If you`re among the fortunate few in the crowd at The Ranch Concert Hall on June 17, his stories may even help you to forget he was Jack Bauer all those years on the series 24.
The 30-year acting veteran admits making the move from both big and small screens to intimate stages throughout North America, fronting a country music band, scared him to death.
“I wanted the audiences to like my songs,” says Sutherland, who turns 50 in December, “(but) the dates have gone so well that it`s helped me realize the audience and I have a lot more in common than we knew.”
Kiefer enjoys rockers like Pink Floyd and Bruce Springsteen. But he`d always been roped in emotionally by the stories told by country artists. It`s something Sutherland says helps him draw a link between creating characters in song and on screen.
“No one believes that Johnny Cash actually ‘shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die’, but when (Cash) wrote that song, he spoke in the first-person narrative.” That, Sutherland says, is much the same approach to playing the many roles throughout his long career (The Lost Boys, Flatliners, Young Guns, Stand by Me).
Sutherland and songwriting partner Jude Cole teamed up for the 11 songs on his CD Down in a Hole (due for release in Canada in June), songs he characterizes as “the closest thing to a journal … very personal.” He confessed initially wanting to hand the songs over to other artists to perform, but as Cole and Sutherland heard the demos over and over, Kiefer started to hear his own voice in them.
Sutherland also admits to impatience with other actors who make records, but then don’t go out and support them by touring. On this tour, Kiefer and his band are hitting major centres like Nashville, Toronto, Ottawa and Quebec City, as well as hamlets like Gravenhurst, Stratford, and in-between towns like Barrie.
“I prefer nice, intimate rooms (like the Ranch), places with a capacity of 200-400 people. It’s what I was thinking of when writing the songs.”
The Kiefer Sutherland Band plays The Ranch Concert Hall on Bayfield St., Barrie on Friday, June 17. The doors open at 8 p.m., with the show beginning at 9. Tickets are $20 plus HST, and can be ordered in advance.
