Press >> Leader 2001

"Bocephus music" was the derogatory moniker attached to most of what James Perry was writing when he hit Nashville from Point Roberts, Wash., more than a decade ago.

The reference to simplistic, three chord Hank Williams-style country wasn't S0 bad, in retrospect "Point Roberts is a place you generally want to get out of," Perry says. "I started traveling when I was pretty young and I found out that everyone was pretty much as bored as I was.

"I came from a place where everyone was talking about their horrible relationships and I ended up in places where everyone was doing the same thing, just in nicer clothes."

After a three-month stint on his cousin's couch in Malibu, Perry kept on moving, kept on writing and playing, and it wasn't long before he adopted Bocephus King as an alter ego that made little or no sense when you consider its origin.

Now 30 years old, with three albums behind him, Perry is making his mark across Europe and several pockets of North America with an art form that defies description.

Elements of jazz, folk, blues, roots music, R&B and southern rock combined with a vaudevillian charm could hardly be pigeonholed by Nashville in 2001.

"I guess it's not unusual that I like so many different kinds of music," Perry says. "I had older brothers who would go through different music phases and I'd get their record collections once they were done with each phase. I was exposed to a lot of stuff that most people wouldn't have the opportunity to hear in Point Roberts."

In addition to his versatility, Perry's primary talent, however, is likely his ability to tell a story within a song and, indeed, throughout a record. He's a born lyricist who draws comparisons with Tom Waits, Townes, Van Zandt, and Van Morrison, to name a few.

Judging by his gnarled and raspy voice, Perry himself has experienced at least a few, if not more, of his tales of lovers, losers, hustlers, hookers and hard living that inhabit last year's Blue Sickness album.

He says there's a concept and a middle on the collection of songs, which includes "Mess Of Love," "The Worst Friend," "Please Answer The Phone Please," "My Blue Soul" and "Ballad Of The Barbarous Nights." "The record kind of became a metaphor for being stuck in this ... middle ground," Perry croaks. "You know. Being too afraid to go forward, but you can't go back. You can't go anywhere.

"The album became a bigger metaphor for just the entire idea behind the knowledge that you would eventually die one day and what's the point of ...anything, really. "We're all in this middle ground, and that's what Blues Sickness became." That, and, according to Perry, "the feeling of taking too much codeine and wanting to throw it up, but you couldn't because the nausea is still better than the pain."

But no matter how morbid these tales or truths seem, Bocephus King and his Rigalattos (keyboardist Doug Fujisawa, bassist Darren Paris, drummer Dan Parry, and multi-instrumentalist Paul Rigby) are always willing to relate them to a willing and open-minded audience.

"It's all about the entertainment aspect of the live show," Perry says. "I'm really into vaudeville and the Marx Brothers, and I really embrace the whole idea.

"If you like to dance, I want people to dance. I just really want people to not thjnk about having to go into work in the morning."