Leeroy Stagger has been a busy man for the past 10 years. He just finished touring on his latest CD “The Truth Be Sold,” which was released in May and is busy working on his tenth album in as many years. He is also working on Dave McCann’s new CD. On top of that, he is taking care of his four-month -old son Guthrie.
He plays a rare hometown show, Sept. 12 at the Slice with the Delawares.
“ It has been a buy 10 years and non-stop touring for the past seven or eight of them. At some point you get burned out on the life, so it’s good to take a step back,” Stagger said from his Lethbridge home as Guthrie gurgles in the background.
“I love making music and performing, but the lifestyle is not easy, especially with a baby,” he said.
It has been a good year for Stagger.
“I was touring around Eastern Canada and England for three weeks, other than that I’ve been mixing my new record and taking care of my baby,” he said.
He is excited about the upcoming CD.
“We cut seven tunes in England. It’s a hard to explain what they sound like, they’re a little more mellow, but it will still be a Leeroy Stagger album, because they all sound different,” he said.
“ We just wanted to record them to see if they sounded like a record,” he said.
“It will be released at some point next year. Next year will be my tenth year in the business and it will be my tenth album. It’s crazy,” Stagger said.
His recorded his latest CD in Portland with Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin who has also worked with people like Rick Rubin.
“He had a lot of stories about working with Rick Rubin and the Tragically Hip and Bob Dylan,” he enthused.
“It was great, fantastic. He definitely had a different approach,” he said adding Berlin played a lot of percussion on the CD which took the place of drums.
“I sent Steve demos of 20 songs and let him choose the ones he liked. I was just along for the ride,” he said adding the songs Berlin chose weren’t the ones Stagger would have chosen.
“Probably not, but I really wanted his influence,” he said.
“I love it. We finished it two years ago, so it was finished a year before we released it,” he said.
They began a tour in support of the CD in may after it was released.
He is going to scale things back a little after he releases his next album.
He doesn’t play Lethbridge very often.
“ Most of the band lives in other cities and I’m not playing with Evan Eushenko anymore, which is a bit of a bummer. But for me, being at home means being with family,” he said.
He is busy recording his new CD as well as Dave McCann’s new Cd.
In December he will be back on the road with McCann and John Wort Hannam as the Highway 3 Routs Revue.
There is a $15 cover for the show, which begins at 9 p.m.
