Jeffrey Gaines’ biggest commercial success came from a song that he didn’t particularly care for at first.

Among his fans, Gaines is known for a deep catalog of blues-based songs about relationships gone wrong or social injustice. But to a wider audience, he’s known as the voice behind a cover of Peter Gabriel’s love song “In Your Eyes.” Gaines’ version made it to the adult Top 40 chart in 2001, some 15 years after Gabriel recorded his.

But Gaines may have never recorded the song, may have never fully appreciated it, if not for a girl.

“In my youthful arrogance, I only knew about Peter Gabriel from his MTV videos. So I never listened too closely to that song,” said Gaines, who lives in Philadelphia. “A girl I happened to be in love with always told me I should listen to that song. I nodded, but really never did.

“Then one night I was driving home from a gig, and she’s asleep, her head resting on my thigh, and that song came on the radio and I didn’t want to move her to change the station. So I heard the entire song, driving through the night, with my best girl, looking like an angel, asleep. “Finally I thought, ‘I get it. Now I get it.’ “

Still, it’s not a sure thing the audience will get to hear “In Your Eyes” when Gaines plays One Longfellow Square in Portland on Saturday. He doesn’t always play it. He will do it if it is “wanted” by the fans at the show, but that’s not always the case.

“A lot of fans of mine are into my own compositions and they don’t want to hear that song,” said Gaines. “Usually if people are yelling for that song, it means they’re new to me.”

Gaines has been recording since the early 1990s, after building a following around his native Harrisburg, Pa., and then regionally. While he was growing up, his parents were into the Memphis-based soul music of the 1960s popularized by the likes of Otis Redding, Al Green and Wilson Pickett.

A poppy version of soul coming out of Motown in Detroit was also hugely popular, but the fact that his parents favored Memphis soul has had a long-term impact on Gaines’ music.

“I think that’s why my lyrics and content have continued to be dark and deep, and blues-based. My music is a lot about relationships gone wrong and social injustice,” said Gaines. “But then I can have some very ‘Yummy, yummy, yummy, I got love in my tummy’ things. It’s hard for me to find a marriage of the two. People tell me I’d probably be on the radio more if I could meet in the middle somewhere.”

“I’ve had executives and successful people tell me there’s nothing wrong with my stuff, that I could sing the ingredients to a meal and it would sound good,” said Gaines. “But the way I view the world, not a whole lot of people do.”

Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at:

rrouthier@pressherald.com

 

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