This Juno-winning guitarist wants to take you around the world

Jesse Cook wants to take his audience on a ride when the award-winning guitarist, composer and producer performs at the Sault Community Theatre Centre this Sunday.

Cook has been on the road with his five-piece touring unit for the past 18 months in support of his 2017 album, Beyond Borders, which debuted at number one on the iTunes world music albums album chart.

“Well, we have a rumba party basically,” Cook told SooToday over the phone from Belleville, Ont. “I want people to bring their passports, we’re going to take them on a trip around the world.”

Cook- who has garnered 11 Juno nominations and one Juno win for his 2001 album Free Fall - is often described as a flamenco guitarist.

But that’s not entirely accurate, he says.

“Certainly flamenco is a big influence on my playing, but even my own playing, I realize, is a hybrid - I started as a classical kid and then I went to jazz school, and I always studied flamenco on the side,” Cook said.

Cook says that his music can take listeners on a musical ride - from Cairo to Colombia to Cuba - sometimes all in one song.

“I have a song called Bombay Slam, and it combines Parliament/Funkadelic and a Bollywood string section with Armenian duduk, and some Spanish guitar, so you know, I don’t know where you are after that,” he laughed.

He says that Toronto definitely informed his playing, from hearing South Indian drumming while studying at York University to playing in a west African drumming ensemble and a Brazilian band.

“When you’re living in a city with all these other cultures, you keep mixing together with other types of music,” Cook said.

When asked about the response to his Beyond Borders album thus far, Cook told SooToday that the feedback from the public is getting harder and harder to gauge.

“We live in a time where people don’t buy records like they used to,” said Cook. “It’s the strangest thing - my first few records came out before downloading, and I actually had much lower chart positions than I do nowadays.”

That change within the music industry has seen Cook exploring the visual aspect of his music - he even edited a produced one of his performances for PBS in the United States - through his YouTube channel.

He openly ponders the thought of releasing a series of singles on his YouTube channel as opposed to a conventional album.

“Every new year, it seems like there’s less reason to kind of go that route, you know what I mean?” said Cook. “It’s a funny thing, especially for those of us who kind of grew up in the age of the album, where the album was everything.”

The guitarist says that although the music industry has shifted, he doesn’t intend on hanging up his love of music.  

“I get to do what I love for a living, this is amazing,” he said. “I mean, how many people do accounting for a hobby?”

“This is a great job. I totally love it.”

Tickets can be purchased at the Sault Community Theatre website.