When banjo virtuoso Tony Furtado decided to learn how to sing and play slide guitar, it was destiny.

The vocalist for Furtado's band, Sugarbeat, had quit, leaving him high and dry. Furtado plopped down, thinking, "Here I am just a banjo player. What the (expletive) am I going to do?"

He chuckles at the memory. It was a fortunate twist of fate.

Even though he was a national banjo champion with three albums under his belt by the mid-1990s, Furtado moved back in with his parents. He always had wanted to learn how to sing, play slide and write songs.

So he dug out Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal records. He listened. He practiced slide.

He sang - not always well.

Then he hit the road again.

"I kind of felt sorry for my crowd the first few years," he admits. "Because I was listening to tapes (afterward), and I'd realize what I needed to do to my voice to make it sound more like I felt. I always knew I would not be an acrobatic singer, but I wanted to sing in a way that would represent the song that I wrote, or that would feel natural and match up right with what I'm playing."

In 2000, Furtado released an album with vocals for the first time.

Neither singing nor slide guitar had been exceptionally difficult to grasp, Furtado says. Training his voice, however, took discipline.

"There are definitely some singers born with it," Furtado says. "For me, I had to learn and work out the way I wanted my voice to sound and get it there. ... The singing came gradual, but once it came, it came. I feel as comfortable singing now as I do probably playing slide guitar.

"Nothing will be as comfortable as banjo, ever," he adds, "because I started that when I was 12."

Furtado, who will release his 14th album Nov. 4, is praised for all his skills nowadays. As a banjo master, he originally was pegged as a bluegrass musician. But as a singer-songwriter with formidable instrumental skills, he now prefers to be known as an Americana artist. Furtado is comfortable delivering a gritty original, singing a Tom Petty tune, or uncorking a blazing instrumental banjo song.

Fans will get a taste of all these approaches Wednesday at Alive After Five. Furtado is bringing two other Portland-based musicians to back him: fleet-fingered bassist Damian Erskine, nephew of Weather Report's Peter Erskine, and drummer Tyrone Hendrix, a cousin of Jimi Hendrix. ("I swear to God!" Furtado says. "He just found out a couple months back.")

Furtado's solo shows are somewhat folky, but prepare to rock a little with his backing duo: "I've got a good wallop when I've got the band with me," he says.

Just remember to smile in appreciation when you hear Furtado's late-blooming voice. And if you want to compliment his singing between sets, well, that always makes him feel good, he admits.

"(Singing has) become vital to me," Furtado says. "It's something I love doing and need to do. Writing the songs and singing them and playing, it finally feels like I'm expressing music in the way I've always wanted to do it."

Michael Deeds: 377-6407