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Mark Huff brings a taste of Nashville back home to Vegas

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Mark Huff may be in his second decade as a Nashville resident, but he heads back to Las Vegas for a solo show as a proud native.

The troubadour has found his way home. Mark Huff may be in his second decade as a Nashville resident, but he heads back to Las Vegas for a solo show as a proud native, having gone from being a young drummer and a caddy to the stars, to a punk frontman in Smart Bomb, to a revered singer-songwriter who ascended to play both the House of Blues and the Joint over 50 times each, in some cases opening for international acts like Chris Isaak, Al Green and—the man he’s seen play 106 times—Bob Dylan.

For this return visit, he comes gearin’ up to share the songs from his new EP, Down River, which sonically pushes Huff in new directions, from the gospel-tinged title track to the stunning leadoff slow-burner, “Just Before the Fade,” which goes from Southern gothic to a rootsier Pink Floyd. Huff spoke to us about Down River and other topics while taking a break from his drive to South By Southwest, coming from his father’s memorial. “He told my stepmother the day before he died, ‘Tell Mark to keep going.’ I’m still listening to my dad.”

I was surprised to find Down River on Spotify, given that you still send the press CDs and are famously traditional. What aspects of the digital revolution are you down with, and where do you put your foot down? Someone in Germany sent me a message a month ago and said she was following me on Spotify. I said I didn't know I was on it. And she said, I shouldn’t follow you if you don’t want to be on it. I said, I don’t not want to be on it. I don't have a problem with it, but I can't download it. I’m on tour 150 days a year, so I buy CDs.

I want people to hear [my records] in their car, house, or office on bigger speakers. I travel with a Macbook, iPhone and iMac, but I wouldn't listen to music on them. They’re for airplanes to watch a movie when you can’t sleep. But I still buy records and put them on. I still have big JBL speakers in my studio. I'm not against downloading, but ... I just don't like the sound of it. I just grew up that way. I'm a very routine kind of person, I don’t get out of them very often because I travel so much. I just want the record to sound good. I make the records live. I recorded [Down River] in one day.

Really? We only had the drummer, Paul Griffith, for one day, so we had to cut it in one day. We recorded from 11 to 6. Then, I did overdubs later. I brought on [guitarist] Audley Freed for some stuff. That’s the way I like to do it. I don’t rehearse the band, I want it to play on instinct and memory. I'm going for performance and spontaneity.

You’ve said you walk around with whole songs in your head. How literal are you when you say that? The first song on Down River, “Just Before the Fade,” is a six-minute epic. It’s a really sad story about two people. I carried it in my head a long time before I wrote it. I get up early in the morning and walk with my dog at 5:30 or 6 in the morning and then go into the studio. I didn’t strum the guitar and come up with a riff and lyrics. I composed in my head with lyrics and melodies, and when I got home, I got my guitar and a cup of coffee and went into my studio and put chords on the melodies. I wrote every song on the record [that way].

For the first time in my life, I felt like a composer. There's no phones and computers or distraction walking around in Tennessee. I’m clear and fresh. When I was younger, the creativity came at 2 a.m. Now it’s six on the morning when I get up. So I wrote these songs when I’d walk. Last song I wrote, I was driving to the store and jotting lyrics at stop signs. You get them wherever you can.

Does that mean you typically don’t have to sing a new melody or lyric into a recorder app on your iPhone, or do you do that, too? I have a bunch of songs on my phone. When I get an idea, I put it down somewhere. But for this record I was walking and I’d get home and write music to it.

You wrote most of the Down River songs in a 10-day run. Is that kind of creative spurt regular for you, or was this a unique occasion? I had gone through a long period of writer’s block. I met Leonard Cohen and spent time with him, and he gave me some advice. You know what it was, man? I booked a studio session with all these guys in town, but 10 days before I didn’t have any songs. I panicked, I said, I gotta write some songs. The songs come when they’re supposed to. Getting up early and walking and being clear—I had these songs in my subconscious. I had conceptual ideas in my head, so it came pretty quick. And it was a relief. When you write something you like, your writer's block is gone. It’s like when you meet someone you like—you become super-confident. You’re like, I can talk to anyone! So it was a good time for me as an artist. I could write [songs] and record them quickly, and the record came out good.

I was struck by “Teardrop in Your Drink.” It’s got the tone in the verses I would expect of a song about a loved one who is suffering, but then it changes tempo and tone for the chorus and suddenly I feel like dancing. I was wondering: Did you have to give that song an upbeat musical element to help you get through the sad narrative? I wrote it about my brother, who passed away in 2000. It’s about our upbringing and childhood. It is really a sad song. I was afraid it might be cruel. [During] my meeting with Leonard Cohen, he talked about not holding back. I remembered what he told me, which was months before the record. I used to think, I can’t say that, it might hurt someone. For the first time, I wasn’t holding back. But that upbeat part wasn't my idea. It was straight all the way through, and then I played it for my friend Jeff Johnson. He said, what you should do is jump the beat and change the key, and he showed me how to do it. I wasn’t sure how if it would fit, but I said f*ck it, and it all fits. So I credit him.

