You can now officially classify classic rocker Randy Bachman as a ‘three-peater.’

After huge success fronting The Guess Who, and morphing into the classic rock hit machine Bachman-Turner Overdrive, the award-winning Canadian artist is now channeling his love for late-’60s British blues grooves into a brand new and refreshingly accessible power trio.

In a recent Newtown Bee interview ahead of his April 24 stop at The Ridgefield Playhouse, Bachman was positively fired up about his latest effort, Heavy Blues, which he’s showcasing on tour this spring accompanied by bassist Anna Ruddick and drummer Dale Anne Brendon.

According to his recent bio, this “architect of Canadian rock n’ roll” has designed unforgettable pop-culture touchstones including “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” “Taking Care of Business,” “Looking Out for #1” and “Let It Ride” for Bachman-Turner Overdrive; and “American Woman,” “No Sugar Tonight,” “Undun” and “These Eyes” with The Guess Who.

Since his first hit in 1965 with “Shaking All Over,” Bachman has sold over 40 million records and earned over 120 gold and platinum album/singles awards around the world for performing and producing, and his songwriting has garnered him the coveted #1 spot on radio playlists in over 20 countries. 

He remains the only one of his countrymen to have been inducted twice into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

But during the summer of 2014, Bachman was determined to avoid being labeled as just another “legacy” artist. So he rifled through his vast catalogue of unreleased songs and knocked out 12 new tracks of blues-rock for a new album, featuring solo contributions from guitar greats Peter Frampton, Neil Young, Joe Bonamassa, Robert Randolph, Scott Holiday, Luke Doucet and the late Jeff Healey, and a powerhouse rhythm section consisting of Ruddick and Brendon.

On April 14, Randy Bachman, under the moniker BACHMAN, unveiled his debut album, Heavy Blues, combining a raw, classic British blues feel of the 1960s, infused with a strong contemporary vibe that finds Bachman’s songwriting craftsmanship shining through thick, fuzzy coats of distortion.

On the recommendation of Bonamassa, instead of self-producing the project, Bachman chose famed rock producer Kevin Shirley, who didn’t make things easy on him.

Known as “The Caveman,” Shirley has helped birth electrifying recording sessions with artists like Rush, The Black Crowes, Journey and Led Zeppelin. In great demand for his studio acumen, Shirley carved out a small window of opportunity between projects to work with Bachman before heading to the UK to produce the new Iron Maiden album.

“Kevin pushed me past my stop sign and pulled me down a road I never would have gone before, because I’d produced myself for so long,” said Bachman in his advance. “I thank him for remodeling me.”

During his conversation with The Bee, Bachman talked about putting the new band together, channeling vintage Led Zeppelin, Cream and The Who, the energy oozing from his abbreviated recording sessions, and how he extracted a multi-guitar “wall of sound” effect from just a vintage Sears catalog instrument and amplifier.

Newtown Bee: Let’s jump right in talking about how you put your new band together for this Heavy Blues project.

Randy Bachman: I was challenged to get a new band and to do something new and different. So I was invited to see the new (theatrical) version of the rock opera Tommy about a year ago in Stratford, Ontario. And Pete Townsend flew in for that and they seated me right behind him. At one point during the show he leaned back and said, ‘the drummer is amazing, he sounds just like Keith Moon.’ And I said, that drummer is a lady – I’ve played with her. The program had the name as Dale Brendon, but I said that’s Dale Anne Brendon. And he said ‘It can’t be.’ So after the show we went back stage to meet her. Dale Anne has her own drum school, and she ended up charting all Keith Moon’s drum parts exactly like the record. So that’s why Townsend was so blown away. I told her I was going to record a new album, and I asked her if she wanted to play drums with me and to do an act like the White Stripes with just guitar and drums. She said, ‘I’m in,’ but the minute I told my manager, he said it had been done by the Black Keys and White Stripes, and how about I bring in a bass and create a power trio.

So about a year ago I was up in Winnipeg because BTO was getting inducted into the Juneau Hall of fame, and I went out after to see a band called Ladies of The Canyon. It was four chicks with long scraggly hair, flannel shirts and ripped jeans playing wild country rock like Crazy Horse, and I loved the bass player, who turned out to be Anna. I invited her out to dinner a week later when we were back in Toronto and she shows up in a John Entwistle T-shirt. It turns out even though she studied classical stand-up bass and composition, she makes her living playing rock music and Entwistle is her favorite bass player. So I told her how I had toured with him in Ringo’s All Starr Band and that I had a drummer who was just like Keith Moon — and I want to do an album with the two of you that sounds like a late-60s power trio — The Who, Cream, Zeppelin, the Hendrix Experience. They said they were in, so then I contacted my friend Kevin Shirley who was totally into it, but he only had a week to do it. So then I had my band — this power trio that basically cranks up these British-style blues, and brings it back to America.

Bee: When did Joe Bonamassa float into the picture?

