Howe Gelb will be performing at ONCE Lounge in Somerville on Saturday, June 22.

By Blake Maddux

Tucson, AZ denizen Howe Gelb had released seven albums of what Stereogum writer Peter Helman called “dusty, folky desert-rock” with his band Giant Sand before recording his first solo album in 1993.

Since then, Giant Sand has added nine more studio volumes to its discography and Gelb has added 10 to his. Alas for its legions of steadfast fans, Gelb announced in February 2016 that Giant Sand was no more. Promising “piano for now, songs forever.” [sic] in a press release, he unveiled a lounge lizard persona on November 2016’s Future Standards.

This March, he returned with Gathered, a 15-track collection that includes songs recorded in Spain, France, Ireland, Denmark, Holland, and Tucson with guest artists Anna Karina, Kira Skov, Pieta Brown, erstwhile collaborator M. [Matt] Ward, and his teenage daughter, Talula.

Gelb spoke by phone to The Somerville Times while travelling by train during the West Coast leg of his current tour. The East Coast trek stops at ONCE on June 22.

The Somerville Times: How did you want Gathered to be different from and similar to its predecessor, Future Standards?

Howe Gelb: Albums these days are calling cards of what the live shows will be. The Future Standards record was notifying the listening public of what we were going to be performing for that year. Then we rerecorded the first Giant Sand album [Valley of Rain, rerecorded as Returns to Valley of Rain], which was exactly the opposite: loud and abrasive, making that source record sound more the way it should’ve. And that’s what we sounded like last year. What you hear on Gathered is that smattering landscape of some guitar, some piano blending with other things. That’s what I sound like now solo.

It used to be that you would put together a sonic tapestry, attempt a masterpiece, and call it an album. Then you would tour behind it to support it. But now with streaming, there’s no point of doing that anymore. So what you do is you provide a kind of calling card, some notification of what you’re going to be like touring, because now the album supports the album instead of the tour supporting the album.

That was the people’s choice, by taking full advantage of free streaming which is, you know, pretty great. But in doing that, things have shifted.

TST: In what ways do you think that Gathered is better than your other recent albums, or what does it achieve that others didn’t?

HG: Well, that’s a trick question. There’s never an either. it’s just what’s happening right now. Music is alive when it keeps changing, so we don’t try to continuously represent something that has been frozen on a recording or from a sound we had a year or two or five years ago. If you listen to old jazz records, you can hear the music changing every minute. And that’s when music is most alive. Even old blues records. It’s only in pop albums that that got frozen somewhat and music became more dead than alive. So when I’m putting out anything, it’s a state of change. But it’s never better, or worse.

TST: Why did you choose to record Moon River with your daughter Talula on lead vocals?

HG: We were playing Moon River, my band was showing me the correct chords. I was playing it, as I usually do with cover songs, with wrong chords. And then that night when we went home, just coincidentally my younger daughter, Talula, was playing it on the guitar. I never knew she liked the song or even played it, and there she was playing it with these real simple chords. So the next day coming home from school I asked her just to stop at the studio sort of as a little bit of homework in case she ever wanted to make music. I wanted her to hear what her voice would sound like.

TST: How did the cover Leonard Cohen’s A Thousand Kisses Deep, a duet with M. Ward, come about?

HG: I’d been trying to inspire Anna Karina to sing some Leonard Cohen songs back when Leonard was still alive. And I knew that I could get Leonard the songs because we had a mutual friend [Sylvie Simmons] who wrote his biography. Anna’s voice had gotten deeper with age and I loved it. Especially if she attempts singing it in French, I thought that he would love that because he was from Quebec. Anyhow, she would never take to it. She never took to his poetry. She thought it wasn’t light enough. So then I decided one day, okay, she’s very old school, so I thought, assemble the song, record it, produce it, and bring it to her on a CD. Let her live with it overnight and the next day see if she would be inspired to sing on it. And I built it in Spain with Spanish guitar players and Matt Ward singing in a higher register, and I took his voice out in some passages so it could be a duet. And she listened to it overnight and came back to me and just very sweetly said that Leonard was just too dark for her. So it never happened! But then I had this beautiful track already built, so one of the last things I did was I went in the studio and just gave it a shot singing it myself so we wouldn’t waste the recording.

TST: How likely is it that Giant Sand will ever record an album of new material?

HG: It doesn’t seem likely at all. Right now we’re rerecording the second Giant Sand album [Ballad of a Thin Line Man] with the original drummer, Tommy Larkins, who’s been with Jonathan Richman for the last 20-some years. We’re doing it as a power trio. That’ll come out probably in the autumn. That album wasn’t released in the states because of a glitch way back in 1986, so now we’re redoing the record.

Howe Gelb, Matt Charette, at ONCE Lounge, 156 Highland Ave., Somerville, Saturday, June 22. Doors: 6:30 p.m. Show: 7:15 p.m.