When Jim Byrnes shook my hand, I couldn’t help but think of the extraordinary amount of time, practice, and talent that has been channeled through it over the 65 years of his life. His knuckles had the particular gnarl that can only be seen in guitarists and fishermen, earned over long, hard use against wires and lines.

For all that he purports to be a cranky, "self-centred son of a bitch", he is remarkably affable in person. I had a chance to sit down with him at his booth at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo and, I have to admit, I was a little star-struck. Many of my fellow pre-millennials will remember him from his portrayal of Joe Dawson on the Highlander TV series.

"I felt myself as a surrogate for all the viewers of television, okay?" he says of his role on the show. "Some people know about the Immortals — most people don’t. All our viewers know about the Immortals. So I was their stand-in, their surrogate."

What I didn’t realize, until many years later, was that Byrnes is an accomplished — to put it mildly — blues musician. He is a three-time winner of the Juno for Blues Album of the Year, and has been honoured by the Maple Blues Awards and the Canadian Folk Music Awards multiple times as their Best Male Vocalist.

Born in Missouri, the blues run deep in Byrnes’s blood, though I had to ask: has he ever felt disconnected from those deep roots, living for the last four decades in Vancouver?

"I grew up with it – it’s a part of me, you know? Wherever I go," he answers. "I compare it to James Joyce, who left Dublin, Ireland, and never went back, but every word he wrote was about Dublin, Ireland."

If the blues are Dublin to Byrnes, acting is his Ulysses. He studied theatre at university, but when extenuating circumstances put an acting career on hold, he relied on his musical gifts to make a name for himself. According to Byrnes, it all comes from the same source.

"There’s a creative source in me that wants to communicate," he says. "What I love to do is to find those emotions that you relate to, that he relates to, that she relates to, and that we can all find a common bond."

Now that he is beyond established, acting continues to tempt him, and it’s the stage, not the screen, that calls the strongest. Vancouver residents will be happy to know that he sees Shakespeare in his future.

"I love the stage. I started out as a theatre actor, and that’s very different from being a film actor," he says. "I’ve spoken with Chris Gays at Bard on the Beach in Vancouver, and one of these seasons he’s going to bring me in, and I’m going to play Prospero in the Tempest, or something. I’d love to get back on stage."

You can find out more information about Byrnes’s music, tours, and appearances on his website and, whatever you do, be sure to listen to a few of his songs to hear what his brand of dedication to his craft can produce.

"Music is such a special gift, and it brings together people in the way that nothing else does," he says. "If I had to give up [something], the music’s the last one out the door."