Press >> Westender 2000
Bocephus King has found a home for his music-and it isn't in Canada. King, a songwriter and roots musician, just returned from a tour in Italy where he's developing a growing fan base. He's not quite Inter-Milan (the soccer team), but the Italians seem to dig his laid-back style and lazy melodies.
Canada can be a tough country to crack. musically speaking, and King has experienced the same troubles that have plagued touring Canadian artists for time immemorial. While Josephina," off his new album, The Blue Sickness, is a fast rising single on the disco charts in Italy, and Bocephus King graces the front covers of magazines and newspapers across Europe, the band still makes do with a small but loyal following in their home town.
Things are positive, but it's been a lot of work." King says. It's easier to get on the front page of the Amsterdam newspaper than to get on any music page in Vancouver. That's fine. If you listen to the radio in Vancouver, it's no big insult if they don't play you. It's a little depressing, but not that depressing.
Bocephus King is celebrating the release of his third album (his second with the Rigalattos), The Blue Sickness, at the Railway, Aug. 10 to 12. The three nights feature openers Auburn (Aug.10-12, Flophouse jr. (Aug. 10, 11) and The Be Good Tanyas (Aug. 12), plus numerous surprise guests ftom the Vancouver roots scene. He then takes his "21st-century vaudeville" show on the road across Canada.
King is a prolific writer who draws musical inspiration from his experiences living in Point Roberts, New Orleans, Nashville (where he did a hard-times stint as a songwriter for a publishing company) and Montreal.
"This album is the first of what will probably be three albums," King explains. "The blue sickness is a theme I came up with. It initially started when I was trying to describe taking too much codeine.
Then I started to think of the blue sickness as more of a mind frame for people in our age group, where you sort of don't want to go back. you don't want to go forward, it's like everyone's on this one constant nasty middle ground. The blue sickness went on to describe that whole position of sort of being stuck in the middle. Musically it's a set up for the next two records which we have pretty much written and planned out."
The Railway is probably the best place In Vancouver to see Bocephus King. The beer soaked club has always been a favorite of his and who knows, you might even see some of the characters from King's songs "pill-poppers, prostitutes, misguided and lonely lovers who are all looking for the same thing...the big win, the quick fix that will heal the blue sickness inside.
Maybe the antidote lies in the music.
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