Aussie bluesman makes fans his priority
Time flies. Nobody knows that better than Michael Charles.
He flew to America for a gig and stayed for 30 years.
The Australian blues guitarist had a fairly well established career at home when he was invited to play at Buddy Guy’s Legends in Chicago.
That went well, and he found himself on the road with various blues acts. Then one day his mother phoned to ask him a question: “Are you ever coming home? You do realize it’s been six years.” Charles couldn’t believe it. “It just snowballed.”
He’s now spent almost three decades in Chicago, though he’s on the road much of the time.
“I’ve noticed audiences in the smaller towns are quite hungry for entertainment coming through,” Charles said recently from the Windy City.
“And then you’ve got the odd person there who is actually a fan and they drag along a whole bunch of other people, and it’s just a lot of fun. You keep expanding the whole spectrum of your career, it’s just great.”
Charles has a dozen shows lined up in Western Canada for his All I Really Know tour, including stops in Moose Jaw, Regina, Yorkton, Calgary, Edmonton, Birch Hills and Swift Current.
Charles grew up in Melbourne and started playing guitar as a child. He can’t remember not playing, much like a person can’t remember taking their first step.
“It’s very hard for people to decide what they’re going to do in life, but I was so lucky because I knew at a very young age that I wanted to be a musician,” he says.
Charles wrote his first song at 12 or 13.
“I still find it fascinating how you can just come up with a certain riff or a certain lick or put a couple of notes together and get that distinctive sound that’s totally yours.”
Charles says he instantly felt at home in America. Other than his accent, his only concern was making sure he didn’t get hit by a car crossing the street because vehicles go by in the opposite direction.
By now, people back home say he sounds like a Yankee. But North Americans identify his Aussie accent in a second.
Getting Buddy Guy’s endorsement was a huge career step. Charles remembers feeling extreme jet lag after his flight over, but he was taken immediately to Legends, where he was handed a guitar and told to take the stage.
“And that’s how I met Buddy Guy. Before I even shook hands with him, I looked to my left and there’s Buddy playing, and he just looks at me and goes ‘take it.’ Talk about getting weak in the knees. What a way to meet one of your guitar heroes. But I pulled it off and everything went great and that’s how I met Mr. Guy.”
By now, Charles has a single or album to go with each of his 33 years in the business — not to mention eight Grammy nominations and his 2015 induction into the Blues Hall of Fame.
“It’s been a hell of a ride since I got to the United States and I’m still on that ride,” he says.
The hall of fame, “that was like somebody hit me on the head with a hammer — wow, where did that come from?”
As a performer, Charles says: “My No. 1 priority is always the audience. You have to keep the audiences happy more than yourself.”