The music world needs Jeff Finlin. Surprising, considering that he’s 45 and seven albums into a career that has never set corporate cash tills ringing. Although Bruce Springsteen plays his records at his gigs, and Cameron Crowe put Sugar Blue in his movie Elizabethtown, Finlin remains “undiscovered”. His gravel voice conjures up words that shine like diamonds. He’s a storyteller whose sparse songs are a musical accompaniment to Raymond Carver’s short stories or Sam Shepard’s plays. The beats — Kerouac, Ginsberg, William Burroughs — are essential influences. “They made everybody look at words in a different light,” he says. “I approach songs as little novellas.”

Angels in Disguise is his first major-label release. It is populated with faces and images that exist on the fringes of the American dream — a one-legged Vietnam vet turned bank robber (Postcard from Topeka), Geronimo running a native casino (Forever Evergreen) and, in the bleak Long Lonesome Death of the Traveling Man, tattoos carved in “strawberry curls against my black-leather grin”.

Descended from Irish railroad workers, Jeff grew up in Columbus, Ohio — a restless, difficult kid. “I ask my wife, ‘Why are you so content all the time?’ She says: ‘I was happy with the way things were. You just always wanted to change everything.’ I had this level of discontent and drive inside of me to see and do and experience. I had an intense desire to live life at its fullest, and that’s still what motivates me.”

After he finished high school, he hitchhiked west, trying to emulate his heroes. His adventures included a stint working in a circus and a night out drinking with Hunter S Thompson. “My job was to feed elephants, take the money for the freak show and keep the clowns in tequila. If I didn’t give them any, they were very angry clowns,” he laughs. “I had a thing for the contortionist, but she wasn’t having it, so I headed down the road. I wound up in a bar and Hunter Thompson was there. As the night got later, he just came up to me and slapped me. We spent a day just drinking together, went to his house and blew up odd things with little sticks of dynamite. I remember about 45%, which is pretty good going for a bump in the night with one of my heroes.”

Returning home, he formed a band with schoolfriend Gwil Owen. He’d grown up on the Beatles and the Jackson 5, listening to Steely Dan, Led Zeppelin and the Stones on the radio and playing drums from the age of 11. “For me, the pinnacle of music was 1970-71. Those times in history are really rare. If Dylan or the Stones talked about Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Woody Guthrie, I was like, ‘Wow, I gotta check that out.’”

For the next few years, Finlin and Owen pursued their dreams of rock stardom, moving from Boston to LA before settling in Nashville. “I could afford to live there,” he says. “Nobody on a musician’s salary can afford to buy a house in southern California. I did whatever I could to get by. Paint houses, work in bars.” Eventually, the Thieves signed to Capitol and released one album, aptly titled Seduced by Money. An almost-hit later and the band were dropped. By now, Finlin was tired of playing drums, and suddenly the songs started pouring out.

“I’d met my wife, Karen, at that time, and I really had to break down a lot of walls to make the relationship work. With that, the songs just started coming. For a drummer to pick up and start writing songs in Nashville... a lot of people snickered under their breath. But I got a publishing deal and a record deal. I really never looked back from that.”

Since 1991, Finlin has released a series of increasingly confident albums on a variety of independent labels. He’s prolific, once writing a song a day for six months, but admits he can’t judge his best work.

“I pissed a Nashville songwriter off because he asked me how I came up with what he thought was a great song, but I didn’t write it, I wrote it down. I sit down, I get myself centred, I open myself up and it just comes in. It’s my gift, and that’s why I continue to do it, even when it’s not financially successful. I’m a successful musician because I have a wife with a good day job.”

Three years ago, Finlin, Karen and their son, Aidan, left Nashville for Fort Collins, Colorado. He knew too many talented musicians who were now slaves of the Nashville system. “I spent a lot of time trying to find fame and happiness, and my happiness didn’t come from success. My life was on the back burner because I put my music first. Life — riding motorcycles and horses, skiing and chasing grizzly bears — must come first.” His latest songs reflect that:

“The record has an underlying theme of finding the good. Life’s never what we think it is. Most of the great things in my life have come to me from bad experiences. There’s something to be learnt from the dark side.”





Angels in Disguise is released tomorrow

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