Jennifer Geens
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Apr 30/04) - Though he's only 25, Charlie A'Court is an old hand at the bar scene.

A'Court has been performing music in bars since he was 16. Not only with his parents' permission, but actually with his parents. His dad plays 12-string guitar.

Charlie A'Court: brings his fresh look at blues to Yellowknife this weekend.

"While other kids were out partying at someone's place when their parents weren't home, I was hanging out with my parents in bars," said A'Court.

By the time he had graduated from high school, he knew music would be his career.

"It had picked me really," he said. A'Court won an East Coast Music Award for Best Blues album for his CD Color Me Gone.

He has a live CD out exclusively in Europe (though it might be out in North America later this year).

He also has a whimsical Web site that invites visitors to vote on whether or not he should cut his long hair.

The Halifax-based blues/roots musician has almost spent more time touring Germany in the past nine months than touring Canada.

That came about because a German record label sent a delegation to the East Coast Music Awards last year, scouting for talent to bring across the Atlantic. Most recently he was touring Deutschland in March with the 1960s band Procul Harem.

A'Court said his songwriting influences aren't so much the classic blues masters.

"I was a teenager in the '90s, listening to adult contemporary," he said.

He counts songwriters Tracy Chapman, Melissa Etheridge and Bruce Springsteen among his songwriting influences, but says that for performance style he looks to the great blues masters like BB King. "Blues has been undergoing an evolution the last couple of years," he said.

The blues the younger artists are playing is "very rootsy, very personal, but also very melodic," he said. "It's not your standard 12-bar blues stuff. We're giving blues a facelift."

A reviewer once called him the "Colin James of the Maritimes" and he considers that high praise.

"I've always been a fan," he said of James. One of his dreams was realized when he got to open for James.

"I'm stoked," said A'Court of his first visit to Yellowknife.

A'Court performed Thursday and continues tonight and Saturday at Lucille's Cabaret.