JOHN DOE
At Atwood’s Tavern, Cambridge, June 12 at 9:30 p.m., June 13 at 9 p.m. Tickets: $20. 617-864-2792, www.atwoodstavern.com
You make a record or you write a book, and you put it out there for the world to find. Or not. John Doe, the cofounder of the long-running Los Angeles roots-punk band X, has been at this performing thing long enough to know that the responses to your work can vary wildly.
“Early on, I realized that the most enjoyment, the most satisfaction I’m going to get out of any project is making it,’’ says Doe, on the phone a week before his upcoming two-night run (Sunday and Monday) at Atwood’s Tavern in Cambridge. “What happens afterward is more or less out of your control.’’
So, he’s learned to accept the inevitable disappointments with equanimity?
“No, I’m totally crushed when that happens,’’ he says with a laugh. “I just lick my wounds, and get to work on something else.’’
Right now, though – nearly 40 years since X’s start in 1977 – Doe is experiencing a peak moment in his solo career. He’s the primary author of “Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk,’’ a new reminiscence of the city’s rowdy, hypercreative underground of the late 1970s and beyond, with tales from Henry Rollins, the Go-Go’s Jane Wiedlin, Doe’s ex-wife and ongoing bandmate Exene Cervenka, and others. And he just released his 11th solo album, one of his best: “The Westerner,’’ an intimate set of songs with a crackle so dry it could go up in flames with one wayward spark.
Doe has aimed to make records like this one for more than a quarter-century, since his unhappy solo debut with DGC Records, a Geffen subsidiary, in 1990. Though it featured some of his best songs, “Meet John Doe’’ was buried under a morass of production that still irks him. When he grouses that the album was left to die on the vine in favor of the debut by the celebrity-twins band Nelson, he’s not kidding.
Not that he’s still hanging onto the resentment. For one thing, it’s unbecoming of a man his age (63), he says. Anger is for young men.
On “The Westerner,’’ he’s feeling a little contemplative, a little vulnerable, and a good bit appreciative, as on the lovely acoustic ballad “Sweet Reward.’’ The following track, “Drink of Water,’’ sounds like a vintage X song with its barbed male-female vocal interplay. Unsurprisingly, it was co-written with Exene, though the vocal accompaniment isn’t provided by her, but by their LA friend Cindy Wasserman.
Other guests include Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Cat Power’s Chan Marshall. Discussing their participation, Doe sounds like he’s still got the enthusiasm of the mid-20-year-old who couldn’t believe he’d gotten the Doors’ Ray Manzarek to produce his band’s debut album (and the three after that).
“I can’t think of two cooler, more soulful people’’ than Harry and Marshall, Doe gushes. While he and Marshall were recording one of the album’s signature songs, “A Little Help,’’ together, she told him that Exene was one of her early inspirations.
“She said Exene was a role model, and I thought, Well, excellent,’’ Doe says. “Of course she should be. It’s a point of pride for me when X is playing’’ – after going their separate ways in the late ’80s, the band continues to regroup at regular intervals – “and I see 20-something women, or even younger, up front, looking at Exene like, damn, she’s cool. Yes! You don’t even know how cool she is.
“Exene gives no quarter and asks for none. She’ll tell you straight-up what’s the truth. For better or for worse,’’ he adds with a chuckle.
That, for him, is the essence of the punk spirit.
He hasn’t lived in LA for 30 years, he says, though he keeps connections to the place. Doe has landed plenty of acting roles, from indie films (“Border Radio,’’ “Roadside Prophets’’) to appearances on TV shows such as “ER’’ and “Law & Order.’’ The striking cover art for “The Westerner’’ was designed by Shepard Fairey, the LA-based artist and printmaker. But Doe and his second wife have lived in the San Francisco area, where their adult daughters attended school, for several years now.
He doesn’t pine for the mayhem of the early days of X. (The book includes a memorable story about a burning armchair.) But he does know that the musical convergence he and his original band experienced is worth commemorating.
“The main kernel of why that scene was good, why people care about it, is the collaboration, the community,’’ he says. “It was an enclave of bohemian misfits. We made a scene.’’
JOHN DOE
At Atwood’s Tavern, Cambridge, June 12 at 9:30 p.m., June 13 at 9 p.m. Tickets: $20. 617-864-2792, www.atwoodstavern.com
James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @sullivanjames.
