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Bocephus King proves he's a big-league contender with his new album, All Children Believe in Heaven

The way Jamie Perry sees things, the city that gave birth to his alter ego might be the strangest place on earth. To the rest of the world, Nashville, Tennessee, is the country capital of the universe, a dream factory where a Garth or a Shania can arrive dirt-poor and end up living larger than Elvis during the Graceland years. To Perry--better known to his fans as Bocephus King--it turned out to be something considerably darker.

He moved to Music City in 1989 at the age of 19, landing a job in a Nashville songwriting factory. In the interest of self-preservation, the Vancouver roots-rock alchemist eventually ended up fleeing in the middle of the night. But before he got on the Greyhound, there were months and months of watching a dream slowly go sour.

"I wanted to stack myself up against the pros, and Nashville seemed like the place to do that," the lanky, dishevelled singer-songwriter says, sipping espresso at a Commercial Drive coffee bar. "It had the same sort of appeal as Hollywood does for other stupid young kids. It turned into a horrible idea, and, like most bad ideas, it took a while to realize that. I eventually figured out that I didn't have a clue what I was doing."

He didn't exactly arrive at that revelation by himself. Apart from what he'd learned by watching Robert Altman's Nashville, Perry knew nothing about the city's music business. He made the move convinced he'd come up with a couple of Johnny Cash­calibre songs and the royalty cheques would start rolling in. What didn't occur to him was that Nashville stopped caring about the Man in Black, and all he stood for, sometime in the early '70s.

"The other songwriters would talk about 'Bocephus music'--it's like a derogatory term for old-time country songs about drinking," Perry says with a laugh. "Because I was trying to be Johnny Cash, I became a joke to them. They'd come in and go, 'What have you got for us today, Bocephus?' I honestly think they just kept me around for fun. I never really fit in, not in an outlaw way, but more like in an idiot kind of way. I was like a kid who got run over by a Nashville truck."

If there was an upside to all the abuse, it was that the party never stopped.

"It took me six months to get off of everything that I got hooked on down there," he says. "There was a lot of coke and a lot of dealers where I grew up in Tsawwassen and Point Roberts, but I'd never seen anything like the social aspect of the drug use that I saw in Nashville. You had these successful songwriter guys walking around in giant rabbit-skin coats. If someone thought you were even partially cool, they would whip out whatever they had."

Jamie Perry is in a better place today. A decade-and-a-half after the surreal, chemically enhanced nightmare that was Nashville, he's become a heavyweight on Vancouver's fertile alt-country scene. During that time he's released three albums--Joco Music, Small Good Thing, and The Blue Sickness--under the name Bocephus King. Those discs, mixing rough-hewn roots rock with cabaret blues and gutter-view country, placed Perry at the same lonely, losers end of the bar as Tom Waits, Alejandro Escovedo, and Townes Van Zandt.

Already a guaranteed draw on the local club circuit, Perry could easily have given his fans more of what they've come to expect with his latest, the just-released All Children Believe in Heaven. Instead, he decided to challenge himself and those who've followed him. Four albums into his career, Perry has created his first masterwork. If Nashville hated him back when he was aiming no higher than pleasing the shit-kicking fans of Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, imagine what it would have to say about an album that incorporates everything from desert-baked Americana to dark-side-of-the-moon prog rock to stirred-not-shaken lounge pop. All Children Believe in Heaven is a stunner that sounds like nothing Perry has done before. Because the album marks such a radical change in direction, there are going to be Bocephus King disciples that don't get it. The singer is okay with that. It's not like he hasn't had his work criticized in the past.

PERRY HAD A simple goal with All Children Believe in Heaven.

"This time, I wanted to make sure that the only person I sound like is Bocephus King."

The album begins with a genre-busting epic titled "St. Hallelujah". Featuring heaven's-gate synth blips, ghost-town guitars, and beamed-in-from-the-'30s backing vocals, the track kicks off with Perry announcing "Heaven, just a death away." That lyric is a sign of things to come: death, both spiritual and physical, comes up a lot on All Children. Sonic experimentation aside, what makes the track an immediate standout is that it clocks in at more than 10 minutes.

"I figured if I was going to take a beating with this record, then I might as well take a really good beating," Perry says. "When you start an album with a 10-and-a-half-minute song, people can't sit on the fence when they're doing a review. That sort of audacity isn't easy to ignore."

As well as boldly announcing the record's ambition, "St. Hallelujah" also introduces some of the themes Bocephus King explores on All Children. The key to the song is the line: " 'tit Jean dans les bras de sa mère", which translates as, "Little John in the arms of his mother". That's a nod to '50s beat poet Jack Kerouac. (He's just one of the deceased icons Perry name-checks over the course of the album, joining a list that includes Nelson Riddle, Raymond Carver, Neal Cassady, Jimmy the Greek, Montgomery Clift, and Muddy Waters.)

