Three-time Juno award-winning blues musician Jim Byrnes will be performing in Athabasca Nov. 1 for the Heartwood Folk Club’s third performance this season.
Byrnes will be joined on stage by Lindsay Mitchell, who was the chief songwriter and lead guitarist of the rock band Prism. Audience members will be given a sneak preview of Byrnes’ latest album, Long Hot Summer Days, before its Nov. 3 official release date.
“It’s just an expression of kind of who I am deep down. We have tunes on there from Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge, and like I said, stuff we wrote ourselves,” Byrnes said in an interview. “People who were fans of a certain era of soul music will be very familiar with what we’re doing on it.”
Unlike other Heartwood Folk Club shows, Byrnes will be performing at the Athabasca United Church instead of the usual Nancy Appleby Theatre, which was booked that evening.
Byrnes said the performance will be really “stripped down,” but will include a great variety of material.
“We do stuff from the albums and we do some old blues music, we do some old country hits and go back do some stuff from Waylon Jennings and Hank Snow as well as we do Muddy Waters and B.B. King,” he said.
He added the new album is a collection of three original tunes, along with old rhythm and blues and some soul music from the 1960s he “loves and am fond of.”
“It’s music I grew up with and it lives within me, so I guess sometimes I got to throw it out there.”
Byrnes comes by his blues background honestly, having grown up in St. Louis and being immersed in the world of blues, gospel and soul music. By age 13 Byrnes was singing and playing blues guitar.
“I was really exposed to all this, I didn’t get it second hand,” he said.
Byrnes added he has a “load” of great stories to tell, delving into the background of the tunes he plays and working with Waylon Jennings and Ray Charles.
“Just the history of blues music and where a lot of this stuff comes from, that’s one of the things I love to do; often people tell me, well I love the music but boy, those stories were great,” he said.
Peter Opryshko, Heartwood Folk Club artistic director, said he saw Byrnes perform a number of years ago at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, and he really liked his music.
“I like to think that over the years we have provided fairly high quality performers. He’s going to be different; it’s a new sound,” he said. “He’s got a wide range of music. I think we are going to maintain our usual quality.”
The show starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Athabasca United Church, and tickets are available at the door for $31/adult and $27 for youth and seniors. Children under 12 are free. Advance tickets are available at a reduced rate at Value Drug Mart, Whispering Hills Fuels, or call Gail at Athabasca University, 780-675-6718.
