Who says you can't go home again? Randy Bachman returns to his musical roots on new album JazzThing (released today) and pays tribute to late jazzman mentor Lenny Breau at the same time.
"For me it's quite a full circle," says Bachman, who'll play an intimate jazz gig at the Windsor Hotel May 18.
The veteran rocker was just 15 when he started hanging out with then 16-year-old Breau during lunch breaks from classes at Garden City Collegiate.
"When I met Lenny Breau, I stopped going back to school after lunch," Bachman says.
That was in 1957. Already a professional musician, Breau had just moved with his parents to Winnipeg from the U.S. and travelled the province playing country music gigs with The CKY Caravan.
Murdered in L.A.
Breau, who was murdered in Los Angeles in 1984, made his mark in jazz, while Bachman famously rocked the Canadian music world in bands The Guess Who and Bachman Turner Overdrive.
But Bachman, now a father of eight and grandfather of 16, says he always played jazz between shows. Now, he's moving his hobby to the front burner.
With some 2,000 hours of Breau's music in his possession Bachman -- who has released six posthumous Breau albums, with royalties going to Breau's heirs -- decided to duet on JazzThing. That's Breau playing on cuts Breau's Blues and Summertime, to which Bachman added vocals a la Natalie Cole's Unforgettable duet with her late father Nat King Cole.
Chet Baker influence
"I just thought this very appropriate that I do this with Lenny," Bachman says, acknowledging the Chet Baker influence in his breathy rendition of the standard.
He says Lenny Breau introduced him to "the two Chets" and told him he should aim to play guitar like Chet Atkins and sing like Chet Baker.
But he admits he's not expecting people to buy the album for his vocal prowess.
"I'm not a serious singer. I have to sort of noodle with the track," he says.
The jazz foundations of Bachman-penned classics Undun and Looking Out for Number One aside, the seasoned performer, who now lives on Saltspring Island in B.C., says it was scary to commit to playing a full jazz set onstage. He says fans expect to hear his songs played note-for-note as they've heard them for the past 30 years -- and he expects to play them that way at more Guess Who gigs this year or next. But he felt he needed to "go to the edge," for a while. And he did feel on edge when he played his first JazzThing concert in front of TV cameras, at a March taping for Bravo! concert series Live at the Rehearsal Hall in Toronto.
With guests including his wife, singer Denise McCann, son Tal Bachman and Winnipeg-born Joel Kroeker, Bachman played for more than 90 minutes.
The Bravo! show airs May 11 and the full concert will be released on DVD this fall.
"I was pretty nervous. The first time we'd played together was on the Bravo! show," he says. "It's a whole new adventure, it's quite fun."
