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He Might Look A Little Stressed | But Wyckham Porteous’ year has actually turned out pretty well.

Wyckham Porteous
w/ Niel Golden, Kat Danser. Oct 17 (9pm). Four Rooms (137 Edmonton City Centre East). Entry with WCMA wristband or $10 at the door.

It’s certainly not a small thing to have Andrew Loog Oldham — one of popular music’s most inimitable men behind the scenes — describe you as “a warm, warm performer whose voice is like a bottle of wine who has matured into a friend.”

Vancouver’s Wyckham Porteous explains how the endorsement came about. “I met [Oldham] through a friend, Steven Drake [of The Odds], who plays on the album. Andrew had moved to Vancouver part-time, because his son was going to school in Los Angeles. We got along really well and just after we met he said, ‘Let’s go into the studio.’ I said sure.”

Porteous’ latest album, 3am, is up for Outstanding Solo Roots Album at the WCMA Awards this Sunday; his name also leads the list of Canadian Folk Music nominees, which were announced last week. However, his album is no conventional roots recording. Aside from being produced by the man who “discovered” The Rolling Stones and produced many influential British rock/pop artists of the ’60s and ’70s (including Marianne Faithfull, The Small Faces, and Humble Pie), 3am includes several cover songs which, despite being completely out of the realm of roots music, fit into the album without a hitch.

“Andrew asked me to do [The Beatles’] ‘Please Please Me’ the night before we started our session, and I honestly couldn’t figure out why he wanted me to do that song.” Porteous says. “He waved his hand in this really slow tempo and so I went home, downloaded the lyrics and played it in this really slow tempo and I went ‘Whoa! This is amazing!’ Then I totally understood why.”

Along with the dramatically mellower “Please Please Me”, 3am also includes a lush acoustic version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart,” a roots/jazz milkshake of the old standard “Teach Me Tonight,” and an absolutely heavenly revision of Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector’s “Spanish Harlem.”

For the self-penned tunes, Porteous takes on the role of storyteller more often than not. “Harper’s Ferry” evokes the Civil War, a subject that interests Porteous partly because of his Irish ancestry. “It intrigued me,” Porteous says, “how the Irish came over and some of them settled in the North and a lot in the South [and subsequently ended up fighting against each other].” Another rambling song, “Ancient Highway,” borrows the tone and pace of Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’” to tell the story of a man struggling to reach his potential.

Another notable aspect of 3am is the eclectic instrumentation, such as the sitar lines that weave in and out of steel guitar licks and chugging acoustic chords in “Please Please Me.” Oldham added sitar to classic tracks like Chris Farlowe’s “Moanin,’” but Porteous says, natural assumption to the contrary, Oldham wasn’t the one who suggested it this time out. “The sitar only got into it because Steven had just bought one and I said, ‘Can you play that?’ And he said, ‘Not really.’ I said, ‘Well, can you learn the solo to “Please Please Me”?’ — which he did. With Andrew, anything goes as long as it sounds good. He doesn’t have any preconceptions around theories or philosophies. For him, it’s all about sound. He’s very much like Phil Spector; he conducts in the studio opposed to being technical. He doesn’t work the faders and he doesn’t know what key any of the songs are in — he’s very intuitive.”

Hopefully this mutual respect is a sign of further future endeavours together, because if the critical reception of 3am is any indication, it could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.