T.J. Wheeler releases “Nadine (Love Songs From My Heart)” at The Stone Church

Legend has it that Paul McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs” was written in defiance of John Lennon’s proclamation that one can’t just fill the world with such “rubbish.” Sir Paul’s song was corny for sure, but love songs don’t have to sound like a musical Hallmark card, and heaven knows we can all use a little more cheer in the world.

“People think love songs have to be saccharine, sappy mush,” says T.J. Wheeler with the kind of cool gravelly voice you’d expect to hear from a blues man. His latest release, “Nadine (Love Songs From My Heart),” is an unabashed love letter (sans sap) to his wife of 25 years, Nadine Perry. “Real love songs can have a real edge, and I wanted to interpret these songs with the same intensity with any jazz and blues that I’ve recorded with my life,” he says.

Chuck Berry’s “Nadine” starts off the 13-song collection which scatters a few originals among the standards that account for the bulk of the album. The Afro Cuban jazz arrangement of the song should serve notice to those expecting a straight up “blues” recording that this ain’t tourist blues. Jose Duque’s snappy drums punctuate lines as James Cohen and Melvin Graham swing on nylon string guitar and upright bass under the song. Cohen takes an impressive solo on the number before Wheeler and the band sink back into the pocket. 

Wheeler has long been a true blues enthusiast and educator, and every year he spends most of the calendar on the road traveling from school to school bringing his “Blues in the School” program to eager students. So, it’s no surprise that, over the course of “Nadine,” he revels in tracing the different avenues the genre has stretched out into over the decades.

“When I followed the blues back to its earliest incarnations, and then back up to its current times, I followed as many paths as possible,” says Wheeler of his more than three decades as a performer, songwriter and student of the blues. “I really learned that the blues is about a feeling, or an attitude,” he says, “That is far more persuasive about what blues is than a chord progression. So, this ‘love songs’ album, there’s no doubt—this is blues, this is jazz, this is swing.”

Cohen and Wheeler join forces on “Don’t You Care,” a lovely and dizzying Flamenco piece. The soft attack of the nylon strings do all the singing necessary.

“Tracing the diaspora back from Africa to the east—to deny flamenco’s African roots would be ignorant,” Wheeler enthuses. “It’s a very passionate music. It’s very much in the moment like jazz and blues. There’s a real dynamic relationship between core and freedom.”

The tale of how he met his muse is, as he puts it, “sort of a reverse Cinderella story.”

In the early 1980s, the young musician had recently picked up a shift at Portsmouth’s long gone WBBX radio station. The show, “The Night Train,” was an all-night jazz and blues show that ran from midnight until 5 a.m.

One night his band had a gig at the Masonic Temple, and she was there. The two had met once before at a Press Room show of Wheeler’s, but on this night the flames grew, and they spent much of the gig dancing. There was one problem. “I had to be at station at midnight,” chuckles Wheeler. “I left during the last song, and I let my band finish the song. I didn’t lose a slipper or anything, but I had to bust to the station to get there in time. I had to do some research to find out her last name, too. Then I asked her out, and rest is history.”

It takes something special to live the musician’s life, never mind living life as the spouse of a musician, but they’ve made it work over the years. The pair purchased a 1977 Airstream trailer to serve them during their adventures. “It’s hosted on the property of an old friend and singer songwriter Loel Hendricksen on Bainbridge Island, which is a 25-minute ferry ride from Seattle, Washington,” he says “It’s where I grew up. Nadine and I have been spending a lot of time back on the island over the last three years.”

It’s a long journey for a kid from a quite isolated island  (population 20,000)  off the coast of Washington to a life living and playing the blues, but a fateful trip early in life changed things.

“I had hitchhiked to San Francisco with a friend of mine one weekend,” Wheeler remembers. “The first night we went with an older friend of ours, who snuck us into the New Orleans club in Berkley and we saw Buddy Guy. That was really the moment. I had been listening to the blues for a while, but then, the next day we saw Janis Joplin and the Holding Company at the Fillmore. I basically turned my back on all pop music.” Shortly afterwards, the young guitarist was on the road, hitchhiking south with all his possessions in search of the source of the music that so stirred him up. It’s still stirring. “Nadine’“ is the third CD Wheeler has released this year along with “TJ Wheeler” and “Solo 7-String Guitar Orchestra.”

“This is out of the box,” says Wheeler of album number three for 2006, “I’m always out of the box.”

 “In some ways, as I turned my back on pop music, now I’m kinda turning back and reclaiming some of that music—changing it, my own interpretations. The blues is a universal music. it has affected every type of music that I can think of.” The latest album’s stylistic shifts play out Wheeler’s philosophy on that topic.

“I became a little bored with people’s perceptions, and limitations, so I decided to free myself up from people’s judgments. I owe a lot to my wife Nadine for my confidence in tackling some of this material as well.”

Wheeler’s Small World Band will be joining him at The Stone Church to celebrate the release of “Nadine’“

The band features many of the players from the recording including Pat “Hatrack” Gallagher (“The cat that put the “harm” in harmonica!), bassist Melvin Graham and drummer Jose Duque along with 83-year-old jazz pianist Mauriel Havenstein and swing drummer Dave Page. One other person of note will likely be there: Wheeler’s wife, Nadine Perry on the heartstrings.