There are live albums that define, not only their own genre, but also the artists that release them. But for every good live album, there's usually ten bad ones that pretty much only make sense if you were there yourself. Where do you see the pitfalls when it comes to recording and releasing your own shows and most importantly, how do you avoid them?

Though I have a closet full of CDs of recorded shows going back 10 or 12 years, I've avoided putting out a live album for 20 years for the very reasons you cite. I've tried to sit down and plow though those boxes, to analyze
the best takes or find the best shows, but it's just too time-consuming. To me it all seems to be about 85-90% good - not much differentiation between shows. I do remember playing a show in California a few years
ago that seemed perfect, but of course no one was recording it.

Last year I came up with the idea of recording a show at The Horseshoe Lounge. I wanted it to be just one night, take it or leave it, in a special place. Special in itself, the 'Shoe is a charmingly dusty little
neighborhood bar with a shuffleboard table and a great jukebox.

Indeed the exterior is a bit foreboding, and in the afternoons you might be in there with just a middle aged alcoholic couple making out at one table and some bikers playing dominos across the room, but at night it's an eclectic mix of post-shift restaurant workers, musicians, metrosexuals and the occasional transvestite. There's no stage as they don't feature live
music there. So it was like playing at someone's house, or in the corner of the pub.

And it is special for me because I've been singing a song called Horseshoe Lounge nearly every night for about 12 years now. We sent out a last minute invite to our email list and had a great house full of fans and regulars alike. Although we had great fun, I didn't feel my voice was in good shape, so we did another show a couple of months later, to have more material to choose from.

Sadly, I've never been to one of your shows, so if I forced you to tell me what this album DOESN'T give me, what would it be? Is there a certain visual aspect to your performance that an audio recording could never capture? A Chuck Berry'esque dance during the harmonica solo in No Angel Knows? Grown men in the audience breaking down in tears when you do One Good Year?

No lasers, no flashpots. I used to do a lot of shows with Ivan Brown, an upright bass player who would stand on his instrument once in a while, but he was not at the 'Shoe. If you'd like to get a feel for what that night
looked like, here's a video someone posted: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7olZoe8mEKo)

When the guy calls out for Below, you talk about your old songs. How come there aren't that many here dating back before, say, Broke Down? Is it just a natural progression for you that songs just come and go, give way to new ones? Has The Promise or The Brave And Free completely vanished from your setlists?

While there is a natural tendency to replace older songs with newer ones - I don't have time to play them all, and I'm more excited about the new ones - I also feel strongly that I made a real breakthrough in my writing
around the time I was putting Broke Down together. Most of the songs I wrote before 1999 just don't seem quite up to snuff to me. I still do Key Chain, originally on the CD Life's Other Side, if requested. And I pull
out the song Life's Other Side once in a while.

When you do a song like Breakfast In Hell, it really requires the participation of the audience. Have you ever played a show where a song like that just went horribly wrong? Are there audiences out there that just sit there in the dark, completely quiet? I hear Belgian crowds are the toughest?

The worst experience I've had playing Breakfast in Hell was when some DJ asked me to do it on the radio. I couldn't get though it. I kept losing my place without the audience response to cue me along. Then there was
the time in New Hampshire where the audience was quite taciturn. Ivan Brown shouted out, "What, is there a gas leak in here?"

There's a new song here, Go For The Gold. Does this mean that there's a new studio album on the way?

I have about a dozen new songs, but I only like three of them. So it'll be a while before there's an album of new material.

Here's a question from your guitarist Michael O'Connor:
- What part of your job brings you the most joy?"

Well, there's the existential joy of being able to make a living in the music biz. After working so many menial jobs starting out, it's just a never ending miracle to get paid for singing songs. On a more direct
level, to see a room full of faces burst into open jawed surprise and then joyful laughter when I break into a showy yodel maneuver, or when Ivan stands on his bass - that's pure joy: surprising people and making them happy. I
could never be a stand up comedian, but I certainly understand the high they are always going after.

While you're at it, please tell me about your relationship with Michael O'Connor. I can clearly hear that he's an amazing guitarist, and his own new album, Devil Stole The Moon, is very very good. Is the, erm, Iceman to your Tom Cruise?

Michael is a consummate professional and has added immensely to the quality of my shows over the past 11 years. Not only has he developed just the right parts, in just the right places, for all of my songs, but
all the best patter between songs seems to bubble up from his sharp Irish wit. He's the wiseguy and I'm the straight man, for sure.

I've got another celebrity question, this one from your old friend and songwriting-partner, Rod Picott:
- Please name the artists you listened to that informed your sense of melody the most. And could you specifically name a song that had a impact on your learning how melody works?

I was seeped in Beatles and other great 60s music as a young child, so that had to have some impact on my melody writing. More directly, I think studying Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie and Nebraska era Springsteen
when I was starting to write songs focused me into the simply structured, economical folky style most of my songs exhibit. But I was also listening to early REM and U2 and the Replacements at that time. I remember being
floored a few years into my career by Steve Forbert's Mission of the Crossroad Palms album and in particular the song Oh, To Be Back With You.

I believe there's a lilt to that melody that has informed some of my songs. But the most explicit memory I have of my sense of melody is a conversation with Rod in which he stressed the importance of melodically
stressing the most important word of the line, while pointing out where I was failing in that dictum with respect to a certain song I had brought to him for critique. He's a smart fellow, that Rod.

I recently did an interview with Rod, and one thing we were talking about was the difference in how the two of you approach the songs you've written together. When you did Not Going Down, you could almost dance to it. Rod, however, could make a grown man cry with his version. Rod sounds like he has the heaviest heart in showbusiness, and you put out an album called Sorrow & Smoke and it STILL sounds like an evening of smiles and laughter. What are your thoughts on the poetic and musical differences between you and Rod?

Poetically, lyrically, I think Rod and I are pretty well in the same ballpark - that's why we can stand writing songs together. But there are differences. Typically I am stronger at exposition where Rod exells in
evoking moods and emotions. Melodies come easier to me, and Rod exells at the thematic elements of a song and keeping the tone and language consistent throughout a song. When it comes to singing, our
physiological differences are pretty stark. Where I have this accessible, yet light and rather boyish voice, Rod is a gruff hound dog. Imagine asking Loudon Wainwright and Tom Waits to sing the same song. You are going to get
different results.

Between you and Rod, you must have driven a million miles, slept in hundreds of motels and looked into a thousand eyes in the audiences. What is it that keep the both of you going, night after night after night?

That's a better question for Rod than for me. He works twice as hard for half the glory I get out there on the road. There are a couple of songs off his latest CD that should be all over the radio; they're as good or
better than anything out there in the Americana world, but he's still struggling. As a friend of mine says, "It just makes me want to push someone down."

I've been incredibly fortunate. My wife Karen has supported me from the get-go, 22 years ago, and we have slowly, doggedly carved ourselves a little niche where we work hard and are lucky to have found a loyal audience that's just big enough to support us and keep us from having to take a day job. That's all I ever wanted.

Slaid Cleaves' Sorrow & Smoke is out now on Music Road Records.