Jim Byrnes Going Everywhere West

Everywhere West is the fourth collaboration between Byrnes and Black Hen Music label president, musician and producer Steve Dawson, and showcases Jim's bluesiest sound in many years. The follow-up to his 2008 critically-acclaimed release, My Walking Stick, Everywhere West includes raw and stripped-down takes on classic songs, as well as originals penned by Jim, himself.

It's the kind of music that Jim Byrnes grew up hearing in his adolescence. Owner of a dual citizenship, Jim Byrnes has been based in Vancouver for many years, but was originally born and raised in St. Louis and grew up surrounded by music on the north side of the city. Chuck Berry, Ike and Tina Turner, Ray Charles and Muddy Waters played nearby and were major influences. Jim's parents even lived for a time in the same apartment building as Chuck Berry's legendary piano player, Johnnie Johnson.

In his liner notes for the new CD, Byrnes recounts tales of him and his buddy driving over to East St. Louis in the mid '60s to hear people like Jimmy Reed, whose classic "Take Out Some Insurance On Me," Byrnes covers on Everywhere West, as well as such other blues giants as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Albert King and Little Milton. "And if you cared to pay attention, this music was in the air, everywhere," he writes. "Down at the end of the dial, Spider Burks, Dave and Jerome Dixon, Robert BQ, Gabriel and Lou 'Fatha' Thimes kept the best in blues, rhythm and blues and jazz in our hearts and minds.

"Once we discovered this treasure, we dug deeper and found incredible musical history right under our noses. I had the good fortune to share the stage with men like Furry Lewis and Henry Townsend, whose recording careers reached back into the 1920s. This CD is dedicated to all those who have gone before. To those who taught me to take it like you find it or leave like it is."

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