Isaak Goes 'Beyond the Sun' to Cap Concert Season

By Andrew Herrick

Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom marketing director

Chris Isaak will close out the 2012 concert series at the Casino Ballroom at Hampton Beach on Saturday, Nov. 10, celebrating the release of his new album and PBS special. 

Yes, after more than a quarter of a century into his career, Chris Isaak has finally created the album he's always wanted to make.  Beyond the Sun, Isaak's first Vanguard Records release came out one year ago and is truly a labor of love. As a child spinning his parents 45s in their Stockton, California home, this deeply committed artist has been obsessed with the glory days of Memphis' Sun Studio and the visionary artists who got their starts there—including Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis—all of them discovered and nurtured by the late, great Sun Records founder Sam Phillips. Now, at long last, Isaak has acted on this lifelong obsession, magically recapturing the transformative hepcat brilliance of the classic sides cut by these greats at Sun with Phillips during the mid-'50s, while also getting down to the heart and soul of his own deeply rooted musical identity. 

Elvis is heavily represented on this handpicked collection, with "Trying to Get to You." "I Forgot to Remember to Forget", "Can't Help Falling in Love", "How's the World Treating You", "It's Now or Never", "She's Not You" and "My Happiness" – the first song Elvis ever recorded.  Isaak opens the set with Cash's "Ring of Fire", and later offers his take on "I Walk the Line." He wails his way through Jerry Lee's "Great Balls of Fire", revisits Orbison's "So Long I'm Gone", and heats up Perkins' "Dixie Fried." The standard set is rounded out by a blistering rendition of "Miss Pearl" by the nearly forgotten Sun artist Jimmy Wages. The second disc, which starts out with the one-two punch of Presley's "My Baby Left Me" and Orbison's "Pretty Woman", also contains the treasure "Everybody's In The Mood" by Howlin' Wolf. Clearly, this guy knows the Sun catalog inside out.

To say Chris and his band mates hit the bull's-eye on these tunes would be a gross understatement. One of the most stunning moments occurs at the end of "It's Now or Never", on which Elvis hit an impossible note with all of his prodigious vocal power. On the new version, Isaak seems to back off from the big moment, but then he pauses for dramatic effect before powering up to the top of his range and tearing the roof off the sucker. "When you do a song like that one, you can't leave out the guns," he explains with a wry smile. Fact is, there isn't a moment on this record that doesn't feel immediate as well as authentic.

Don’t miss Chris Isaak and his band, playing all of his hits, some Beyond the Sun covers and more to celebrate the final show of the 2012 concert series at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom Saturday November 10^th.  Tickets are on sale now online at Ticketmaster.com/CasinoBallroom or over the phone at 603-929-4100.