Bluesman found love through childhood friendship with Howlin’ Wolf

Colin Linden

While many people can remember meeting great people during their childhood, not everyone can truthfully say that they discovered their professional calling through such an experience.

But Colin Linden links his 33-year plus career in the music business to spending three hours with the legendary Howlin’ Wolf as an 11-year-old in Toronto, Canada.

“He could have just blown me off as this noisy kid, but instead he really spent all this time talking to me about the blues, telling me stories about the people he knew and the things he’d experienced,” Linden said. “I knew right then that this was what I wanted to do, and we continued being friends for the few years that he had left. One of the last things he told me was that it was up to the next generation coming on, people like me, to keep the tradition going, because his day had passed.”

Linden, who’s lived in Nashville for the past 11 years, has certainly done his part to maintain the heritage and legacy of the blues, though he’s also amassed many credits in the worlds of country and folk music. He’s played on more than 300 discs and produced more than 60 artists ranging from The Band, Leon Redbone and Keb Mo’ to Lucinda Williams, T-Bone Burnett and Emmylou Harris (whose band he’s been playing in for the last few years).

In addition, Linden, who’ll appear at The Bluebird Café Friday night in a show that will include performances from Whitey Johnson AKA Gary Nicholson, Brian Owings and Dave Roe, has a strong new disc of his own available. From the Water is his 11th solo project, and it pays homage to the country and urban blues he heard as a child. It’s also a tribute to longtime comrade and collaborator keyboardist Richard Bell, who passed away in 2007. The duo worked on more than 100 discs together (40 of them Linden also produced). Linden calls Bell “one of the all-time great musicians and people, someone that everybody loved.”

Cut both in Nashville and Canada, the set’s strongest numbers includes Linden’s rollicking “Smoke Em All,” a tune that celebrates Bell’s personality, as well as the simmering “Sinking Down Slow,” one of two numbers he co-wrote with his wife, novelist Janice Powers. Powers actually composed the main lyric while working on a new book. He also joined forces on two selections with Gary Nicholson, one of them a philosophical work (“The Price You Pay”) and the other a poignant cut that serves as the CD’s finale (“God Will Always Remember Your Prayers.”)

Linden has also had his songs recorded by an array of great artists, among them Bruce Cockburn (whom he played with for three and a half years), The Band, The Blind Boys of Alabama and Mo. He’s won multiple Canadian industry awards and been nominated for a Grammy as a producer.

Still, Linden deems himself first and foremost a blues player and says that is what informs his approach to everything he plays, no matter the context.

“A lot of it boils down to note choices,” Linden said. “You don’t necessarily put some runs into a song when you’re playing with Emmylou for instance, because there’s a long line of great guitarists who’ve put their stamp on her songs, and you don’t want to deviate too far from what they’ve done, out of respect for the music. But you can still always put your own philosophy and stamp on everything that you do, and for me, that’s playing the blues.”

After living in many cities throughout his career, Linden made a side trip to Nashville for a writing project in the late ‘80s and fell in love with the city. He made periodic returns for another decade, and he and his wife made the permanent move in the late ‘90s.

“For a musician like me, this is the ideal location,” Linden said. “I can find so many kindred spirits, people who enjoy a lot of different things and are open to all types of styles and interpretations. Plus it’s helped me enormously in terms of songwriting, because there are so many outstanding writers.

“It’s become home for us, and someplace I feel we’ll be from now on.”

What: Guitarist, vocalist and producer Colin Linden opening for an evening with Whitey Johnson
When: 9:30 p.m. Friday
Where: The Bluebird Café, 4104 Hillsboro Rd
Cost: $10
Info: 383-4104, bluebirdcafe.com