn of the millennium, full of war.

But now, in the peaceful '40s, Just a train stop away from the Persian Gulf, old man James gets up off his hover-chair and plays, I mean, plays some Egyptian Delta Blues. And his sparkly eyes are still as young as his pink fingers.

Really form the age of slavery, this is what the blues has been about for more than 150 years: defying truly obvious limitations.