I'm gonna start off with the obvious question. In the liner notes for your previous album, Nowhere Nights, you leave us with a promise of better things to come, brighter days and songs about the love you've been busy falling into. Is Heart of a Dog a fulfillment of this promise, a brighter, happier record, even despite the fact that the songs are, well, much louder?
Heart of a Dog is a brighter album, but it's not the album referenced in the Nowhere Nights liner notes. Nowhere Nights was a very personal record, and I
toured behind it for a year, living with all of those songs. By the time that year was up, the absolute last thing I wanted to do was make another very personal record, brighter days or not. Heart of a Dog isn't necessarily a happy record, but the songs have a sense of humor in a way that the songs on Nowhere Nights do not. I don't know that I'll ever write another record as personal as Nowhere Nights.

Nowhere Nights seemed to deal with your geographical "situation", with you more or less voluntarily being stuck in this place called Bellingham, WA. Am I over-analyzing things here, or did that record close a somewhat painful chapter of your life and career?
You're not over-analyzing. Nowhere Nights was written about a period of my life that was not especially healthy. It was a cathartic record for me to write, to record, and to perform, but I'm not sure I'll be going back to it any time soon. There are a couple of songs that have made their way into this new band's set, but for the most part that record is on the shelf for me right now.

It's only been about a year between Heart of a Dog and Nowhere Nights. In this day and age, especially with the industry being in the state it is, that's a pretty damn short time between records. Did you even leave the studio?
Nowhere Nights was recorded in 2009. Heart of a Dog was recorded in 2010, on a break from what turned out to be a year-long solo tour. As someone who is an avid record-buyer, I'd love it if more artists put out a record every year. But I know everyone can't operate that way, and I probably won't have another record out until late 2012, so, yeah, I can see where the turnaround time between the two seems pretty quick. I had the songs and the band, though, so there was no reason not to make this record.

Are you the type of artist who fundamentally thrive with heartbreak, sadness and darkness? Could these songs just as easily have been written down on some napkin in your average cry-in-your-whiskey bar?
With the exception of Nowhere Nights, my records are primarily works of fiction. There's material everywhere; newspapers, novels, overheard conversations, your life, my life, whatever. I think, to a large degree, my state of mind influenced my writing, which is why my first few records were pretty dark. Heart of a Dog is far more even-keel, and I expect the next record will be, as well.

You have this fantastic ability to navigate gently between hard-rocking country-rock songs and the saddest ballads I've ever heard. How do you do that? How do you decide if a song will break my heart or blow out my speakers?
Marrying the music to the lyrics is the hardest part of writing. I think when the lyrics and melody start working together, that dictates which direction the song's going to go.

What are your three favorite albums?
Sticky Fingers, Rain Dogs, and Highway 61 Revisited.

This is your first album in quite some time without Eric Roscoe Ambel. If you don't mind me asking, how come you decided not to work with him on this record?
Eric actually wrote the riff for "The Wrong Light," which opens the record, and is credited as such. There was no great falling out or anything melodramatic, we had just made three records together and I wanted to make one by myself. I don't know of too many artists who use the same producer their entire career.

How do you view your own position on the musical map? You're a little too rock to be country, a little too country to be rock - where does that leave you, and do you even give a shit? (And are you going to punch the next guy who compares you to Steve Earle?)
I don't give a shit. That's the truth. I could not care less how or where or why people categorize the music I make.

As an artist and a singer, I could do a lot worse than being compared to Steve Earle. Steve is one of the best songwriters alive and an artist in every sense of the word.

Here's the really depressing question, but if you should die, lose your voice or completely forget how to play the guitar tomorrow, what would you like your eulogy to read when it comes to you as an artist?
After a show one night, a guy came up to me and said, "Man, you remind me so much of Woody Guthrie." I was so moved that I lit into this long story about how my mom used to sing me to sleep with "I Ain't Got No Home," and how Joe Klein's biography was the first book I ever bought with my own money, and the guy let me finish, then he looked at me and said, "Yeah, it's mostly just your hat."

I'd probably let that guy give the eulogy.

If Nowhere Nights was about being stuck in a small town, and Heart of a Dog is about love, then where does that leave you on the next record?
I don't know yet. I'm enjoying playing these songs with this band - Andrew McKeag, Eric Corson, Mike Musburger, and Ty Bailie - so I think we'll do that a while. We put out a 7" for record store day that I'm really proud of but, from there, I don't know exactly where we'll go. Things will settle down after summer and then we'll figure out what the next record is, but that will depend on the songs, and they haven't all been written yet. And that's pretty exciting to me.

Kasey Anderson's Heart of a Dog is out now on Blue Rose Records.