Bachman: Well, once Shirley was on board, he tells me he’s getting his neighbor Joe Bonamassa to come play on a track. And I said, that gives me an idea. So I called up Jeff Healy’s widow Cristie and asked her if I could use a solo that Jeff and I had recorded live together before he passed away. She said yes, so I wrote a song built around Jeff’s soloing called “Confessions to the Devil.” Then I emailed Neil Young to tell him that I got a new band, new sound, new guitar, a new producer, and I wrote new songs. I said I think I’ve reinvented myself, something I never really did before — and it was really fun, and I’m kind of scared to do it. And Neil says that’s what you need, you need that edge, and he proceeded to offer me a solo. So then we were on a roll and we ended up compiling this amazing list of incredible soloists, which helped the album take on a life of its own. It was completely beyond my control at that point.

Bee: Up until then you had controlled virtually every project, right?

Bachman: And it was great to let it sort of roll out on its own and to let Kevin Shirley shape what was happening.

Bee: So there are no obscure blues covers on this new album — they are all original?

Bachman: I wrote them all. But these were going to be tributes to the old school players like Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed, and during the sessions Shirley kept coming out and saying, ‘Why are you doing that?’ And I said I loved these old blues guys — and he says, ‘But everybody has done that.’ And he suggests taking the songs and writing new ones — and play them heavier. So I started working up something right on the spot, and he says, ‘Hey those are some heavy blues.’ So I went home and wrote a song that I called “Heavy Blues,” and it became the title track and it’s kind of neat because they’re starting to call the music that now. It just took off on its own.

Bee: So you are the father of heavy blues?

Bachman: More like the father of making mistakes, but I grabbed onto them and went along for the ride (laughing).

Bee: Did any of your guests show up in studio to do their parts?

Bachman: No. They were all on tour all over the world. So we ended up taking these seven mixes and sending them out to these seven different guys. Then we waited for them to finish. Some took a week and some took three months because they were out on tour and were trying to finish the tracks on tour busses and in hotel rooms. The amazing thing, when they all came in, was they all sounded like they were in the same room with me playing. They all played perfectly — and you could feel their heart and soul, you could hear each guy’s trademark tone the way he plays, and they were all basically shipped back to me over the Internet. I never heard any samples, and I didn’t make any suggestions ahead of time — except asking them to each give me a little bit of themselves, I know what you play like so just give me some of your best licks — and mix it LOUD. I’ll tell you, we never could have done something like this in the old days.

Bee: Did the eclipsed time factor of needing to track all the cuts in five days put you in the position of task master, or were you able to give Anna and Dale some room to bring something of their own to each track?

Bachman: Well I knew one played like John Bonham and Keith Moon, and the other one played like John Entwistle and Jack Bruce. I’d go in there and say, ‘Here’s the song.' We’re honoring whichever band I wanted them to sound like. It was like Wayne’s World: We’re down in this basement with these two ladies, and we’re just jamming like The Who, and Led Zeppelin. And they just closed their eyes, imagined the song, we counted them down and nailed them in just one or two takes. And Shirley comes out and says it’s great — there are even one or two mistakes that we’re going to keep because I want this raw, edgy feel like people are seeing you on stage, but instead, it’s just live in the studio. So as we were getting ready, I just told the girls to go back on YouTube and watch the early Who and Zeppelin shows live on the BBC, and to watch. They didn’t just play their instruments, they’re attacking them. These guys were animals — smashing their drums. That’s why I wanted Dale Anne — she basically pounds her drums. These ladies are not only beautiful, they’re great people and top-notch musicians. I gave them the freedom to let it rip, and that was it.

Bee: So give us a glimpse into one of these abbreviated recording sessions for Heavy Blues.

Bachman: Most of the communication during the takes was me giving eye signals and nodding my head and basically yelling some instructions between takes. Then Kevin would just wipe those out before I’d go into the vocal take. All the guitars were done with one old Supro guitar and a couple of old amps. But on those amps we had mics spread out at seven o’clock and nine o’clock, 11 o’clock, right across the mix, so when I hit a chord, it sounded like a bunch of guitars when it was just one old guitar coming out of a couple of amps with a bunch of mics in the room giving out so much sound — like those old Who recordings.

Bee: So you were only using old vintage equipment — no new instrument or amplifier technology or effects?

Randy Bachman: I went on the Internet and bought old Silvertone amps and a Supro guitar. I didn’t want those standard sounds that everybody else had — like a Gibson through a Marshall stack or a Fender through a Fender amp. I wanted to go back to the days when you couldn’t afford a Les Paul and you got your guitar through the old Sears catalog. I got this old Supro, a hollow body guitar with no f-holes and these incredible P-90 pickups. I took ten guitars into the studio, but I ended up using that one on every track. Anna ended up using a single pickup Rickenbacker to get that Entwistle sound, and Dale just filled it all in with her drums. It really made for some incredible sound.

Bee: Have you modified your hits to fit that heavier blues sound?

Bachman: I’ll tell you, we do “American Woman” and it sounds like Cream on Wheels Of Fire. These chicks are going insane. We do “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” which we sneak into the opening song, which is “The Edge.” Then we do “No Sugar Tonight and “Ton of Bricks” combined together. We’re playing a lot of Guess Who and a Lot of BTO — we don’t want to bore people with a lot of the new stuff, but we do a few.

Get tickets for Randy Bachman’s April 24 show by visiting ridgefieldplayhouse.org, and check out a “making of” video about his new project.

See Randy Bachman performing an encore set in Sydney, Australia on April 7.