John Velghe, somewhere between Minneapolis and Austin on Don’t Let Me Stay

Austin, Texas, lays claim to being the live-music capital of the world. And if there were a governor of such a province, few would argue that the title belonged to singer-songwriter Alejandro Escovedo. Last week, at South By Southwest, Escovedo’s likeness graced the cover of the weekly Austin Chronicle, he shared a stage with SXSW 2012 keynote speaker Bruce Springsteen, and he handpicked the acts for high-profile (but tastefully mellow) parties on Saturday and Sunday.

Peter Buck and Mike Mills of R.E.M., Lenny Kaye, Jesse Malin, Chuck Prophet, the dB’s, and Tommy Stinson were among the performers Escovedo selected. Also on both bills: Kansas City’s John Velghe and the Prodigal Sons. On Sunday night, at the unofficial closing-night party at the Continental Club, Escovedo got up onstage and joined Velghe and the Prodigal Sons for a cover of the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

“I’ve known Alejandro since around 1995, when [the late Midwestern Musical Co. founder] Jim Strahm introduced us at a Son Volt show,” says Velghe, who is in his 40s but could easily pass for early 30s. “We became friends, and he’s been a mentor of mine ever since. But I was still pretty shocked that he asked me to play those shows. Alejandro at South By Southwest is like the father of the bride on the wedding day: You’re lucky if you get five minutes with him. I was like, I seriously get to play on a bill with Lenny Kaye?”

In fact, Escovedo almost produced Velghe’s new album, Don’t Let Me Stay, whose release is being celebrated this Saturday at RecordBar. “Our schedules didn’t work out, and I ended up producing it myself, but he was sort of a satellite producer for it,” Velghe says.

Don’t Let Me Stay turned out all right anyway. Nearly a dozen musicians, many of them local, appear on the album’s 12 songs, which reveal Velghe’s fondness for what he calls the “American Masters”: Iggy Pop, Paul Westerberg, Jeff Tweedy, Alex Chilton, Springsteen and Escovedo. Velghe is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable music fan, and he makes a full stew from the work of his progenitors. The breezy Americana tunes (like the excellent opener, “Time Bomb”) are embellished with melodic hooks; the hotter, more electric tracks boast lively brass sections. 

“I’ve always said my heart is positioned midway between Austin, Texas, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, and that’s kind of where I write from,” Velghe says. “There’s a lot of Austin songwriters like Alejandro and Doug Sahm and Jon Dee Graham that have been really influential to me. But I was always a huge Replacements fan. There are a handful of people and bands that I saw and heard when I was younger and said, ‘I want to do that for the rest of my life.’ And the Replacements were one of them.”

There are definitely some ‘Mats moments on Don’t Let Me Stay, most markedly when the horn section — Mike Walker (trombone), Hermon Mehari (trumpet) and Sam Hughes (saxophone) — emerges. Walker and Hughes played on an EP that Velghe released in 2010, and he wanted even more brass on Don’t Let Me Stay. “I wanted to get a sound like the Memphis Horns stuff on Pleased to Meet Me or the brass on Exile on Main St. or the stuff Jim O’Rourke arranged for Superchunk,” he says. (Velghe has lately taken to referring to his brass section as the Waldo Horns, a localized reference to their Tennessee forebears.)

“With a lot of bands I play with, the songs arrive at practice half-written,” Walker says. “With John, the form and melody is already there, but he’s very open to the horn players’ suggestions for arranging our parts. The horn ideas he brought in [for Don’t Let Me Stay] were pretty solid already, and we just cleaned a few things up. He’s got a real vision, and we just try to help realize it.”

“I have always wanted to play on a record like this one,” guitarist Mike Alexander says. “I had done similar things with the Roseline and the Buffalo Saints but never anything with the scope that the Prodigal Sons record has, what with all the horns and strings. And I really like that John wants to get more than just a performance out of the guys in his band. He wants your personality in the shows and on the record.”

Don’t Let Me Stay comes across as a very complete, polished product. It took about two months to record from beginning to end, but it’s far from overproduced or self-serious. “Bloodline,” an upbeat, alt-rock jangler, was written in about five minutes. “I was laying down guitar parts for another song, and I started playing the riff that became ‘Bloodline,’ so I set up a new track, played that part and sang dummy lyrics into the mic. I wrote 80 percent of the song in the process of just recording the idea,” Velghe says, then draws on a musical hero to decorate his point. “You know that thing Westerberg said about how the best songs are written in a few minutes when you’re bored and have nothing else to do? It was sort of like that.”