Frank Black is so relaxed and chatty over the phone that it's like talking to an old pal over a cup of coffee -- give or take 3000 miles. And the fact that we've never met. And, maybe, the coffee, though I am sipping hot, black java as we converse about the sense of what literary types would call magic realism in his recent songwriting and about the pleasure Black takes in penning tunes and performing these days, as his career approaches the 15-year mark.

For an artist whose original stash of songs -- recorded at Boston's Fort Apache studios with the Pixies to formulate what became the "Genesis" of the indie-rock Bible -- were full of dark, King James Version-fueled portent and tsunamis of sound, Black, who was known in the Pixies as Black Francis and before that simply as Charles Thompson, is a reg'lar guy. That's audible not only in his casual speech but in his post-Pixies music. The truth is, he's evolved from a kind of rock-and-roll storm king to a highly skilled journeyman -- a dependable, erudite, Boston-bred troubadour who's the modernized, urbanized counterpart of respected Texans like Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Joe Ely.

The numbers Black writes for albums like his new Devil's Workshop and Black Letter Days (both just released on spinART) no longer shoot for the epic scale of Pixies' human-nature studies like "This Monkey's Gone to Heaven" and "Debaser." He's more concerned with small stories about personal issues, like the fear and isolation in Black Letter Days' "1826," and with conjuring modest visions of fantasy like Devil's Workshop's "San Antonio, TX." And if these seem the result of more perspiration than inspiration, well that's okay with Black.

"I usually don't need much of a spark these days to sit around and play my guitar," he says from his home in LA, where he's lived since leaving Boston 11 years ago. "I write blocks of chord progressions and try to turn them into a song. It becomes this homework thing when I gotta do the lyrics, 'cause I keep putting it off and putting it off, but, you know, I usually finally just sit down and do it.

"For a few years I used a rhyming dictionary, which would help me fill in some blanks, 'cause it is, after all, a puzzle. The bottom line is -- forget about what your subject is -- things have to rhyme or they have to deliberately not rhyme. And sometimes, if I'm really stuck, I just want to do something fun, so -- this is just a total crapshoot -- I'll do things like use an acrostic. I'll write a word vertically and call that my subject, and I'll write the lyrics from that.

"That can mess you up. It's kinda like recording with a two-track, because you get stuck in this neurotic game you're playing. But at the same time it keeps you moving forward. Sometimes it'll just be a matter of time, like, `The guys are gonna be here in one hour, can I write a song? Can I actually keep focused enough?' So I'll come up with a quick chord progression. `That sounds pretty good; okay, I gotta write a lyric.' Then I don't have time to be pretentious or all artsy-fartsy or play word games or whatever. I gotta sing the first thing that comes out and write it down, so frequently that's when I'll write a straight-ahead `She done me wrong' song.

"It's great being spontaneous, but you fail, too. That's the thing that's incredibly depressing. One day I'll come in and I'll write some song and it'll be great, and the guys will play it good and I'm feeling pretty proud of myself and I can tell the band is impressed. `The guy wrote that song at three o'clock, and listen to the thing -- it sounds great.' And I'm real impressed with myself. And then I'll go and do it again the next day! Then I'm like . . . man, I'm really impressed with myself. Then the next day comes, and I'm like, `Here's a little shindig I threw together this morning,' and we'll play it and it'll just suck, and I pray no one else will ever hear it."

Black's reference to recording with a two-track is purposeful. It's an MO he's pursued since he started working with versions of his current band the Catholics, on 1998's no-frills-titled Frank Black and the Catholics (spinART). And now he's assembled his own portable two-track studio, so in theory he and the group can record anywhere -- indeed, both new CDs were made in LA rehearsal spaces.

Eschewing multi-track tape and expensive studios isn't the same as going lo-fi, Black points out. Devil's Workshop and Black Letter Days certainly don't scrimp on sound quality. The guitars -- played mostly by Black and Catholic Dave Philips, with occasional licks from Boston ringer Rich Gilbert (Human Sexual Response, the Zulus, Tanya Donelly, etc.) and former Captain Beefheart stringman Moris Tepper -- boast huge, chiseled tones, and Black's voice is warm and robust. Still, working without the net of overdubs and fixes does require a high level of proficiency, especially since Black may show the band a song only a couple of times before they put it on tape.

Playing that tight is the mark of a group who have logged plenty of road miles. Black actually tours so often today that he plays Boston more frequently than when he lived here in the Pixies' heyday. "Making records is great, but going down to the nightclub to set up and play is a big part of it. So even if we have a particularly long and miserable tour for some reason, after we get home and take a break, it's usually just a few weeks before it's like, `Man, let's go play some shows.' It doesn't matter if they're big or not, if they're in Europe or Nevada. I think everyone in the band is still pretty adventurous. We like the whole idea of, `Gee, I never played in Winnipeg before!' We're still excited -- we still kind of think we're teenagers.

"We've done lots of tours when we haven't had any roadies at all, sometimes even no sound man. I remember doing tours with Rich Gilbert and me and [Catholics drummer] Scott Boutier and [bassist] Dave McCaffrey with just a van and a trailer. We became really happy when the local crew from the clubs would say, `Gee, you guys set up faster than any band that's been here in the last six months.' We became impressed with our own little well-oiled machine. You have to get into all that team shit a little bit, 'cause that's what you're doing all the time, just like if you were working down at a warehouse loading trucks. You have to revel in the muscle that you've built up, feel good about what you're doing. But believe me, all those wonderful moments are followed by moments like, `What the fuck am I doing with my life?' "

When I mention the surrealist dialogue of "The Modern Age" and the literal flight in a taxicab that takes place in the song "San Antonio" and how it makes me think of the surreal Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, Black accepts the compliment but -- like a true rocker -- points to a source of inspiration closer to home.

"I'm a very poor reader," he demurs. "I probably read more when I was in high school or college. But you know, the first records that I heard were Beatles records, and then the next guy that I discovered -- this was probably at a pretty young age, eight or nine -- was Bob Dylan. It was through a record that was in our house. I suspect it was probably left there by my cousin who used to baby-sit for us sometimes. When you start listening to Dylan's songs, you tap into that whole thing where he's like this prophet and he's on top of this mountain and he's speaking to you. I'm not saying it's without humor. There is a lot of humor. As a matter of fact, one of the first Dylan songs that I seized upon was `The Mighty Quinn,' but still there's this whole vibe about him. Having already heard the Beatles, I was totally into abstract, kooky things. Then to hear Dylan adopt this total posture of the prophet, I found it very attractive. And I still do."

Issue Date: August 30 - September 5, 2002