"Jack Kerouac's mother used to call him 'Tit Jean," Perry says. "I read a lot of James Ellroy and Jack Kerouac while I was working on the record. As a result of that, a lot of the songs ended up being about the '50s and '50s Hollywood. What fascinates me about that whole time is the façades that people had to put up back then. Kerouac and Montgomery Clift had these secret other lives that they had to keep hidden away from their public."

Perry isn't just obsessed with what went on behind closed doors in McCarthy-era Tinseltown. In the tradition of Ellroy's L.A. Confidential and Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust, All Children paints Hollywood as a living lie where every boulevard is littered with broken dreams.

The songwriter's fascination with down-and-out, desperate losers is nothing new; such characters litter Joco Music, Small Good Thing, and The Blue Sickness. But never have they been as finely drawn as they are here. With lines like, "There's no way out except the fire escape/Down endless alleys and the police tape", "Lullaby Blues" plays out like a Robert Mitchum film noir set to cocktail nation­spiked Calypso country. And, whether intentionally or not, the coming-down-at-dawn waltz "We're All Here" evokes Sunset Blvd.'s reclusive Norma Desmond with "I'm alone in this mansion, abandoned and cursed."

The film references don't stop there. For every James Dean and Grace Kelly who made it in the '50s, there were thousands of desperate hopefuls who never got beyond a casting call. Perry doesn't forget them, paying tribute to these shadows in "Hollywood", where he sings: "I'm getting out of here before I'm dead/I should have stayed right where I was instead". It's no coincidence those lines sound like something you might expect to hear from Naomi Watts's doomed Betty in David Lynch's Mulholland Dr.; Perry is a huge fan of the director who's frequently referred to as "Jimmy Stewart from Mars". And he's a huge fan of movies in general, largely because of the way they continue to break new artistic ground. That's something, he argues, that can rarely be said about music.

"Film is always trying new things. These days I watch movies and try to figure out how directors put things together so that they flow," Perry says. "Then I try to put songs together in the same kind of way, bringing different elements together. Rather than try to top someone that's come before you, like a Dylan, it's almost better to take yourself right out of the running and look to another medium."

Consequently, when Perry wanted to communicate an idea to the cast of musicians that helped him out on All Children Believe in Heaven, he'd talk about things he'd seen or heard in movies. Take, for example, the celestial, retro backing vocals of Coco Love Alcorn in "St. Hallelujah"; they give the song a sonic undertow that sounds like the Andrews Sisters after a long night in the opium den.

"There's a scene in L.A. Confidential where it shows the progression of time with this sequence that's all sped up to show what people do on a day-to-day basis," Perry explains. "I was having trouble getting across what I wanted to do with 'St. Hallelujah'. Finally I said to Coco, 'Have you seen that part of the movie? That's what I'm after.' And that's sort of how we ended up getting the vocal part done."

JAMIE PERRY HAS an easy explanation for why it took him so long to make the dramatic artistic leap forward that's he's pulled off with All Children Believe in Heaven.

"In the past, I was messed up on various chemicals," he says, "and because of that, I wasn't fully together."

The perpetually unshaven singer has the behavioural tics of someone who's done some hard living. He fidgets constantly, running his hands through his short, light-brown hair, squirming in his chair, and playing with his espresso cup long after it's been emptied. He's got the cracked, nicotine-cured voice of someone who smoked--Camel Lights and then Dunhills--for more years than he should have. On this day he arrives unshaven and looking like he's been sleeping in his clothes for days. He looks older than his 34 years.

Perry started partying as a teenager in Tsawwassen and Point Roberts while playing bars like the now-defunct Breakers, where his mother worked.

"Basically, the world I knew was one of booze and pull tabs and cocaine," he says.

For a long time, drugs were part of his creative process.

"When you get into things like speed, you get an unfair advantage over people who are sleeping," he offers. "Eventually, that takes its toll on you physically and mentally. It gives you a perspective on the world that people don't normally enjoy. I don't necessarily know if that's a great thing, but for me it worked."

So did cocaine, pot, alcohol, and whatever else he could pump into his system. Perry cut back a couple of years ago when he saw those around him begin to get too strung out to function properly.

"The people that I started living that whole party lifestyle with starting checking out," he says. "It was like suddenly they weren't all there. That made me realize that if you keep doing that stuff long enough, you become a walking joke, a jaded, drunken, drugged-out artist. I was on the road to that.

"But I was lucky enough," Perry continues, "to have heroes like Townes Van Zandt or even Art Bergmann in Vancouver to look up to as examples of what happens when you go too far. Thinking about where they ended up made me slow down and get my life together. I'll say it out loud: 'I have a problem.' But I'm lucky enough to see that and to be able to do something about it."

