With a silk tie stretching around his thick neck and a flashy suit draping from his football player figure, Brian “Taz” Grant resembles James Earl Jones. Before he speaks.

“My keyboard player makes fun of me and says I have a velvet voice,” Taz says. “The only words I can say to describe it would be very subtle. When you see me, my voice does not sound like what I look.”

Taz, when sporting his dark shades, could also pass for B.B. King, though he plays more like Spyro Gyra and sings more like Babyface.

He is as mellow as musicians come but possesses a unique kind of enthusiasm that is honest and ageless. Taz doesn’t say a lot, but his common one-word answer — “Absolutely!” — does.

Taz, who took his nickname from his favorite cartoon character, the Tasmanian Devil, grew up in the tiny southern Chicago suburb of Dixmoor.

When he was eight years old, Taz had his first crush. On a guitar.

“I saw Joe Pass and Ella Fitzgerald on the ‘Lawrence Welk Show,’ and Joe Pass was playing so much music out of his guitar, I said, ‘That’s what I want to do,'” Taz recalls in his delicate voice.

It took three years, but Taz eventually bought his first guitar.

“There was a lady at my school, Miss Malusky — you can make up the spelling and I won’t hold you to it since I can’t remember — she offered free guitar lessons for anyone who would purchase a guitar from her,” Taz explains. “I ran home and told my parents, and I got a $24 guitar. I’ve been playing ever since.”

Taz now owns eight guitars, including a Fender Stratocaster and a Gibson ES175, which retails near $500.

Years of guitar lessons lead Taz to Des Moines, where he studied music and journalism at Drake. He has been teaching, currently at Southwestern Community College in Creston, since he graduated 19 years ago, and gives private lessons out of his home.

But what truly lights the fire behind this guitar-toting devil is his own music, a smorgasbord of funk, rock, blues and jazz.

“To fuse anything is to combine two or more elements,” Taz says. “And the kind that I do is more funky. It has jazz changes to it, but a groove and a beat that’s more funky.”

Taz-fusion was tagged “rhythm and jazz” by the music industry, which capitalized on similar bands like The BlackByrds and The Yellowjackets in the ’70s and ’80s.

“The thing that attracts me to jazz is the education,” Taz says. “I’m the kind of person who is always learning. I’ve always said, ‘When I stop learning, I’ll quit.’ So with jazz, it’s a music that you can constantly grow and get better at. I’m still growing.”

Taz formed his own eclectic jazz band in the early ’90s, which has released two CDs, toured England three times and opened for such acts as Johnny Hooker and Robert Cray. Much like Chicago or Tower of Power, The Taz Band has a continually evolving line-up.

“It’s changed constantly, because for one, I’ve changed,” Taz explains. “And because of the discipline, like I don’t allow my musicians to be on the stage drunk. I’ve had to change musicians several times.”

Change is something Taz is accustomed to. During his years in the Des Moines music scene, he has seen flavors of the month turn into the flavors of the week.

At times, primarily at the peak of the now defunct KFMG years, Taz has been the center of attention. Now, legendary jazz clubs like Bag’s Lounge are gone forever, and Taz is left with only a few outlets.

“The truth of the matter is, the music scene in Des Moines is suffering, especially for the type of music that I do,” he says. “I’ve established a fanbase that supports the music, but the venues and the establishments are not ready for what I do.”

Taz has found ways to stay happy and further his own musical journey. He built a recording studio in his home where he is working on his third album. It’s been several years in the making, yet Taz refuses to call himself a perfectionist. “But everyone else says so,” he adds.

As for whether future records will follow:

“Absolutely.”