It can be a challenge, even for someone who has lots of experience in front of audiences. And maybe even more of a challenge if that audience mostly knows you from TV — as the tough-as-nails intelligence operative who’s always defusing deadly terrorist plots at the last moment.
It turns out that Kiefer Sutherland, the veteran actor perhaps best known as Jack Bauer, the counter-terrorist agent from Fox’s wildly popular “24” series, also has a musical side — one he’s been quietly cultivating for years.
And as he embarks on a concert tour to promote his upcoming debut album, the country-tinged “Down in the Hole,” Sutherland says he’s well aware some might view it as a vanity project: a wealthy, successful actor using his name to indulge a hobby.
But Sutherland, 49, who comes to the Iron Horse in Northampton May 19, says he’s OK with that. In a recent phone interview, he said he’s always loved music, has played guitar for years, and his songs are simply a vehicle for giving voice to deeply personal experiences: “This album is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a journal,” he said.
“Obviously I’d like people to like it, but my thought was if they didn’t, it wasn’t going to stop me from doing it,” Sutherland added. “I’ve had to confront the fears I had … of an actor playing music. That’s always made my eyes roll when I hear of someone else doing it, so I can completely understand why anyone would feel that way.”
But Sutherland said he’d long ago been drawn to acting “to tell a story, and my desire to go and play music is very much the same thing.” And playing his music to an audience, he said, “is the thing I’ve gotten the most satisfaction out of — it’s so new and fresh for me.”
Sutherland’s been active in film and TV since his early 20s; aside from “24,” his credits include “Stand by Me,” “The Lost Boys,” “Flatliners,” “The Vanishing” and many other films, including “Forsaken” in 2015, in which he starred with his father, Donald Sutherland.
On the musical side, he began playing violin, at his mother’s insistence, when he was 4. He had to keep up his lessons until age 10, he said, before he was allowed to get the instrument he really wanted: a guitar.
Over the years, the guitar became his regular companion at home and on film and TV sets, something he could turn to after a day of work. Eventually, he also began to write songs, inspired by the work of songwriters from a number of different genres.
“I really responded to the lyrics, to storytelling,” he said, as he ticked off the names of some favorite early writers: Bernie Taupin (Elton John’s lyricist), Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger, James Taylor and Van Morrison.
Then, in the 1990s, Sutherland opened a ranch in Montana with a friend and got busy riding horses, entering roping competitions and traveling the rodeo circuit out west. Along the road, he mostly heard country music, a sound he began to appreciate in particular for the directness of the lyrics.
“When you listen to guys like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson,” Sutherland said, “they all tell amazing stories, and they tell them in a first-person narrative — which is really interesting, because I’m almost positive Johnny Cash did not shoot a man in Reno.”
You can hear that kind of straightforward approach in the ballad “Not Enough Whiskey,” the first track released from the upcoming album. To strummed acoustic buttressed with pedal steel guitar lines, Sutherland, in a raspy voice redolent of cigarettes and morning-after blues, sings of abroken love affair: “Memories hang / in the hall / pull them down / off the wall / Now it’s done / she is gone, gone, gone.”
Other cuts — “I’ll Do Anything,” “I Saw the Truth in Your Eyes” — are of a similar vein, with tasteful but stripped-down arrangements: twangy electric guitar, drums, slide and steel guitars and lyrics that examine the eternal topic of love, both won and lost (as well as the perils of drinking).
“I’ve had one of the most fortunate lives of anyone I know,” said Sutherland, who’s been married a couple times. “But there have been people that I’ve loved that I lost, there are friends of mine that have passed, there are mistakes I’ve made in my life.”
Singing these autobiographical songs live, he believes, breaks down any barrier that might exist between him and his audience.
“I think at the end of the night … we begin to realize there’s not much difference between us, and that’s been one of the great experiences I’ve had in playing these shows.”
Yet Sutherland says the recording of his album and his live gigs are both a sort of happy accident. Initially, he had not intended to do either.
The roots of the project go back to 2002, when he and a long-time friend, singer-songwriter and producer Jude Cole, decided to form a small record label in California, called Ironworks, to record talented area musicians and get their music into circulation, hopefully attracting bigger labels to the artists — a philosophy much like that of Northampton’s Signature Sounds.
Over the years, Sutherland said, he’d written about 20 to 30 songs that he hoped other artists might be interested in recording. In early 2015, he told Cole he’d like to record a few of them as demos for that purpose, and Cole arranged for the sessions.
But Cole thought the songs held up quite well on their own, and he asked Sutherland to record more of his tunes, with a band backing him up — and Cole told his friend he should consider making a full album that he would produce.
Sutherland says he was dubious at first but slowly warmed to the idea.
“Around the fifth or sixth song, I had my ‘Come to Jesus’ moment and I said, ‘You know, I really do like this — let’s see where it goes.’ ”
Sutherland began trying out some of the songs live, with a band, late last summer and into fall, and his official tour began in April and continues through May. He’s also begun shooting for the upcoming TV series “Designated Survivor,” an ABC political drama, and will play more gigs this year as filming allows.
Playing his music live is more personal than acting and a little nerve-wracking, he notes — “As an actor, you can hide behind a character” — but he says he wouldn’t trade it for anything.
“The feeling I get after a show — it’s just indescribable,” he said.
Kiefer Sutherland and his band play the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton May 19 at 7 p.m. Singer/songwriter Austin Plaine opens. Advanced tickets are sold out, but a limited number will be available at the door on a first-come, first-serve basis.