Call it Colin James’ close encounter of the Van Morrison kind.

The tale began when the Vancouver-based rocker received two tickets to go see the legendary Irish singer at a winery located south of San Francisco — a birthday gift from his wife, no less.

“How great is that?” says James, a longtime Van The Man fan.

“The day the show was on, it just so happened to be Van’s 60th birthday. My wife and I were staying in Sausalito and before the show, we went out to get a bite to eat. After that, we go by this one restaurant — and there’s Van Morrison having dinner with some pals of his.

“We go in and I pretend to start reading the menu before my wife says, ‘What are you doing? We just ate.’ I start darkening my eyes behind this menu — because we were sitting down right beside Van Morrison’s table. But I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to him. Instead, when he left, I stole the swizzle stick from his leftover drink.”

You might as well forgive James for the Morrison fan-worship. On Limelight, the 41-year-old’s newest effort released this past September, James eschews his ‘90s blues and Little Big Band swing modus operandi in favour of more soulful, rootsier material — including a Van Morrisonesque title cut and covers of his idol’s Into The Mystic and the lesser-known It Fills You Up.

“Back around 1991, I started buying Van Morrison records and I guess those filled that hero spot that I used to have with Stevie Ray Vaughan before he died so suddenly the year before,” James says. “For this record, I was searching more for the emotion behind the songs, as opposed to just shouting out lyrics.”

Canadian radio still locks James in as a blues rocker who belts out hits Just Came Back, Why’d You Lie, Keep On Loving Me Baby or the poppier Five Long Years; or even as a swing-blues artist accompanied by his Little Big Band (which, incidentally, James says he may revisit in the near future).

But James’ sound has long moved on, and for Limelight, he was ecstatic to be working again with producer Colin Linden (their first collaboration was James’ 1997 National Steel album) and hooking up with famed session drummer Jim Keltner, whose session-work resumé includes Ry Cooder, John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Bob Dylan.

In one of Limelight’s most coincidental moments, James covers Dylan’s Watchin’ The River Flow, totally unaware that Keltner also drummed on the original 1971 Dylan recording. “It was only when he started explaining, ‘Yeah, when we did that track at so-and-so ...’ I just went, ‘You’re kidding me?’ “ James laughs. “Until that point, I had no idea.”

Colin James plays Massey Hall on Saturday night.

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