Gorden James, a country music artist born and raised in P.G., and recently featured on Country Music Television's Big in a Small Town where 30 top artists in Canada were featured, is coming home to perform at the Treasure Cove Casino show lounge July 6.
After graduation, James left Prince George and moved to Kelowna. He's come back for a few years but ended up moving back to Kelowna again.
After a near-fatal accident at a sawmill where he fell through an open grate to running saws, his life went in a whole new direction, leading him to do music full time. He was lucky, missed the saw blades, but hurt his back.
"That was my motto, I wanted to get out of the mill before I lost an arm because Def Leppard already had a drummer and there aren't too many one-armed guitarists," said James. "I really didn't want to have that dubious distinction -- and now introducing, Gorden James, the one-armed guitarist!"
His first album, Heart of the Matter, got great exposure from the CMT program.
"That was pretty wild," said James, who did 125 shows last year. "I got an e-mail from CMT inviting me to audition for the show but I get e-mails all the time promising to make me a star, so I called them up to make sure it was the real thing and they asked me to audition so I sent them a backyard tape and they called and told me I was one of the 30 finalists to make it onto the show." Even though he didn't make it past the first round, it was still helpful to get his music to the public that would not have ordinarily heard it.
"And that is so valuable for an independent artist," James said, who recently formed the Good Guys Band.
He's a big believer in giving back.
He volunteers at the Central Okanagan Hospice Association. With funds he raised during a show, James bought and installed aquariums in the hospice that he now maintains.
"Once you start doing this kind of thing, you end up doing more," James said, who won a song- writing competition in 2002 sponsored by Factor, CMT, and country radio. "Not only can I volunteer time, I can also contribute musically. I do a show a month at the Southern Interior Rotary Cancer Lodge and I wrote a song for hospice called Loving Beyond Goodbye with a group of volunteers and then recorded the song. The hospice is selling it as part of their legacy foundation. I'm really lucky in what I do, as it enables me to have the time to do what I want to do."
James wrote Better Land for the Soles4Souls organization, a not-for-profit dedicated to fighting poverty, and all proceeds of the song go to the charity.
"The Soles4Souls song, Better Land, is a call to action, no matter how busy you are, how many hours you work, how many kids you're chasing after, you can find time to help -- whether it's the food bank, or hospice or heart and stroke foundation or the SPCA -- can you imagine how great our communities would be if we all donated just an hour a month?"
Tickets for the show are at the customer service desk at the Treasure Cove Casino for $20 each.
