Imagine moving to Vancouver and winning the lottery three times in a row. And then winning it again. It’s not a perfect analogy because it fails to imply how much he deserves it, but Connely Farr’s boat came in when he relocated here from America’s Deep South. He’d been in Vancouver for roughly a year when singer-songwriter Rodney DeCroo happened upon Farr holding court with his acoustic guitar at the Our Town Café. He told him, “You need to make a record.”

That was early 2009. Cut to June 2010 and Farr is about to release his debut on the same local label, Northern Electric, that handles DeCroo, Herald Nix, David Newberry, Pointed Sticks, and a stable of other high-class misfits. It was produced by no less than Jon Wood, with bass work from Wood’s bandmate Mark Haney of the Beige and backing vocals from Pawnshop Diamond’s Nina Fleming. Pretty nice for a first-timer. What next? A feature in the Straight?

“Even if we didn’t release a record, this experience would be more worthwhile than anything I’ve gone through in the past,” Farr says, sitting on the patio of a Commercial Drive coffee shop. “It blew my mind. I mean, Jon Wood, what a gem. It’s like he’s Bonnie ”˜Prince’ Billy, working on tons of shit in one year and it’s all amazing.”

Typically, the Wood production strategy on Mississippi Live is to shade tracks like the mournful “A Song for You” with a bare minimum of piano, banjo, harmonica, and brushes, or to coax a subtle pulse from Haney’s bowed standup bass on the antiwar “Last Song”. “He loves to capture the essence of what you’re bringing,” Farr adds, “not what he wants to bring. He’s humble in that respect.” Even with the cinematic sweep that a mere harmonica brings to “The Sea Is Now”, Wood manages to add excitement without overwhelming Farr’s delicate and essentially folky compositions.

Which, it should be noted, emerge from a burly and gregarious dude with a killer accent. “My mom tells me I’m losing it,” he says, laughing. “I think hers is thickening.” Add to that a naturally tremulous and emotion-laden singing voice, a fondness for Cuban cigars, and a certain incredulousness at how well things happen to be going for him up here.

“When I started working on the music,” he says, “it was like, ”˜This is what I want to be doing.’ And it’s that balance that every artist goes through. There’s a certain security to having a good job and making a living, but there’s also that fear that 20 or 30 years down the road you’re gonna look up and be in that same office and you’ll be, like, ”˜Why did I sell myself short?’ I think that would be the case for me. I have that fear.”

For the record, Farr is a mild-mannered architect during the day. He began playing music while learning the trade in Alabama, throwing down Ryan Adams, Neil Young, and Nirvana covers in a Mexican bar for “a meal, 30 bucks, and a place to stay”. Realizing he needed to build a broader palette, Farr did what anybody would do. “I learned the blues from YouTube,” he says. Just like all the greats! Farr guffaws. “Well, I realize I probably shouldn’t admit that, but I didn’t know the blues. Literally, I watched half the video, put it down, and wrote ”˜Going Down’.”

That Farr managed to grow up in tiny Bolton, Mississippi, without encountering the blues seems remarkable, but then he also managed to avoid becoming the kid from Deliverance or joining a satanic cult. Instead, he grooved on hair metal, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and 2Pac, took up skateboarding, and developed a passion for Che Guevara. A trip to the Sunshine Coast sold Farr on B.C. as a future home, which coincided nicely with his personal misgivings about America’s recent history. “I don’t want to live in the States,” he explains, a little sadly. “I don’t agree with a lot of the decisions we make or why we make them.”

It’s a move that’s worked out well for a lot of people. When Farr takes to the stage at the WISE Hall on Thursday (June 17), it’ll be under the name Mississippi Live and the Dirty, Dirty—the Dirty, Dirty being a recently assembled band featuring underappreciated former Chinatown axeman Ben Yardley and Jay Johnson on drums. Johnson, in case this sentiment hasn’t appeared in print before, is one of the best drummers in Canada. He’s Wood’s equivalent in terms of Zen-like sensitivity to his instrument, and the fact that he shares the producer’s enthusiasm for Farr’s music speaks volumes. And Farr clearly knows that the potential results are bigger than him. He “remains teachable”, to borrow his own words. “I think this idea that the musician comes in and just knows everything is a lie and it’s very presumptuous,” he states. “When you have that collaborative environment, really beautiful things happen.”

Mississippi Live and the Dirty, Dirty play the WISE Hall on Thursday (June 17).