Press >> Calgary Straight 2001

An insult becomes a virtue for this American-born,Vancouver-based rising star of swamp-rock alchemy

I stumble out of bed at the crack of noon, throat dry, head throbbing, and ears ringing from another late night at a loud club. I'm not exactly eager to greet the sweltering July daytime.

The only reason I'm out of bed at all is because I was supposed to interview Jamie Perry, a.k.a. Bocephus King, five minutes ago. Perry answers the phone after a single ring and I croak out an apology, fumbling with my coffeemaker and explaining the reasons for my pathetic condition. "Me too," responds Perry to my list of grievances. "I can relate, it's no problem."

Judging by the timbre of his voice, Perry, too, has recently woken up and is not yet fully functional. Not only am I relieved to hear this, it actually makes sense.

After all, it's exactly this kind of life -one full of drunken reprobates, smoky bars, and remorseful mornings after -that Perry documents in his songs, and the best way to tell a story is to live it. That's something he's been doing, one way or another, since he was a kid growing up in Point Roberts, Washington -so close to Twassen, BC, that Perry pretty much considers them one and the same. He first encountered the characters who would later come to inhabit Bocephus King's simmering stew of jazzy blues, swing, and country (and the kitchen sink) while his mom worked in a beach side bar.

"I grew up with a lot of those people for real," confirms Perry. He didn't merely observe this world, either. He dove headlong into it, landing a full-time lounge gig in Twassen at the tender age of 16, through some other guys who were fired shortly thereafter. No one seemed to blink at how young Perry was, so he hired his brother and another buddy. Soon the makeshift band was playing five nights a week. It was here that the musician who would later become Bocephus King truly evolved.

It quickly became apparent that Perry's trio needed to learn a boatload of tunes to satisfy a crowd yelling out for Neil Young one minute and demanding a blues staple like "Goodnight Irene" the next. "They'd get really sore if we couldn't play it," says Perry. "We ended up learning this really big list of songs just out of survival."

That explains how Perry would eventually approach roots-based music from several angles at once. Accurately portraying the hazy lives of good people gone wrong - mostly nocturnal ones at that - was another thing altogether. "We would take mushrooms because we were playing five nights a week and we started getting pretty bored," recalls Perry. "It was so surreal, because you'd have these coked-out drunks from next door, these cougars, and kids all in a lounge with a fireplace."

After a night of musical weirdness, Perry and Co. would haunt the Denny's in nearby Richmond, WA, until 6 a.m., go home, sleep, and hit the lounge to do it all over again.

Fast-forward several years to the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. An older, wiser Perry has moved on to seek out his fortune in Nashville, but not before his songs are dismissed as "Bocephus music" (Bocephus being a southern term for 'old redneck'). Perry embraced the term, presenting himself to the world as Bocephus King. His low budget indie debut, loco Music, won him a little acclaim, and his second, 1998's A Small Good Thing, generated a slightly bigger buzz. Things were progressing for Perry, but he wasn't exactly satisfied.

At this point, Perry became extremely disenchanted with New West Records, the Austin-based label that had been touting him as "alt. country." Sure, argues Perry, there's a smattering of that within A Small Good Thing, but not enough to ghettoize him within that one genre. "It got great reviews," saysPerry, "[but] it got stuffed into places it didn't belong. People are going, "This isn't fucking country!" The situation was exacerbated in Canada, where the CD "spent most of its life in warehouses."

The light at the end of the tunnel appeared at SXSW in the form of an editor from Buscadero, a popular Italian music magazine. Unbeknownst to Perry, the editor was bowled over, and he then returned to Italy with a mission: to inform Europe of the genius of Bocephus King. Perry didn't know what was brewing when he was later interviewed for Buscadero, nor when a European promoter called and booked a tour for him. After apprehensively walking onto a stage in Italy and finding that the crowd knew the words to all his songs, it dawned on him: Bocephus King had quietly become huge in Europe. "We did one big outdoor concert where I thought we were part of a huge festival," says Perry, "and it was just us."

Now based in Vancouver, and newly extricated from his New West deal. Perry is busy collecting praise for his third album, last year's The Blue Sickness, which was originally intended as nothing more than a demo. While a new album is in the works. Perry is currently touring with his new band, the Dirty Little Bastards (containing Calgary gui tarist Paul Rigby, best known for his stellar playing in the Grift).

Those in attendance when Bocephus King hits the Calgary Folk Music Festival will be blown away by the fact that many of King's best songs come from something that was only intended as a demo. They'd be further amazed to actually hear The Blue Sickness, particularly "Eight and a Hair', a fully-realized oriental big bandmeets-spaghetti-western track that has become one of the high points of the Bocephus King live show.

The fact that The Blue Sickness is gathering unprecedented critical acclaim for Perry, despite having been invested with half the time and money of its predecessors, fits perfectly with the weird trip that's been the King's musical career. It won't be until the next album is released that people will hear a Bocephus King disc as Perry truly intends it to be.

"It's kind of funny, because [The Blue Sickness] started off as a demo and did better than the record before it," he laughs. "Everything is backwards:' 0

Bocephus King plays the Mercury Stage at the Calgary Folk Music Festival on Sunday (July 29). His latest CD, The Blue Sickness, is out now on New West/EMI.