Lincoln Durham

You just announced a new album, Revelations of a Mind Unraveling. What can you tell us about it? Are there moments you had while creating it that you're excited to share through the songs? "Revelations" is a bloody, aggressive and unapologetic view into my agonies, feelings and urges during my writing, and overall, everyday life. I've always written as therapy and I think that is reflected the clearest in this new project. If you are writing from the right place, it's such an intimate and vulnerable, ill-lit corner to visit when talking about your own songs. The short of it is, this is a still-frame in a very mentally tumultuous time in my life. Over the duration of my career I feel my music has been consistently evolving, or de-evolving into what it is now. I think this album sounds the most like "me" and it more aptly represents the creative and artistic trajectory that I'm currently on and wish to explore. I'm anxious to present it to the public.

There are a lot of various instruments used in your music - and you play them all yourself! Which did you use in the creation of your new album? Are there any you favor while on the road? I am a fan of the cigar box guitars both in studio and on the road. They are primitive, usually home-made, contraptions with the absolute bare minimum "bells-and-whistles" and that's what makes them so fun. It's a challenge to see how much volume, intensity and overall semi-tuned racket you can pull out of them while they fight you along the way. I play a couple, one has a single string, the other has three, and more than half of the new album was recorded with one or the other — aided, of course, with heavy distortion, overdrive and fuzz. Those two cheap little gems seem to be the show-stoppers in the live setting as well. Big, beastly and full of tone, if you put enough tension on anything, it can be an instrument, and the cigar box guitars are proof.

What is your biggest "must have" while out on tour? Good sound. It's a close race: That, strong coffee and a good hotel, but sound trumps all. With any band, a venue with an excellent sound and sound person is half the battle but this is especially true when you are a one-man-band. Over the years, I've gotten to the point that I can make as much noise as a full band, and that helps, but bad sound at a gig can ruin a one-man show. My hope is that I hear this more than fans, but regardless, you always want to put your best foot forward at any and all performances. When you bleed over these songs and toil in the rehearsal rooms to create a product, you don't want to be cut at the knees with a bad sound situation in a live setting. When the sound is great and the tone is there, it engulfs you. It surrounds you like a warm mist and electrifies you and the audience. It's a symbiotic relationship between the three, the sound person, fans and artists. It can be magical when mixed right.

Tour plans for 2016: so far, they include some awesome headlining shows, and a run with The Reverent Horton Heat. It sounds pretty awesome! What are you looking forward to the most about this time on the road? When I get in the van and leave the driveway, I'm on vacation until the last gig. I've never viewed this as my job. Alissa, my wife and tour manager, and I get to see the world together and meet really great people, both on, off and behind the stages. For me it's like a family retreat with a little heavy lifting. I feel like we are experiencing life at a certain angle that not everyone gets to see and I love most every second of it. This particular stretch of gigs is going to be with bands, that I have been a fan of for years and that's very surreal. It's a privilege to get to do what I do.