Will Hoge

There are moments where it would be real nice to sleep in your own bed," admits Will Hoge with a rapid-fire Southern drawl. "But that doesn't pay for shit, so I have to stay out here and work. No, we're fortunate to get to play music for a living. Every time I drive by some poor son of a bitch paving a road in 95-degree heat, I realize how lucky I am."

Although the Tennessee native's star is rising steadily on the heels of recent tours with the Black Crowes and My Morning Jacket, Hoge is well acquainted with the hassles of playing on the haven't-quite-made-it-yet circuit. Currently touring in support of his latest effort, Draw the Curtains, the rustic troubadour is on the road for more than 200 dates a year, delivering his slightly countrified blend of soul and Southern blues rock to an ever-growing fan base. In one recent blog entry, Hoge recounts an aborted show in which the venue's staff never arrived for a scheduled 4 p.m. load-in, pushing the act's sound check back until 7 p.m. Even if the sound guy had been on time, it wouldn't have mattered, because the P.A. didn't work at all. Such tales of road woe, however, are becoming rarer these days, says Hoge.

"When you're first starting out, you take every hand-me-down gig you can get, and you get used to it," he points out. "You get less and less of that over time, and more ability to say no. There's a certain point where it's going to affect the show, where people aren't going to be able to enjoy it, and where the audience would have a shitty experience if you went through with it. But that doesn't happen a whole lot anymore."

Despite the occasional annoyance, Hoge doesn't seem to be on the verge of having to post his resumé on Monster.com. Things are looking up for the Nashville-based singer/guitarist, who secured a new distribution deal with Ryko after releasing two records on Atlantic — 2001's Carousel and 2003's Blackbird on a Lonely Wire — that were critically acclaimed but didn't meet the label's grandiose sales expectations. When support from the label dried up, Hoge issued a series of releases on his own, including last year's The Man Who Killed Love, before securing his current partnership with Ryko. Speaking about the new alliance, he's sounds like an effusive little kid who made a friend on his first day at a new school.

"Ryko has turned out to be everything we had hoped Atlantic would be," says Hoge. "We always wanted a record label that would let us be ourselves and make the records we wanted to make, on a timely basis in which we wanted to make them. It's been a realistic record deal, not one of these negotiations with talk of limos and MTV and all this bullshit. Ryko is a bunch of music fans willing to work with us as musicians."

That notion — of artists creating art instead of factory drones churning out "product," which seemed to be the approach at Atlantic — is one that's far more appealing to Hoge.

"When you start making records, you have to just make records," Hoge explains. "You can't chase records. You can't chase after hit songs. We had more of that at Atlantic. Everybody started second-guessing what was going to work for so-and-so, this demographic or that demographic. You can't paint a picture thinking that way, or sculpt, or do any kind of art. It's nice to make a record and then figure out where you're going to take it."

To that end, Draw the Curtains was largely in the can before Hoge struck the Ryko deal, having been recorded with longtime Nashville compatriot Ken Coomer, the former stickman for Uncle Tupelo. But instead of the usual approach to making a record — calling in the band and trying to replicate the energy of a live show — Hoge and Coomer sat down and worked out minimalist versions of the songs first.

"This one started more organically," Hoge recalls, "with me playing guitar and Ken playing drums, stripped to the core of what the song is really about, rather than performance-driven. It was real constructive for the band to hear the songs stripped down like that and then start layering in more parts after, instead of trying to capture the moment between everybody."

Coomer also produced Blackbird on a Lonely Wire, Hoge's sophomore effort, so the phase that musicians normally go through in which they relinquish enough control of their material, allowing a new producer to monkey with their songs — much like entrusting their child to a stranger — was pretty much out of the way.