Colin James

By now, you know Colin James from songs like "Just Came Back," "Voodoo Thing," "Keep On Loving Me Baby" and "Breakin' Up The House," among others. But on the phone from his home in Vancouver, the Juno-winning singer-songwriter sounds like he's blushing when he admits that he doesn't go out of his way to listen to blues anymore.

"People assume, since I'm blues-based, that I spend my days listening to John Lee Hooker. But I listened to so much of it in my twenties that I'm seeking out new things now," he says.

Speaking about the recently released "Limelight," James concedes that the mellow, easygoing grooves might leave some of the singer's rock fans struggling to find the right chords on their well-worn air guitars, and prompt followers of James' Little Big Band material to learn a few new dance steps, but it's all good.

"I've been on a bit of a soul music thing lately," he reflects. "I don't mean in the traditional sense of listening to Otis Redding, but I tend to like tracks with a bit more emotional delivery to them. So everything from Ray LaMontagne to Van Morrison is what I'm listening to these days."

After 2003's "Traveler," which featured his stirring rendition of John Lennon's "I'm Losing You, James says he wanted "Limelight" to set a certain vibe.

"I wanted something that was going to be a good Sunday afternoon listen," the 41-year-old says. "Something that wasn't made up of out-and-out rock songs."

Backed by childhood friend, producer-singer-songwriter Colin Linden, whose credits include work with The Band and Bruce Cockburn, and a session band that includes Jim Keltner (Bob Dylan, The Traveling Wilburys), "Limelight's" 14-tracks pay homage to some of James' musical idols (he covers Bob Dylan's "Watchin' the River Flow," and Van Morrison's "It Fills You Up" and "Into the Mystic"), while letting him indulge in some of the most soulful vocals in his career.

"I'm really enjoying singing, so much more than I ever did before," he enthuses. "And it's just now that I feel that I'm finding my true singing voice."

While James might have crooned throwaway lines like "I've gone crazy babe/ Crazy over you" (from 1990's "Sudden Stop"), "Limelight" finds the singer a bit older and wiser.

On the burnt-blues numbers, "Far Away Like a Radio" and "Healing Time" the guitar virtuoso teases with slow strolling grooves, while wrapping his smoky swoon around lines like this one from "Weeping Willow Tree": "Nobody seems to understand/ This old world's the devil's playground/ And I can't be the way I am/ So that's the way it has to be/ Beneath the weeping willow tree."

And though he turns on some backroom-blues vocal charm on his cover of Dylan's "Watchin' The River Flow" (with its chorus of "No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow,/ And as long as it does I'll just sit here/ And watch the river flow), he loosens his voice enough to uncover the silky soul of Morrison's legendary "Into The Mystic."

A surprising musical chapter, considering the Regina-native quickly gained North American fame when the late Stevie Ray Vaughan invited a boyish-looking James to open for him in select cities across the United States. Radio hits and television appearances (he performed on Letterman and Conan O'Brien) followed, as well as stints opening for Little Feat and Keith Richards and the Expensive Winos. But James never really took America by storm.

"I wish I had made a bigger dent in the States, but hey that's life," he says. "I'm still going to go down there, play the blues festivals, and I'm making an effort to get out more to Europe."

"I love what I do," he adds. "I love playing and I love being on the road. If I don't play for like a month, I'm miserable and cantankerous. I've got to do it. So there is no downside."

Except one.

"My mom doesn't like 'It Fills You Up,'" he says with a laugh. "Last night when we spoke she was like, 'What's with the 'It Fills You Up'? What fills you up?' And I said, 'Mom,'" and here James pauses, "'it just fills you up.'"

Indeed it does.

Colin James appears at Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom, Thursday, November 24, and Toronto's Massey Hall, Saturday, February 4.