“Having my own style has been really important. I’m not interested in doing what’s already been done.” – Ray Bonneville
Ray Bonneville plays songs that work at night; the singer-guitarist returns to Festival Place Friday. Rodney Bursiel / Supplied
According to many, including his upcoming hosts at Festival Place, Ray Bonneville falls under the ‘blues’ banner. Just don’t tell the artist that.
“I don’t consider myself a blues guy,” he asserts. “People say that but it’s really not accurate. I don’t play any 12-bar blues and I stay away from blues clichés. I’m a storyteller, really. I took the grittiness of the guitar and harmonica and vocal style from blues, but there are other things as well.”
Many hear the continuing influences of Bonneville’s first decade when the Quebec-raised troubadour “learned the language of the blues” more deliberately. Today it’s more appropriate to dub him an original singer-songwriter who works a solid groove. He will remind you that he draws influences from Hank Williams Sr. as much as anyone.
“I don’t like blues music that doesn’t say anything in the lyrics, and I don’t like that traditional blues music repeats the first line of the song. To me it’s a waste of storytelling real estate. Every single line should trigger the imagination and take the listener into the next, so I have no space to waste.”
That sense of economy also reflects the space in Bonneville’s songs. I stumbled onto calling him ‘blues’ because I associate his songs with the night, with life in the shadows and trance-inducing grooves. There’s no better example than his latest album At King Electric, named after the Austin studio where it was made in 2018. Recorded live off the floor with spare but trusted company, it’s brimming with great characters who step out of the night to tell their stories.
“I’m a night guy and the first song on At King Electric is Waiting On The Night. The trance effect or the groove that the lyrics ride on in my music is a form of hypnosis. Once you’ve hypnotized the listener they’re already with you and you can tell them a story under hypnosis.”
Bonneville is most often compared to guitarist-singers like J. J. Cale or Chris Smither, but the important part is that you enjoy his music for the sensitive illumination it brings to life’s darkness. At King Electric is only his ninth album since the 1993 debut disc On The Main, but it’s one of his best.
It’s also the third album he has recorded in Austin, and co-produced with Justin Long, over the 12 years he’s been living in that Texas town. Stability has brought something more solid to his sound.
You could see Bonneville as a bit of a nomad since his birth in Hull, Quebec, in 1948. By age 12 his family moved to Boston where he started learning English. In his late teens he joined the U.S. Marines and went to Vietnam. Back in Boston he started spending time in blues clubs, sitting in on jams and graduating to touring. After he took flying lessons in Colorado he moved to Quebec, Alaska, and Seattle to work as a bush pilot, and then over to Paris to play in clubs there for a year.
A return to the U.S., to New Orleans in 1983, signalled the most important stint for his sound.
“That changed me. When I listen to recordings I did before that everything sounds like I’m in a hurry, not relaxed, trying to cram too many words into a space. In New Orleans I learned the importance of silence in music. Without it, things don’t breathe. I just learned to take my time, to enjoy the sparseness, and that came from New Orleans’ relaxed lifestyle. It all got inside my blood.”
One last scary flight in 1990 pushed him to stop flying before he recharged his musical career in earnest in Montreal, putting out his debut On The Main in 1993. His third disc, Gust Of Wind on Stony Plain, brought him a Juno for Best Blues Album in 2000, and more nominations followed.
Today he splits his time between Austin and a second home on the shores of Lake Superior. While Bonneville once put in around 150 dates a year he whittled that down to 100, and then to 80. He wants to trim his touring further but demand hasn’t allowed him to yet.
While the veteran tunesmith admits he’s been “searching or running all my life,” he reports a new measure of comfort with his place in the world and with the soul in his music.
“Having my own style has been really important. I’m not interested in doing what’s already been done.”
Ray Bonneville brings keyboardist Richie Lawrence with him to Festival Place 7:30 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $25 from the venue (780-449-3378 or online at festivalplace.ca).
Seun Kuti coming to Edmonton
Fans of Afrobeat can rejoice. Nigeria’s reigning prince of the groove Seun Kuti brings the band Egypt 80 to Edmonton on April 30 for a date at the Winspear Centre.
Singer and saxophonist Seun Kuti, now 37, is the youngest son of legendary Nigerian bandleader Fela Kuti, who died in 1997. In leading his father’s band Egypt 80 he continues to build on his predecessor’s legacy, exploring the influential Afrobeat sound that has influenced musicians worldwide and spawned bands in both the U.S. and U.K. No word yet on the size of the touring band.
Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 are scheduled to perform at the Winspear Centre April 30. Jason Halstead / Postmedia
While Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat had its own recognizable sound, Seun Kuti’s contemporary take gives an admiring nod to jazz, funk and pop influences.
Like his father, Seun Kuti is no stranger to politics, and the current tour is also in part a series of benefits to raise funds and awareness of the estimated 2.4 million Nigerians who have been displaced through terrorist activities in that nation.
Tickets for the show run from $50 to $87 from the Winspear Centre box office (780-428-1414 or online).