With that confession, he acknowledges that he could have easily crossed the line that lands people on the streets. For further insight, check out All Children's autobiographical "Wreck of the Century", a thumping, incandescent rocker where Bocephus King proclaims: "You can drag the sick ones from their beds/Too late to stop, we've gone too far/It's a nasty place where the wild things are."

"Obviously, I'm fascinated with drug addicts, and I think that comes from the fact that when you are one, you have to also be a good con person. You have to make sure that people aren't asking questions about what you're doing. Everyone thinks that hard-core drug users are lazy people, but in fact they have to work twice as hard to fool those around them."

PROVING THAT GOD'S children sometimes get their reward before they get to heaven, Perry is a happy--although admittedly perpetually anxiety-ridden--man these days. As his fans know, his past records have, somewhat bizarrely, made him a celebrity in Italy, where he packs out thousand-seaters. Earlier this year, he did a five-week tour of the country, playing both solo and with his new backing group, the Band of Doom. The shows went off beautifully, which is more than he can say about the previous time he went overseas. That was in 2002, back before it dawned on him that he was living his life like a character from a Bocephus King song.

"Looking back, that tour was a mess of terrible drunkenness," he reflects. "What I did this past January was attempt to reclaim territory that I'd already conquered. It was almost me trying to prove to Italian promoters that I was going to show up, not throw up. I'd sort of cashed out mentally that last time, but I think that I proved to them that I'm back."

After more than a decade as a DIY indie artist, Perry is getting his first shot at major-label distribution at home. All Children Believe in Heaven finds the singer on Maple Music, a highly respected Canadian label distributed by Universal. Others on the roster include such critically lauded heavy-hitters as Kathleen Edwards, Sam Roberts, and the Cowboy Junkies.

After a rough period, Perry is clearly jazzed about music again. He talks excitedly about his upcoming August 14 show at the Media Club; to reflect All Children's cover art (a '40s poster­style depiction of Chinese girls smoking Hatamen cigarettes), the room will be decorated in a Chinatown theme. And he's thrilled about his Band of Doom, which includes bassist Jeremy Holmes, drummer Liam Macdonald, guitarist Scott Smith, and keyboardist Mary Ancheta.

"I got a fair bit of hype when I first started doing this as Bocephus King," he says. "Hopefully, that will happen again with this record. I'm definitely back on track, which I couldn't say a couple of years ago. I'm in a position where I can steer a little better and keep on top of my career. I feel like the guy from Palookaville. I was in sort of a shitty position for a while but now I feel like a contender again."

Perry has certainly grown as a songwriter since fleeing Nashville. On earlier outings, Bocephus King sounded like he aspired to nothing more than shooting craps with Tom Waits on a waterfront dock. With All Children, he comes across as someone more interested in drinking with William S. Burroughs at Mulholland Dr.'s Silencio club. Considering the surreal quality of Bocephus King lyrics like "Benzedrine ghosts on highways from here to Tangiers", the two would likely find lots to talk about.

What Perry has accomplished with All Children Believe in Heaven has given him some perspective on why things ended badly in Music City his first time around.

"I obviously had no idea what they wanted and didn't have the tools to give them what they did. Now I think that I could probably fake it properly. It's funny, I finally ended up quitting because it was obvious that they weren't going to fire me. They were only keeping me around for their amusement. For a while I had to befriend coffee-shop waitresses so I could eat. And then, eventually, I ended up working at a bar and grill for this Korean guy named Frank."

That job cemented Perry's conviction that Nashville is indeed the strangest place on earth.

"His pregnant wife was also working there, so my first job was delivering notes in lunches to his weird mistresses. He eventually ended up owing me a bunch of money, and when I confronted him about it, he told me that he knew I was working illegally. I started freaking out because I couldn't pay rent, so he called the cops and said, 'He's kicking the chairs and he's going to attack me and my wife.' When I got home, there was a card from the sheriff on my door saying that they wanted to talk to me. That's when I decided it was time to leave, so I ended up throwing everything I owned in a blanket, duct-taping it up, and leaving on a bus."

Perry figures things might turn out differently should he ever decide to give Nashville a second shot. The scope of All Children Believe in Heaven leaves no doubt he's learned a few tricks over the past decade-and-a-half. Forget a third-rate Johnny Cash; he now sounds like a man who'd easily hold his own against the pros in the rabbit-skin coats. And even if his songs about dead movie stars, desperate junkies, tortured beat poets, and bookies named Jesus turned Perry into a Music City joke all over again, he'd have the satisfaction of knowing one thing: no one can listen to All Children Believe in Heaven and accuse him of sounding too Bocephus.