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Looks like luck's been a lady to Canadian jazz crooner Matt Dusk. At just 27, the young man's already something of an old hand at this jazz thing, having been swept up in the same wave of adulation that brought countrymen Jamie Cullen and Michael Buble to popular attention.
Or maybe luck's got nothing to do with it. Maybe, as Dusk explains, it's all about love.
"You know when you see a girl across the room for the first time, and you think, 'I'm in love with her,' " Dusk explains from a tour stop in Waterloo, Ont. "Well, I fell in love with the music the first time I heard it. And one day I found out I was lucky enough to be able to sing it."
Dusk's major-label debut dropped back in 2004, and was recorded at the famed Abbey Road Studios with the help of a 42-piece string section from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
For his latest, the just-released Back In Town, Dusk headed to Capital Studio in Los Angeles, the same space where legends like Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin and Ella Fitzgerald laid down tracks.
"Room sound is very important in big band music ... and Capital is one of the last studios standing with the right kind of big room," Dusk says. "Plus it was exciting having the opportunity to record where some of my idols have recorded."
And though many of the tracks on the new album are closely associated with one idol in particular (Learnin' the Blues, As Time Goes By and The Best Is Yet To Come are all Sinatra staples), Dusk says he was careful to put his own stamp on the standards.
"I wanted to take some of my favorite songs ... and give them completely original arrangements," he says. "That's the beauty of jazz music -- you can cover it with so many different grooves."
But a respect for the basic structure of a song is of paramount importance, in Dusk's opinion.
"Myself, I like to phrase and sing things like I'm having a conversation with someone over the phone," he says. "To me what makes a great jazz singer is someone who can interpret a song in the way the author intended."
On the topic of the timeless nature of jazz, and especially its recent resurgence in the pop realm, Dusk has a few theories.
"The music industry, and people in general, want to be able to sing the songs they're listening to," he says. "People like Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey are amazing singers but because they're so amazing, it was hard for people to sing along. What gives our genre a boost is everyone wants to sing along, and for the most part they can."
Jazz also boasts an appeal that transcends different age groups, he adds.
"About four years ago, I started doing production shows with a big band and I'd see all these people walking in on walkers and crutches," he recalls. "As soon as the music started playing and I started singing, they'd get up out of their chairs. They all danced better than I can."
And had he not recently been married, it's likely Dusk would have no trouble filling his own dance card. Though he claims he was an awkward looking teen, the semi-regular fixture on TV reality show The Casino was recently chosen one of the 21 Most Beautiful People In Canada by tabloid The Weekly Scoop.
"It must have been a slow year," he laughs.
Tickets for tonight's show are $35 through Ticketmaster (www.ticketmaster.ca or 780-3333).