Don’t let Chris Isaak fool you. Yes he has a new album, “Beyond the Sun” and a new label, Vanguard, but he’s still the same insightful artist that created hits such as “Wicked Game” and “Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing” in the mold of his musical idols including Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and other greats on the famous Sun Records’ label. That’s why Isaak said he wanted his Vanguard debut to be made up of renditions of the classics of those artists and some of their labelmates.
“I did this because I love this music — that’s the entire reason,” Isaak said. “You gotta listen to the original ones — they’re classics – they’re awesome but you can have fun with them. These guys discovered this music for us and we had to rediscover it. There’s no way to do it exactly like they did it, so you’ve gotta give a little bit of your own take on it.”
| Onstage |
| Chris Isaak |
| When: 7:30 p.m., Monday |
| Where: Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria |
| Info: $89.50; ticketmaster.com; 202-397-SEAT |
Isaak first discovered those records when he was a child growing up in Stockton, Calif. From then on the music of Presley, Orbison, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis inspired the fledgling artist. And as he went on to record his breakthrough album ‘Heart Shaped World’ that was released in 1989.
“When I started making music, I thought that if I do those songs, where do I go from there?” he said. “I wanted to make sure I found my own sound and established who I was. But I always loved that music and I wrote songs in that spirit. You can go through all my songs and you won’t find one reference to going to the bop. They’re about my life, not about nostalgia for the ’50s. I came to a point where I felt like the time was right to do this record. I’d met all my heroes and worked with most of them, and I didn’t hear anybody else doing it the way I wanted to do it.”
To keep this latest album genuine, Isaak took his band to Sun Studios in Memphis, Tenn., for part of the recording process. In doing so, he paid tribute not just to the performers but also the founder of the label, the late Sam Phillips.
“There’s just something about my band that was really right for it, because they all love that kind of music” Isaak said. “I’ll tell you something: everybody thinks early country is easy to play. It’s not easy. It’s just as hard to play as, like, abstract jazz fusion or anything else. It’s got a feel, and if you get the feel wrong, everything’s wrong. And I don’t think you could find a better rhythm section than mine for playing this music anywhere.”
