Music

Slaid Cleaves is feeling lucky about new 'Wishbones'

It's 7 p.m. on a Monday night, and the Longbranch Inn on East 11th Street will fill up soon for J.T. Van Zandt's open-mic soiree. But right now, the room's a ghost town, sparsely populated by a handful of early drinkers like the lonesome guy at the end of the bar, staring into a glass of Guinness and looking much like a character in a Slaid Cleaves song: a broken ghost of a man, strung out on shattered dreams and praying for just one good year.

Problem is, the guy with the Guinness actually is Slaid Cleaves, and on closer inspection he doesn't seem forlorn at all. Even in the gloom of the bar, his perpetually rosy cheeks -- as much a Cleaves trademark as his bittersweet narratives and wistful melodies -- glow with boyish bonhomie.

He isn't at the Longbranch -- walking distance from the East Austin home he shares with his wife, Karen -- to drown his sorrows, but rather to talk about "Wishbones," the at-long-last-completed follow-up to his 2000 breakthrough album, "Broke Down."

"I haven't even seen this yet," he says excitedly, taking my advance copy of the album to inspect under the dim light. "I've seen the art on the computer, but it's nothing like holding it in your hand."

No doubt many of Cleaves' fans will be just as eager to get their mitts on "Wishbones," set for release Tuesday. Although it's the 39-year-old songwriter's third album for Rounder Records -- and seventh release over all -- it's likely the first Cleaves album that an audience outside of his family, friends and a few hard-core fans has actually waited for -- simply because prior to "Broke Down," said family, friends and early adopters were just about the only audience Cleaves had.

Back in his old hometown of Portland, Maine, Cleaves was the big fish in a small pond. But a move to Austin in '91 brought with it a reality check. Even after winning the New Folk competition at Kerrville in 1992, he still spent most of the decade "begging and scraping" for opening gigs while guinea-pigging his body out for drug tests at Pharmaco to make ends meet. Cleaves couldn't even persuade his former boss Griff Luneburg of the Cactus Café (where Cleaves worked the soundboard) to give him a headlining spot.

Fortunately, he did find some early Texas believers. Ray Wylie Hubbard took a shine to Cleaves after seeing him at a Woody Guthrie tribute. "There was a sense of integrity and greatness about him," says Hubbard. Producer Gurf Morlix (Hubbard, Lucinda Williams) was similarly impressed, won over by a demo Cleaves gave him at an H-E-B.

Morlix first worked with Cleaves on his 1997 Rounder debut, "No Angel Knows," but it wasn't until "Broke Down" that KGSR and a dozen or so other important stations took notice. In one year, Cleaves went from playing to 12 people at Flipnotics to selling out the Cactus and other listening rooms around the country.

"Broke Down" kept Cleaves on the road for nearly three years. For the first time in his career, he was making money with his music; but the flip side was he could no longer find the time to write.

"I felt like, I'm a traveling salesman," says Cleaves. "I pack up my goods and go out with my comrades, we do our little demonstration and set up our wares and then move on to the next town. I kept scraps and notes and ideas along the way, but I really had to dedicate myself to becoming a writer again."

To that end, last winter he sequestered himself to write in a borrowed cabin in Liberty Hill. The results, much to his relief, pick up right where "Broke Down" left off, offering a further refinement of Cleaves doing what Cleaves does best: Razor-sharp character studies such as the title track, which deftly weaves despair and hope around an indelibly memorable chorus, and heartbreaking story songs such as "Quick as Dreams," about a doomed jockey Cleaves read about in Laura Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit."

"When I see a story like that, it's a neat challenge to me to put it into song format," says Cleaves. "Normally I don't tend towards the confessional thing. I just don't find that very interesting. I'm interested in stories, characters, adventures."

As familiar as "Wishbones" sounds thematically, however, it does bear a marked increase in grit from its predecessors. "He wanted to step it up a bit, give it a little more muscular sound," notes Morlix. "When I first started working with him he was a little trepidatious about being in front of a rock band, but he's really kind of grown into his role as a star."

Cleaves isn't quite so sure of that yet. "I'm not a rock 'n' roller at all," he laughs. "I'm really just a folksy guy, which is partly why I was attracted to Gurf. I think that authority and sonic power he provides complements what I do really well. I knew I needed that so I wouldn't turn into a Dan Fogelberg or something. That's my worst nightmare."