“Moving water is ever in the present tense.”
-Jim Harrison-

From callow bohemian to weary pilgrim, here’s a little of the journey so far.

The city streets of my boyhood; steam heat rising off the Mississippi; the railroad; grits and gravy; the Cardinals and the Dodgers on the radio; summers in Kentucky and the Ozarks; Jimmy Reed at The London House East, Bobby “Blue” Bland at the Cosmo Hall; Muddy at the Moonlight Lounge and Slick’s Lakeside; the High Plains of east Colorado on a winter morning; the Charlie Company Boogie; all those nights in all those rented rooms; the wind off the ocean; the winter storms; the tough break and the heartache; the dust of Mexico; twilight on the Seine; the evening breeze, the distant thunder, the sweetness of the rain; the light and the laughter in my children’s eyes; the constant struggle and infinite joy of love…Jim Byrnes

Biography

Jim Byrnes was born in St. Louis, Missouri – that’s blues country. He grew up on the city’s north side. One of the neighbourhood bars had Ike and Tina Turner as the house band. As a teenager going to music clubs, he and his buddy were often the only white people in the place. “We never had any problems. We were too naïve, and had too much respect for the music and culture – they knew it, they could tell.”

Starting piano at age five, by age thirteen, Jim was singing and playing blues guitar. His first professional gig was in the summer of 1964. Over the years, he has had the great good fortune to appear with a virtual who’s who of blues history. From Furry Lewis and Henry Townsend to Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Albert Collins, Taj Mahal, Robery Cray and so many others, Jim has been on the blues highway for 40 years.

Byrnes moved to Vancouver, BC in the mid-70s after years of drifting, working odd jobs and playing music. In 1981 he put together a band that became a staple of the local music scene. In 1986 the Jim Byrnes Band played 300 nights.

Jim Byrnes’ fame as an actor has grown immeasurably from his too-numerous-to-mention TV roles, with highlights including Lifeguard in the CBS series Wiseguy, worldwide success in Highlander, and his nationally broadcast variety show, The Jim Byrnes Show.

As for highlights in his musical career, Jim mentions “Sittin’ down in a room with Muddy Waters, just him and me, and he showed me a couple of licks on his guitar.”

His greatest musical moment was the first time he saw Howlin’ Wolf. “I was devastated. I was 17. Who could take the Rolling Stones seriously after watching Howlin’ Wolf down on his knees singing Little Red Rooster?”

Jim has proven that a serious car accident in 1972 has done anything but hinder him. Despite two swipes with death and some pretty hard knocks, Byrnes has still managed to rack up an enviable string of credits, both on and off-screen.

Jim’s first love, however, is the blues. His evocative, smoky vocals are found in a truth that doesn’t come overnight. During the 80s, the Jim Byrnes Band released “Burnin’” on Polydor, followed in 1987 with “I’ve Turned My Nights into Days” and 1995’s Juno-Award winning “That River” on Stony Plain.

February 2004 saw the release of Jim’s latest project, “Fresh Horses” on Black Hen Music. This new recording is the result of a musical meeting between Jim and Steve Dawson (of Zubot & Dawson). Jim and Steve realized they shared common tastes in music and realized that a collaboration between Jim and the Zubot & Dawson band would be a refreshing and exciting project.

In Jim’s words, “Early bluesmen were really ‘songsters’ who interspersed their blues with spirituals, popular music, folk songs, anything to get the crowd to take note, and I suppose that’s how I cast myself when I began my career. In the spring of 2003, Steve Dawson approached me about the possibility of a collaboration and I leapt at the opportunity to create a musical dialogue with the very finest players of a whole new generation; sort of fathers and sons, you know? It’s been a long, hard road and so ‘Yahoo, thank the Lord’, I thought, ‘fresh horses’.”