SARANAC LAKE – Sometimes, a chance encounter at the right moment can alter the course of a person’s destiny for the good of all. If it hadn’t been for such an encounter, for instance, J.P. Soars of J.P. Soars and the Red Hots might still be playing in a heavy metal band instead of wowing audiences with his homemade cigar box guitar and his unique take on the blues.

Growing up in Cedarville, Arkansas, Soars first fell in love with music watching his father, a guitarist, play around the house. When he was 11 years old, his father bought him a “cheap electric guitar,” and Soars was hooked for life. His love for the blues, however, wouldn’t bloom until a few years later, when he had the pleasure of meeting, arguably, the greatest bluesman of all time.

“I saw B.B. King when I was 18, and I got to meet him backstage,” Soars said. “I had won this guitar in a raffle, and part of the thing was to go see B.B. King, meet him backstage and have him sign the guitar. That was the first experience or exposure to the real blues stuff right there.”

That was 1988. While Soars said his metamorphosis from metalhead to bluesman would not be complete until nearly two decades later, he noted that seeing B.B. King play definitely was the catalyst.

“There was no defining moment where I said, ‘I’m going to do this instead of this,'” he said. “I got exposed to the blues at a very young time, when I was also into being exposed to all this new-sounding metal that was coming out at the time like Metallica and Slayer and all kind of crazy bands, so it’s kind of a hand-in-hand situation there.

“The last stuff I really did with the metal band was in 2005, so that sort of puts it in perspective.”

Soars said he has always been into different styles of music; he names T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters, Django Reinhardt, King, Wes Montgomery and Pete Fountain as major influences. Based in Boca Raton, Florida, he said he likes to incorporate Latin rhythms into his songs, like he did on “Li’l Mamacita,” a track from his 2014 record “Full Moon Night in Memphis.” While his tastes are indeed eclectic, the clear through-line in his three records with the Red Hots – drummer Chris Peet, bass player Charles Gaspar and guitarist Steve Laudicina – has been the blues.

“At the heart of it, you’re going to hear the element of the blues in it, for sure,” he said. “You’re going to hear a little Latin influence. You’re going to hear some Django influences from Django Reinhardt, and you’re going to hear hints of metal in there, but it always has the tradition of the roots, of the blues and the cohesiveness of roots music in there.”

While the current lineup of the band solidified in the past three years, Soars and Peet have been playing together for about a decade. In 2008, the band released its first record, “Back of My Mind.” In 2009, J.P. Soars and the Red Hots took first place in the International Blues Contest in Memphis, Tennessee, beating out bands from around the world.

“It was awesome,” Soars said. “I still can’t believe we somehow won the thing. I think everything kind of lined up right for us and we were in the right place at the right time and had a lot of luck.

“It was a bit overwhelming, to be honest with you. It was definitely a peak moment in our career. It definitely opened up a lot of doors for us.”

After the festival, where Soars also won the Albert King Award for Most Promising Guitarist, the band released its sophomore album, “More Bees with Honey,” in 2011. One of the tracks on that record, “Doggin’,” gained the attention of rock ‘n’ roll legend Little Steven – aka Miami Steve, aka Steven Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band – who began playing the song on his satellite radio network, “The Underground Garage.” In October 2014, Van Zandt selected one of the band’s songs as “The Coolest Song in the World,” a weekly honor he bestows upon his favorite song in a given week.

“That was pretty awesome,” Soars said of the honor. “I love the station, and I get a lot of people that come to the gigs or contact me and say they discovered us on Little Steven’s.

“He plays a wide variety of music. He’s not playing just one style – that’s one of the cool things about that station. He just plays cool stuff.”

Soars and the band are currently working on a new record which he plans on releasing within the next year.

“We’re trying to expand on what we’ve done form the last CD and trying to do something a little different,” he said. “There is going to be a lot of up-tempo stuff, a lot of Stax Records-influenced sounding stuff on this one as well as a lot of twists and turns. We’re excited about it, definitely; I think it’s going to be the best one yet.”