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Johnny Cash tribute band ready to walk the line

David James and Big River channel the Man in Black at Kay Meek Centre
David James
David James and his band Big River will go through several decades of music in their Johnny Cash concert at Kay Meek Centre on Dec. 29.

David James and Big River: Almost the Man in Black (A Tribute to Johnny Cash), featuring Hillary Beckett as June Carter, at Kay Meek Centre, Monday, Dec. 29 at 7:30 p.m. For more information visit kaymeekcentre.com.

The tour bus is coming, it's rolling 'round the bend, and David James ain't seen the sunshine since he don't know when.

But if he had to say just when he started toting his guitar along roads with dust and sand and every other road in this here land, James would say it was probably seven or eight years ago now, back when Joaquin Phoenix was singing Johnny Cash's songs in Walk the Line.

"I fell in love with what he did," James recalls. "It inspired me how this guy could live this way and come around and get it all back and make great music throughout."

James had spent most of his musical life guitar soloing through his cover band's classic rock playlist, but something about that movie made him sing along.

"I fell into a burning ring of fire. I went down, down, down as the flames went higher."

James is an Alberta native but his water-well deep voice takes on a southern twang from time to time, like when he says "fella" or guitar ("gee-tar"). Maybe that's why June Carter Cash's hillbilly poetry sounded so at home in James' tumbling bass.

Still, he might not have paid the moment much mind if his girlfriend hadn't taken notice. "She was absolutely blown away when I started to sing along. She's like, 'You sound better than Joaquin!" he recalls.

A little while later he talked to his cover band about working in some Johnny Cash. James sang a medley of "Ring of Fire," "Folsom Prison Blues" and "Cocaine Blues." "I watched the dance floor light up," he says. Asked how the guys in the band reacted, James laughs.

"They knew they were going to lose me at that point," he says. "I even told them, I said, 'In one year's time I'll be playing casinos and showrooms.' They kind of chuckled at me." About one year later James looked out at a crowd and said, "Hello, I'm almost Johnny Cash," from the stage of a Calgary casino during the Stampede.

But while James had a handle on Cash's bloody baritone he still needed a band that could give him the Tennessee Three's boom-chicka-boom beat.

His first recruit was Colin Stevenson. Stevenson is a singer/songwriter and guitarist, but there's something about the way he handles Cash's rhythms.

"I tell you what, the guy can play the drums like nobody. There's way better drummers than him but I've hired drummers to fill in for him and it never works out. He's just got something." Todd Sacerty plays and bass and leads the band when it comes to business ("I'm the band leader on stage," James clarifies).

Rounding out Big River's sound is Duncan Symonds.

"We got a young fella  . . . . he's only 25 but the kid can play guitar just like a-ringin' a bell," James says, a famous Chuck Berry melody creeping into his voice. In order to get enough material for his band, James dug into the lifetime of music Cash left behind.

"I went on the Internet and just stole a bunch of songs and then I bought a bunch of CDs as well," he says. "It took me quite a while to figure out what was the popular stuff and what was just the next song."

There were backwoods legends about a woman in a black veil, damned cowboys chasing red-eyed cows, tunes about being hurting and lonely on a Sunday morning, and songs about damned men staring at a prison wall and thinking about where things went so wrong.

"It was neat to dig in and find all these obscure songs and we do a few of them in a night, but just a few," he says. "I realized it's not just the song, it's how you bring it across, too. You can take a piece of junk and turn it into something pretty nice if you kick it, and I've got the right voice to do that. So that's nice to know."

Turning into the Man in Black took a lot of work, right down to studying videos of the way Cash walked, talked, and held his guitar.

"The voice has developed as well where it's just second nature now," he says. "One of my French Canadian friends said 'You better watch out. You keep talking like that you'll sound like Johnny Cash all the time.' I said, 'Well that's better than sounding like you, Guy.'" The concert starts in 1955 and wraps up around 2002.

When James talks about the show, he sounds a little like the radio pitchman at the end of Cash's "The Night Hank Williams Came to Town." "We'll sell you the whole seat," James promises. "You're only going to need the edge."