Considering that he owes his career to a jazz guitar legend, Randy Bachman's own debut jazz CD has been a long time coming -- four decades, in fact.

"Everywhere I'm playing, I get jazz fans coming up to me and saying, 'Thanks for finally coming out of the closet," says the slimmed-down Bachman, who is best known for his fist-like rock guitar stylings in The Guess Who and Bachman Turner Overdrive.

The new album is called Jazz Thing. It's being showcased tonight in the second of a two-night stint at The Top O' The Senator and in a Bravo! concert special this month.

Assembled over three years during breaks in the seemingly-endless Guess Who reunion tour, Jazz Thing features a mix of original numbers and standards, studio session work from Canadian jazz noteworthies, special guests such as saxophonist Curtis Stigers, and two tracks -- Summertime and Breau's Place -- with guitar from the late Lenny Breau.

"Lenny was my mentor and teacher when I was 16. I think I was his first friend. He was kind of a loner and tended to stammer," Bachman says of his friend from his boyhood in Winnipeg's Garden City district. "I was getting rid of my violin and getting into guitar, and I remember going over to his place at 1 o'clock, when he was just getting up from the gig the night before with his family band.

"I showed him I knew how to play I Walk The Line, and he showed me Chet Atkins and Merle Travis, and it would be, 'Now do that only with your thumb ... now take your fingers and do the top of the chord. Now roll your fingers. That's finger-style guitar.' And I had the brain-to-finger co-ordination from playing violin since I was five, so I got it pretty quick."

Bachman says he got so deep into jazz with Breau that it frightened him. Rock 'n' roll came more naturally to him, and that was his musical light at the end of the tunnel.

"I was able to write songs like (The Guess Who's) Undun and (BTO's) Blue Collar from the finger-style jazz Lenny taught me," Bachman says.

"I've got a label now called Guitarchives, where I've released Lenny's stuff, things people have taped for me of Lenny at George's Spaghetti House or Dante's in L.A. I give all the royalties to his kids. It's my way of showing my gratitude for this incredible life I'm still living (Breau was murdered in L.A. in 1984).

Bachman thought it would be appropriate to put Breau's work on his jazz CD. Not that it was an easy process.

"It was kind of like a seance. I listened to some 50 tracks and tried to find versions I could sit in without being intrusive. I found myself singing along to Summertime in my little Chet Baker voice. I really felt his presence in the room, like he was looking down smiling."

I tell Bachman that back in the early '70s I bought his first instrumental album, Axe -- a stylistic mixed bag that was released just after he quit The Guess Who. "So you're the one," he laughs. "They only ever released 3,000 copies, but I've had incredible guys like Roy Buchanan say it's the album he likes to listen to with his wife." He says he plans to sweeten and rerelease Axe, and also to throw together various cuts that didn't make Jazz Thing and call it Axe 2.

THE GUESS WHO TOUR 'STIFLING'

Randy Bachman is enjoying his little clubs tour, on which he welcomes special guests.

His wife, Celtic artist Denise McCann, is singing backup vocals. On other stops he'll be joined by Curtis Stigers and by his recording artist son Tal.

"This is my breakout experience," Bachman says.

"The Guess Who classic-rock tour was stifling, in a way. If I play a different solo, jazz fans applaud. Play a different solo at a rock concert and you get indifference. They want memories note for note."

"Creatively, it's like I'm in a big open field after being in a small, walled-in room."