James T & The Last Volunteers: Heat It.

James T & The Last Volunteers play the Woombye Pub on Thursday and The Healer on Saturday.

In an alchemical reaction that saw the sparks fly and groove soar, ex-Canned Heat frontman James Thornbury joined forces with local legends the King Bees to form the hippest, loudest and grooviest blues rock outfit in the country. Trawling the crowds from north to south and east to west, this band have amassed a following an evangelical preacher could only dream about. With the Volunteers about to swagger into Brisbane, I talked to James T. about the other side of his musical persona.

This Ain’t That is the new album released by the Last Volunteers frontman, and is a radical departure from the hard-hitting blues rock that characterises the band’s sound. Though blues is part of the equation, it very much sits in the background, the sound dominated by acoustic folk elements.

James confessed: “I was ready to cop the most for it ‘cause my last eight records have been blues rock ones, counting the Canned Heat ones. There are other things to do basically. The blues doesn’t suit everywhere that you find yourself. It’s nice to have other places to go. I can still do blues and I will do blues. I write a lot of songs, it’s nice to have another avenue for it. Certainly the famous blues groups of the ‘60s, they did anything. Think of some of Cream’s stuff. They would do Robert Johnson songs and then do God knows what else.”

This Ain’t That boasts a full complement of well-written, emotive material including the Tarot Shuffle, Tell the Witch it’s Worse and Bet the Farm. The album opens with the title track, an instrumental loaded with enigmatic feels and an intriguing flute line.

“I started recording last November actually. Before that I was putting in some pretty good weeks at home—arranging and rearranging. Only four of the eleven songs I wrote in this country, the rest were written before I moved down here, so that shows how old some of the songs are. I wanted to pull out enough to have an album’s length. I just wanted a listening album. I consider myself a songwriter. I just have so many songs, a lot of material. I just wanted to do something different.”

Of course, the presence of flute on the album draws the inevitable comparisons to Jethro Tull much to the amusement of James T.

“Because flute is not used at all anywhere, except in certain Irish musics, well people use it but you can count them on about one hand, flute players whose names you’d know. I think the songs don’t sound like Tull songs at all though Tull is a great band.”