Tal Bachman

“Even the album has little rough and weird things, like the end of ‘Looks Like Rain’; it’s me strumming an acoustic guitar. Did we forget to take that out?”

He paused, then added dryly, “I think of it as an element of rock ‘n’ roll danger.”

Rock ‘n’ roll danger was a family policy when Tal was growing up. The son of Canadian rock legend Randy Bachman, the B in BTO (Bachman Turner Overdrive), he couldn’t do much to rebel. Defiantly, he decided to teach himself to play guitar with no input from Pa.

“The first guitar I ever had my mom bought me,” the younger Bachman recalled. “It was a $100 Korean piece of total garbage. I smashed it when I was teen-ager. I wanted to know what it would actually be like to smash a guitar.

“The ironic thing is, I thought as a teen-ager, ‘Well, I might become a musician or guitar player, and if I do, I don’t want to play like my dad – my poor dad!” he laughed. “He was probably thinking, ‘Oh, my dream’s come true! My son’s learning how to play the guitar,’ but I would not let him show me anything. I just taught myself and I had all these books.

“The funny thing is, now, every time I play a solo, it’s like I’m listening to a Randy Bachman solo.”

Tal, now 30, has mountains of humorous anecdotes involving his staunchly rock ‘n’ roll dad. “Uniforms are good,” Randy once told his private-school student son. “Angus Young wears one.” Or later, when his son was studying at the university, he thought Tal was wasting time reading philosophy and should quit to pursue rock ‘n’ roll. Indeed, his life sounds like a spin-off of the British sitcom “Absolutely Fabulous.”

It was tales such as these that endeared the young Bachman to the industry invitees at a recent showcase at Toronto’s classy Top O’ The Senator jazz club. But it was the music – solo renditions of cuts from his debut album – played starkly on baby grand and guitar that won him fans. His songs have Lennon-McCartney-like pop sensibility and his voice a throaty-but-mellifluous tone.

The clean-cut, clean-living singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist did similar showcases in major cities across North America. Agent Marty Diamond of Little Big Man said he plans to have him out on the road with his band in July for a support tour with an as-yet- undetermined act.

For now, the uplifting single, “She’s So High,” will continue to be worked at radio. Coproduced with Bob Rock in Hawaii, the album also includes the stunning “If You Sleep” (most likely the second single), hopelessly romantic “Beside You” and another contender for rock radio, “Darker Side Of Blue”.

The latter song was co-written at Miles Copeland’s privileged songwriting retreat in Angouleme, France, and was initially a delicate song in a Tony Bennett vein for which Bachman re-did the lyrics.

“I wanted it to sound sophisticated because it’s about some big super-glitzy model or someone who’s famous,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘OK, loser at home watching a television set and somebody has gotten famous that he knew at one time.’ So I was imagining all these things, wondering what it would be like (to be famous),” explained Bachman.

And his conclusion?

“I don’t know.”

Reminded that his old man is famous, Tal recalled fans tracking down the family home in Bachman Turner Overdrive’s heyday. “They’d tap on windows, knock on the door, trying to get autographs, and circling the block blasting an eight-track tape of ‘Not Fragile’ out the windows.”

Would he like someone to blast “She’s So High” outside his home?

“Not particularly,” he said. “I’m basically agoraphobic; I never leave my house. I don’t really have a lot of friends. I don’t go to parties. I don’t go to clubs. Industry guys keep asking if there’s a scene in Vancouver. If there is, I don’t know about it.

“It’s nice to create something that other people like,” he added. “That makes me feel like I’ve done something worthwhile. I don’t really care about fame in and of itself. But it’s like sheer mad instinct – I write songs. Sing song. Play song. People hear song. I have ammo. Let’s pull trigger.”

Now that’s rock ‘n’ roll danger.