Despite being full of well-known faces, and stacked with adventures about which others only dream, the path Colin James' life has taken has never been easy.

Nearly 20 years after bursting onto the Canadian and world music scene with Voodoo Thing and Five Long Years, James is still playing the game that is the music business.

"Time just goes by. You don't even think about it," the 41-year-old says from his Vancouver home. "It's kind of bizarre. I honestly feel I'm only starting to achieve my potential."

Since his first, self-titled album in 1988, James, who plays Kamloops' Interior Savings Centre on Friday, has offered up nine additional albums. He went from pop rock, to blues, to swing, then back to blues. There was an acoustic album, and a greatest hits, back to swing and then rock once more. His latest album, Limelight, is where he finally figures it out, James says. These days, having gone without a cigarette for a decade, he's finally able to sing like he's always wanted to.

"I used to have to tour very carefully or else I'd lose my voice." It used to be, too, that he was afraid of the songwriting process - dreaded it, even. But Limelight is a reflection of how he's overcome his fear, with his name on nearly all the writing credits.

"I'm not as scared of the writing process anymore," he says. "I used to loathe it."

And his efforts are getting noticed. Because James and his band opted to delay a major tour until after Christmas, he's at home, able to hear and read the reviews with few distractions. "I don't do well without playing. I need to play."

It is, however, interesting to be at home and hearing how well the album is being received. As James has discovered, if a person wants to stick around in the music business, he had better be doing something he loves. "I have to please myself. When you're making a record, you're really trying to make something you like."

Now that he's over the proverbial hill, James says he's confident in his talent.

"Because I have more confidence in my singing, I've never enjoyed it more. I think I have a better idea of where I want to go and how I want to be perceived."

Sure, James could have pandered to the record label back in the day. He could have stayed strictly pop - never deviating from what was hip in that particular moment.

But he opted to stretch himself, and while he may not have been blessed with immediate worldwide fame, James has stuck it out. "People have really short memories . . . pop music just comes and goes in such a flash." Often, he says, the projects he's taken on, which to some seem risky, have been the most enduring. "The ones that you didn't over-think and that you did on a whim," he says, are the albums of which he's most proud. And with time, he says, comes success.

"If your name is out there long enough . . .if you haven't gone away, if you stick in the game, you prove your worth."