When Vancouver guitarist and producer Steve Dawson started doing research for Things About Comin’ My Way, a tribute album to legendary ’30s string band the Mississippi Sheiks, he hoped to uncover a significant living link to the musicians, but there was nothing. Then last November, a month after the album’s release, Dawson got a call out of the blue from a woman in Minneapolis.

“She said, ”˜My mother, who’s 83, wants to talk to you,’ ” Dawson recalls, interviewed in the Henhouse, his East Vancouver garage studio. “ ”˜She’s the daughter of [fiddler] Harry Chatmon. She wants to let you know she’s heard about your project and she’s got a lot of crazy stories.’ So I phoned this really engaging, funny older lady with vivid memories of the Sheiks because they were a family band, built around the Chatmon brothers, and they’d come over to the house where she lived to drink and hang out and party before heading to all these gigs they were playing.”

Dawson is hoping that lady, Gladys Turner—who grew up in Bolton, Mississippi, and now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota—will make a special appearance at the pair of shows he’s put together at the Capilano Performing Arts Theatre this Saturday and Sunday (March 13 and 14). Featuring a stellar roster of North American roots musicians from the past 40 years, the weekend will celebrate the completion of the project.

The idea of a tribute to the great string band came to Dawson a couple of years ago. “I really loved their tunes and thought it would be a noble cause, as not many people really know about them,” he says. “The fiddle was a country instrument, so people thought they were white, and they were able to cross over.”

Dawson handpicked the musicians who played on Things About Comin’ My Way, released on his own Black Hen label. To back the artists on the recordings, as well as give the album greater musical coherence, he used a West Coast house band: himself on a range of guitars, Seattle’s Keith Lowe on bass and Wayne Horvitz on keyboards, and San Francisco’s Matt Chamberlain on drums.

That band, with the addition of Daniel Lapp on fiddle and trumpet, will be back together this weekend, working with a roster of great musicians—John Hammond, Van Dyke Parks, Geoff Muldaur, Bob Brozman, Jim Byrnes, the Sojourners, Oh Susanna, and Robin Holcomb—who all have tracks on the album.

“We’ve also got three performers who don’t: Dave Alvin, Colin James, and Alvin Youngblood Hart,” Dawson says. “In putting the concert together we knew that not everyone from the record could make the dates, so I started thinking of people it would be interesting to have, for whom this music speaks in some way.

“Dave, for instance, is a huge fan of [guitarist and songwriter] Armenter Chatmon, who went off to be Bo Carter, a well-known country-blues guy,” Dawson continues. “So he’s doing Bo Carter songs in the show. People will be coming and going on-stage all the time, and there’s a lot of off-the-cuff things that will happen because of that.”

The format and the performers will be the same both nights. Each artist performs two songs but will also appear in combination with others. Dawson will serve as emcee and musical director.

“It’s an interesting way to put on a concert,” Dawson says, “being able to mix people around and have these collaborations. It’s like a festival rolled into one show.

“The lineup is really special,” he continues. “For instance, Van Dyke Parks is a total legend in the music industry and has been involved with everyone from the Beach Boys to Ry Cooder, Randy Newman, and Ray Charles. He’s an under-the-radar kind of guy, producing and playing on so many records, who’s in his late 60s now and has never performed in Canada before. I’ve got him on-stage probably more than anyone else, playing keyboards and accordion. He adds a harmonic sensibility that’s a little ”˜out there’, which I think will be great to add to the mix.”

Dawson notes that his Mississippi Sheiks tribute has two agendas.

“One is to bring exposure to the Sheiks and their music,” he says. “The other is to use the music as a creative jumping-off point. In one sense, it’s really important that we’re spreading the word about the songs, but in another sense it’s a project base for all these people to come up with their own take on this kind of music.”

The Mississippi Sheiks Tribute Project is at the Capilano Performing Arts Theatre on Saturday and Sunday (March 13 and 14).