Major tribute show coming

There's always been a “be what you are and make no excuses” underlying the music of Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard.

Never righteous, these two country legends sang with sincerity about their fears and dreams. And it was this frank openness that paved a direct path into fans' hearts.

Many artists today pay lip service to these nostalgic country outlaws while preferring to toe the glitzier commercial line.

Two Canadian singer-songwriters that have developed a stronger kinship with Cash and Haggard's open sincerity than the current Nashville style and swagger are B.C. based tribute artist Gary Kehoe, and Jess Lee now residing at Lake Wabamun.

Kehoe is the driving force behind The Life and Times of Johnny Cash and the duo returns to St. Albert's Crown & Tower on Saturday, Aug. 16.

Lee instead takes fans on a victory lap of Merle Haggard's greatest anthems – tunes such as Okie From Muskogee, The Fightin' Side of Me and I Wonder If They Think of Me.

Ask Lee about Haggard's music and you hear the reverence in his voice.

“There's an honesty to it. I understand where it comes from. Singers like Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell and Jimmie Rodgers – they were all common people writing about other people. They were just trying to express themselves in a way they knew how,” said Lee.

Lee came to sing Haggard's music after the icon released a double album of Jimmie Rodgers tunes in the 1970s.

“I heard him and thought he was fantastic. I tried to sing a few songs and realized we had similar voices. We had the same resonance and we shared a love of the same music.”

The Edmonton born, Peace Country raised singer-songwriter's first foray into music was at 13 in a pop band called The Broken Ceramics. In the 1970s during Alberta's first oil boom, Lee and his brother moved to Edmonton and formed The Rogues.

Appropriately named, the country band developed an unruly reputation playing in bars favoured by oil patch workers.

“Back in those days, we were pretty haywire. We'd fight at the drop of a hat,” Lee said explaining that heavily intoxicated patrons often challenged band members just for playing songs they didn't like.

“We wouldn't take crap. So the Alberta Hotel Association barred us from playing for a year.”

The band broke up and Lee formed the Jesse James Band and played honky-tonk bars across the province. But by 1980, he was living in Vancouver and signed by RCA as lead singer of Midnite Rodeo Band.

There his work with Rocky Swanson earned him several awards including the British Columbia Country Music Association award for Male Vocalist of the Year and Album of the Year.

For a time, he lived in Nashville, but returned home to his aboriginal roots in the 1990s. With songwriter Bonnie James, he wrote Sacred Ground, a reflection of aboriginal and MĂ©tis experiences. He was subsequently nominated for a Juno Award.

Lee sees himself not as a tribute artist, but as a singer-songwriter that sounds like Haggard and sings about simple day-to-day truths.

In addition to Haggard hits, he plans on singing a couple of his own tunes such as The Sparrow Song, a song cautioning about the dangers in life, and Stay In Your Heart, a melody that exhorts listening to oneself.

Kehoe, on the other hand, with his remarkable bass-baritone vocals, will stick to Cash's big hits that he knows crowds love.

Just to make it interesting he's throwing one of his originals in the mix – The Canadian Senate Song, a witty poke at Duffy and his cronies from the upper chamber.

“I've done comedy writing over the years and when I heard about the senate scandal, it was too good to pass up. I've accompanied the words to the theme song of Bonanza,” laughs a clearly delighted Kehoe.

Kehoe launched his Johnny Cash salutes in 2006, a year after Walk the Line stars Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon retooled the Cash-Carter saga.

“At the time, I couldn't work enough. I could have worked every day of the year if I'd wanted. Johnny was such a hot item.”

Although the Crown & Tower gig will only have two performers, it will be structured much like a variety show.

“There will be lots of songs, videos, costume changes, humour and comedy. It'll be a great show.”