VANCOUVER – Colin James refuses to rest on his laurels.
It would be easy for the Juno Award-winning blues guitarist to wield a hits-heavy setlist when he hits the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium stage on Feb. 18.
And make no mistakes, songs like Voodoo Thing, Keep on Lovin’ Me Baby, Just Came Back and Five Long Years, will have the crowd on its feet.
But James, who turned 60 last August, continues to pound out new material, and plans to present plenty of it during his 19-stop tour across the nation.
“It’s easy to get stuck in a rut and play the same songs in the same order all the time. And I’m really trying to challenge myself to still play the hits – I mean we’re doing the stuff that people expect, but setting the pace that allows for (new material). We’re doing nine songs off the new record,” James said, reached by phone from his Vancouver home.
James is really just happy to be back on stage.
Last September, while touring in New York state, he was hit by a car and needed two surgeries on his leg, sidelining him for several months while he recovered, unable to even climb the stairs in his home.
It was frustrating, but makes the current tour that much more special, he said.
“I had to do about a week in the hospital in New York and had an operation on my foot. Then I had to have a second one when I got home to Vancouver. It was a fair amount of recovery, so it feels great (to be back),” James said.
“We started out by doing a cruise ship with a bunch of blues players from all over the world, like Taj Mahal.”
James is touring behind his 18th studio album, Chasing the Sun, which he said was a departure from the records he released in 2016, 2018 and 2021.
“I had done three straight blues records in a row. I think this one I wanted to have more writing on. Initially the idea was to make sure we had most of the record original, which we did. After three straight-ahead blues records, I wanted to show a little more, for lack of a better word, Americana is the type of word people use these days.”
He turned to one of the genre’s finest for a collaboration, working with the legendary Lucinda Williams on Protection, the album’s first cut.
“There are few people who have the pedigree she does as a writer and the career she’s had. I’m a fan. I was a fan from the first time I heard her voice. To have her sing with me was just such a joy,” James said.
He also had a chance to work again with Darryl Jones, best known for his tenure as the bassist for The Rolling Stones, and drummer Charlie Drayton, who has ties to Keith Richards and Bob Dylan. The Stones’ Keith Richards, of course, gave James a huge break in 1988, asking him to open on his Take it Hard tour.
“It changed my life in a lot of ways,” James said.
Tickets for Tuesday night’s show are available at Ticketmaster.ca.
