Halifax Herald
January 26, 2006
By Stephen Cooke

West coast blues and roots rocker Colin James couldn’t have picked a better title for his latest album in regards to his Halifax shows this week.

James is definitely in the Limelight at Casino Nova Scotia tonight through Saturday, with three sold-out performances in the Schooner Showroom, with special guest (and longtime collaborator) Colin Linden.

On Sunday, James plays Glace Bay’s Savoy Theatre at 8 p.m.

But despite the title, the record isn’t so much about fame and fortune as it is about getting deeper into the art of songwriting and presenting compositions about love and soul in the most honest way possible.

To that end, James and Linden headed to Los Angeles to work with musicians who have a knack for making singer-songwriters look good.

"I wanted something a little more laid back than what I’d done previously, a little less electric guitar, a little more acoustic, a little less overdrive," says James of the vibe he was hoping for. "It was ultimately a more natural-feeling record to do, basically just four guys in a room.

"A lot of it is just Jim Keltner, Hutch Hutchinson, Colin (Linden) and myself. That was it."

Those first two names are enough to make a music lover drool. Hutchinson is probably best known for his live work with Bonnie Raitt and the Neville Brothers (and countless sessions), while Keltner has one of the longest resumes of any drummer in rock and roll, going back to work with John Lennon and George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Ry Cooder.

"Jim is awesome, and I’d never met him," says James. "But we started this record in L.A., in the Valley, and he’s two or three hours late on the first day, and he was late on most days, but he’d get in and set up and give the rough track a listen, and then just do it.

"I truly love the fact that it’s just us in a room. Jim was sitting to my left, Colin was to my right, and that’s what you hear. And some of these songs I’d never really sung before, I’d just written them, so they wound up sounding much different than the demo versions."

Rather than give Limelight a cool, generic feel, working with pros like Keltner and Hutchinson allowed James to rely on their instincts and go with material that might not have been as road-tested or pre-produced as some artists are comfortable with.

The result is some of James’s most natural sounding work to date.

"Some of these songs you’re actually hearing me sing for the first time," he explains. "Like the Bob Dylan tune (Watching the River Flow), I’d never played before, but I heard his inflection in my head, that talking blues, and we just did it. And Jim played on the original recording of that! It was just a fluke that I picked that song.

"I’m a major Ry Cooder fan, and that’s what I know his work from mostly, so to be sitting across from the guy who played on Get Rhythm and all those records was unbelievable. Then you start realizing that he played on Lennon’s Imagine, and Jealous Guy, it’s unreal.

"Plus, to play with a guy like that, who plays the drums like an instrument rather than just keep great time, he’ll take chances with things, and barrel into ideas when he doesn’t always know where he’s going, and things that seem like an accident at the time sound awesome when you listen back. All those little points where we go off the rails a bit end up being the parts of the record I love the most."

Plus, with players like Hutchinson, Keltner and Linden — who has been working in Nashville and Memphis as of late — on board, the soul vibe of the songs is bound to come to the forefront.

In fact, James says that sometimes spiritual aspects of the songs would rise to the surface even when he didn’t expect them to.

"I wanted something that was a soulful record, and the stuff that I listen to these days that affects me kind of comes from that direction," says James, who lately has also been spinning discs by Canadian songstresses like Kathleen Edwards and Sarah Harmer. "I don’t think it was a totally conscious decision; but a song like 'On My Way Back to You,' which started out as a boy/girl song, I realized wasn’t that at all when I was about halfway through writing it.

"It was neat, because I was trying to write a love song, but when you get to lyrics like 'looking down the stairway at the gate on the corner of the road,’ the words start taking on a different meaning. In fact, it was Jim Keltner who pointed out that the song could just as well be talking to God, and I realized it, and all the lyrics just kind of stood on their head."

If you don’t get a chance to catch James and Linden this week at the Schooner Showroom of the Savoy Theatre, keep an eye out for James’s next project, the revival of his Little Big Band, and subsequent shows with the swinging ensemble.

The Casino Nova Scotia shows are sold out, tickets to Glace Bay’s Savoy Theatre show are $28.