In terms of the sound and themes, what on Down River jumps out at you as being different from the previous records, and was any of that difference intentional? The guy that mixed it was Chad Brown, who I've worked with before. He’s won a Grammy, and he did the Gravity record with me. He’s an amazing recording engineer and he's a talent. He works at John Hiatt’s studio, so we did it there. He is such a genius about sound, such a [Daniel] Lanois kind of guy with the atmosphere. His ideas were way better than mine in lots of cases and it far surpassed what I heard in my head. I have an idea of what I want a song to be like before I record it, and I’ll go into production in my head. … When I gave the tapes to Chad, we spoke about how I wanted them to be, and he went way beyond what I expected.

You’re in your 13th year living in Nashville, a city where you’ve said you’ve grown as a musician. I figure being around so many singer-songwriters and musicians who play with them helps, but what else has factored into your evolution? The main thing is being there and being friends with all those players and touring with these people. Going on tour with Steve Forbert in Europe a few years back—we became friends 10 years ago—really opened my eyes. Seeing him perform every night, [I realized that] by far, he’s the hardest working man in show business. The people I’ve met and friends I’ve made, the other artists—and even managers and people in business—have inspired me to do it and do it better. To myself, I need to be as good as them or better. It’s like an athlete that wants to be faster and jump higher. When you're around these people and they’re your peers, you wish you’re as good as them. It pushes you.

Nashville seems like a city where the term “music community” really means something. Can Vegas, which has talented, though lesser-known players, ever develop its version of that, or does the nature of the city, its live venues and even how musicians make a living make that tough? People ask me this question, and I don’t put down Vegas. I miss the desert and my family and love going back. But I can’t work there. The difference: The nature of that town is never gonna be like [Nashville’s]. Even a place like Lawrence, Kansas, or Minneapolis—you know Minneapolis is a fantastic music town, You can see great bands in Lawrence every night of the week. If you're in Charlottesville, Virgina, you can see bands every night of the week … Las Vegas is gaming. It’s never gonna change, it's the way it is. I tried and I tried like everyone else did … I couldn’t keep going. I ran out of room, I hit the ceiling. I had to go where someone didn’t know me to see if I was any good, as I often say.

They play music every night [in Nashville], at about 150 places. A lot are just little cafes, but there are 30-40 serious clubs that have been in business for a long time that have music every night, and it's not just country. You can go to east Nashville and see great bands in tons of places — and really cool bands that are happening and not just locals, like Wilco. When I have friends visit me, I take them and they’re like, no wonder you moved here. There’s always someone to see.

You’re always being called the Troubadour. Do you like the sound of that or do you roll your eyes and just think of all the sh*tty hotel rooms you’ve ever been put up in? I don’t know, what does it mean? I think it means a traveling journeyman musician. Then, I embrace it. That’s what I do. It gets thrown around a lot, but if you look at its definition, in its truest form, that’s what I am. It sounds cheesy now, the guy with the floppy hat and the Levi’s jacket, and I’ve stayed at really sh*tty hotels and really nice ones, too. I’m not Woody Guthrie jumping on the train! I’ve been doing it a long time and it’s a hard life, and when a promoter puts you in a nice place—or in Europe, where they treat you well—it's great. But there's a lot of sacrifices: marriages and family, for me, at least. But I still do it and love it. … Fobert is the template and model. And Bob [Dylan], of course. He’s not staying at the Days Inn, but he hasn't stopped touring every year since 1986. I have a lot of great role models. … These people have inspired me, and as long as I can keep writing good songs and people keep showing up, I’ll keep doing it.

What’s the most notable difference being a singer-songwriter playing American roots music in 2016 from being one 15 or 20 years ago? It's totally different. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, I would have three or five different distributors selling my records in the U.S. and Europe. That aspect is totally different. And it's the nature of the business. When I was at the Folk Alliance International conference in Kansas City, I got a distribution deal … there was a hole and void when the record stores were going out of business, and all the singer-songwriters had nowhere to sell their records. So [this distributor] filled that void, and they service every independent record store in the country and some in Europe, For the first time in 16-17 years, I've got one distribution company and he's a real fan of the stuff I do. That’s a whole new thing now—record stores coming back and distributing records again.

What’s up on the tour docket for you besides this Vegas gig? Right now, all solo and acoustic. I’m without an agent for first time in eight years. … I’m doing a bunch of one-nighters, but I have promoters in England and Norway that wanna do some stuff, and I’m trying to get to Japan. I’m talking and meeting with people. I’d love to do more band stuff and get on a support tour. But I like the solo stuff as well, it’s very freeing. I know my job. I’ve been doing it a long time and I'm good at it, and not that it’s not challenging, but it’s up to me to make it that way.

Mark Huff with Bryan McPherson, Jackson Wilcox. March 31, 8 p.m., $5. Bunkhouse, 702-854-1414.

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