Howard Iceberg & the Titanics are unsinkable

Howard Eisberg is spoken of with a certain degree of reverence in the local music scene. And he has earned it. His most well-known release, Howard Iceberg & the Titanics’ Welcome Aboard, was also his magnum opus. The seven-disc boxed set, which came out in 2011, was composed of 105 songs that Eisberg had written over the previous eight years.

Saturday night, Eisberg releases a new album, called Smooth Sailing. It’s a sturdy collection of 14 Americana tracks, with Eisberg’s gruff voice supported both by his band and by an all-star local lineup of folk artists, including fiddler Betse Ellis and dobro, mandolin and banjo player Phil Wade.

Ahead of his show at Coda, The Pitch spoke with Eisberg about his never-ending creativity and productivity.

The Pitch: Smooth Sailing is your first release since the 2011 box. Tell me about it.

Eisberg: I have a band that I’ve been playing with, and I really liked where we got, but I’m kind of not playing out as much now. Still, I wanted to capture the band sound, which is sort of a heavier sound than from when I released my collaborations with other people [in 2012]. So the new album has some of the more grungy rock-and-roll songs, and I really wanted to get those out.

You said you’re playing less these days. Why is that?

I’ve had a little bit of a lower public-performance profile, but I’ve been actively writing and recording and mixing and all that stuff continuously, ever since that tribute show in 2012. I’m still writing one or two songs every week, and at this point, I want to spend as much time as I can documenting stuff. I’m way behind. So I’ve got this CD with this show, and I’ve got a whole other CD’s worth of stuff, and I’ve booked studio time for that in June. And then I’ve got three or four CDs of other stuff that I’ve recorded, and that’s my main focus right now: to scramble and catch up and get stuff out while I can.

The kind of productivity you’re talking about sounds insane.

That’s what they say. On my computer, I’ve got a thousand songs. Definitely it’s not a thousand really top songs — there’s plenty of stuff that could go away — but I’ve always been prolific. The songs just come to me, and I want to write them as long as I can.

What’s the secret to your creativity?

Well, it’s just sort of my main outlet or hobby. These songs come to me. I don’t sit down and furrow my brow or pour a pot of coffee and say, “I’ve got to write something.” They just come to me at odd times.

I do read a lot and observe my friends and the people around me, and I see inspiration everywhere I go. And I guess I probably also work as hard as the other songwriters in town in terms of studying the craft. Like right now — I’ve always sort of taken from rock and roll and country and blues and stuff like that. But right now, I’m studying a text by a guy named Alec Wilder, and it’s called American Popular Song. He’s a composer and a student of the songs from Jerome Kern to George Gershwin, the old-time songwriters before the early rock-and-rollers. I spend a lot of time with that stuff. That’s really fun for me.

There are 16 collaborators on this new album, all lauded local musicians — and not including your four band members. What does bringing in so many other people do for you?

Over the past 10 or 15 years, I’ve been recording nonstop, and most of it not with the band. Every so often, I do something with the band, but most of it is these collaborations. I search out people who I like personally and whose abilities I respect, and I say, “Let’s get together and work up two or three songs.” It’s like having a fun little mini concert. And we may continue on if the chemistry is right, or it may be a one-time thing. Sometimes it’s with a whole band or just one or two people.

I just get a lot of energy or stimulation working from different people. I learn different stuff from all these different people, and they bring their own creativity to these songs. That way, I’m able to document songs in a way that I wouldn’t have thought of just myself.

So many musicians put out albums with the aim of getting press, achieving fame, getting a record deal, that kind of thing. It doesn’t seem like that’s the goal for you.

It’s definitely not, and it hasn’t been. I’ve been an immigration lawyer for 40 years. I’m winding that down, too. I’m only doing that part time now. And I’ve had a good business career. I’m not interested in the business of music.

I’m sort of like a painter who wakes up and wants to paint a landscape every day and doesn’t care who sees it. These songs come to me, and I feel like it’s my job to write them down and document them somehow. Like anyone, I’d like it if there was a little more public knowledge of this stuff, but I’ve known so many musicians who have gone that path and pursued record deals, and that brass ring does not lead to happiness for so many people. And anyway, I get a lot of satisfaction from doing what I’m doing the way I’m doing it.