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Bullfighting bluesman

Duck hunter, bullfighter, son and bluesman - John Lee Hooker Jr.
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Hooker cranks it at Buffalo Bill's Sunday, Nov. 5. Photo by Nicole Fitzgerald

By Nicole Fitzgerald

Who: John Lee Hooker Junior

When: Sunday, Nov. 5 & Monday, Nov. 6

Where: Bufallo Bill’s

Tickets: $20

How does the son of a legendary bluesman describe himself these days? The heir to one of the most prestigious names in the history of blues? The pied piper of ushering a deeply-rooted historic art form into the new century?

Nope, he calls himself a duck hunter and a bullfighter, depending on what side of the recording studio glass he is standing on.

But most blues fans call him John Lee Hooker Junior, the man who brings the latest tracks from his new album Cold as Ice to Buffalo Bill’s Sunday, Nov. 5 and Monday, Nov. 6.

In Hooker’s first album, Blues with a Vengence , which scored a 2004 Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album, Hooker kept his contemporary take on the historical music form in great, straight strides.

His new album shoots for a more eclectic menagerie of sound. Hence the likening of the recording artist to a duck hunter.

“It’s extreme,” Hooker says from his California home of Cold As Ice . “It’s a duck hunter. The ducks fly out of the bushes and he doesn’t aim at one, he aims at everything and shoots. That is what I’ve done with this. I’ve shot at every race, creed and colour. I am shooting at the young and old. I am shooting at the modern and traditional. I am shooting. We always try to get better and better. It’s like a Cadillac. They outdo themselves every year.”

His album is a bit of both: precisely aimed and a smooth ride.

Instead of the 1950s and ’60s vibrato of crying the blues over your daddy leaving or taking to the drink, Hooker’s lyrics hit closer to home, including a memoir of his father who passed away in 2001 at the age of 83.

The song entitled Do Daddy journeys through Hooker senior’s life as a dad tucking junior into bed; the self-made musician with no formal education; the blues legend on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; and the common man watching baseball on the big screen — only this everyman wore a three-piece suit.

“I love my daddy,” Junior said. “I miss my dad. That (song) is my expression of love. I don’t want his records left behind. I want people to be able to put on a John Lee Hooker Junior album and hear how I feel about him. It’s my memoir to my dad.”

Junior’s dad also weaves his way into the title song Cold As Ice as Junior recounts how he should have heeded his dad’s advice in his pursuits of a woman with a chilly heart. Junior laughs. He should have listened. He should have listened.

What Junior misses most about his dad was how the two joked around doing impressions. Van Morrison, Jimmie Reid, the two were each other’s greatest comedians. This humour is found in many of Junior’s songs. Not the slap you on the knee kind of gafaw, but a relating chuckle just under your breath at how universally true his lyrical comments are.

Gaining insight into the personality of this musician who will soon become a legend in his own right is one of the joys of watching this man play live. His vulnerability keeps his music rooted and real.

Although John Lee Hooker Junior was only eight years old when he first hit the radio waves, and he played alongside guitarist Jimmy Reed when he was in his teens, it wasn’t until almost three decades later that Hooker finally put out a solo album, in 2004. His musical career was sidetracked by drugs, alcohol, divorce and incarceration, all life lessons bringing depth and soul and will to overcome in his music.

“I liken that (time) to a bullfighter,” Hooker says of overcoming such odds. “I was a bull in a cage being teased and mocked. Drugs and drinking held me back, but once God delivered me from destruction, I came out with these horns on. I worked hard and aggressively. It allowed people to see what was held back in the gates. It allowed people to see what has been held back. I am in a race to make that happen.”

Already Hooker is busy writing his new album, with film soundtrack aspirations in the future.

“I am one driving force,” says the blues proponent. “I want to take (the blues) to the next level.”

Advance $20 tickets are available at Bufallo Bill’s or by calling 604-932-2446.