The forecasters have threatened a storm of mammoth proportions, but looking out of his Midtown Manhattan hotel window at the light, half-hearted flurry of snow outside, Delbert McClinton is unimpressed. He shakes his head and smiles the confident smile of a man whose life is going so good at the moment, nature herself wouldn't dare throw his schedule off track with an inconvenient snowstorm. As he sits at the edge of his bed to talk about his new album, Nothing Personal, a line from it comes to mind that fits the scene and his comfortable mood perfectly: "I spent a lot of time in the past/Kissin' other people's ass/But now I'm where I wanna be/Sittin' here watchin' the rain."

At sixty years old and in robust health, McClinton says both his life and career are right where he wants them to be, and he has good reason for the rose-colored glasses. Although best known to blues hounds as one of America's pre-eminent house rockers -- and to rock trivia buffs as the cat who taught John Lennon how to play harmonica -- Nothing Personal suggests that such descriptions, however flattering, do not do him full credit. Tracks like the opening rave-up "Livin' It Down" and "Nothin' Lasts Forever" find McClinton still at his blues-rockin' and harp-blowing best, but, more than anything, it's McClinton the songwriter that takes the spotlight this time around. Nothing Personal is McClinton's first album since 1975's Victim of Life's Circumstances, and he's written or co-written every track, and the often surprising results suggest an uncompromised labor of love. "I paid for this album myself, so I didn't rush anything," he says with satisfaction, explaining that he opted to lease Nothing Personal to the independent New West Records rather than go with a major label. "This is the first one I own, and I won't ever make another record that I don't own." He pauses, then adds with roguish charm, "Unless somebody gives me so much money that it's just sick."

A lot of people think of you primarily as a harp-blowing, roadhouse bluesman. But Nothing Personal really comes across as a well-rounded songwriter's album. Did you approach it that way?

I did. In the last few years I've been writing quite a bit -- I've been having a good run at it. And I was trying to reinvent myself a little bit and bring something to this CD that was fresh and new. Some of the songs on here are the type of songs that people who know me are not used to hearing me do, but they're songs that I wrote that I liked, and I said, "What the hell? I want to do them." I think people are going to be surprised by "Birmingham Tonight" because I've never recorded straight-ahead country songs, especially old-style country songs. I pitched it to several people in the country music business, but it was too country for anybody. So I never had any luck with that, but I liked it, so I did it.

Have you ever thought of yourself as straightforward blues?

Well, I think I'm a singer who can sing blues songs. I'm a singer who can sing country songs, and I'm a singer who can sing rock & roll, or roots rock & roll. Whatever I feel like doing, if it feels good doing it, I can do it -- I don't feel uncomfortable doing it.

You're living in Nashville these days. How long have you been there?

About eleven years. The IRS took my house in Texas, and I had to go somewhere, and I thought Nashville would be a good place to go. It's a great songwriter community, it's a good place to live, nice town. And, I've got a career beyond recording, so I didn't have to go to Nashville and do some of the things other people have to do there -- the gripping and the grinin' and going to every event and kissing everybody's ass. I could go to Nashville and use everything that's there, which is state-of-the-art recording studios and a great songwriter's community, which is what I've done. I've got more friends from Texas in Nashville than I do in Texas anymore.

You spent most of Texas years in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, but like Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Joe Ely and many other notable Texas musicians, you were born in Lubbock. What are your memories of West Texas?

I was eleven years old when I moved away from Lubbock, so that was really before I had a career. I've been back several times, but not in the last several years. I used to go to the Cotton Club with my parents when I was a kid -- I can remember going out there with them and Bob Wills would be playing, and all the kids would just be playing in the parking lot while all the adults were inside dancing. That won't ever happen again [laughs]! I did play the Cotton Club before they tore it down, but there's nothing in Lubbock for me really anymore. It will always be where I came from, but I couldn't live there.

It wasn't long after you moved to central Texas that you were backing guys like Buddy Guy and Jimmy Reed in Ft. Worth blues clubs. Given the atmosphere of segregation at the time, did any of those guys ever regard you with suspicion, being a young white kid playing the blues?

No, it wasn't like that at all. All the guys that we played with were teachers to me. I learned to play harmonica from Jimmy Reed, Buster Brown and Sonny Boy . . . I soaked up as much of it as I could every chance I got. We had a great band, and they loved to play with us, because we knew all their songs. I've got a microphone that Jimmy Reed threw up on, the very first night that I got it. I had had it on layaway, and I'd been paying on it for months. And he was going to be there that weekend, so I went and paid it off and brought it in, and he threw up on it that night. It didn't ruin it -- I cleaned it up and used it for years after that, but he christened it [laughs].

Where would you usually play with those guys?

That was Jack's Place -- it was just across the line outside of Ft. Worth city limits in a little town called Mansfield. It's where all the young people went, because Jack had a deal with the police in Mansfield. The neon sign was a jackass kicking, and if the jackass was kicking, everything was fine, but if it wasn't kicking, everybody knew there was going to be a raid that night; every once in awhile, they had to have a raid. So if the mule wasn't kicking, that meant don't come in. There'd be some people there, but all the underage kids from Ft. Worth would stay away -- I mean, all the ones that knew better, but most of them did because this was a known place where you could go if you were underage to dance and drink. I started playing there when I was about nineteen, and I did about three years at Jack's.

What do you think of the state of the blues today?

Well, there's a lot more to playing the blues than just playing the songs. You've got to really put yourself in it. Since Willie Dixon died, there haven't been a lot of great blues songs written, in my opinion. Blues has to reinvent itself. Stevie Ray was the last one to put anything new into a blues song. A guitarist playing the blues can't just play something he heard -- he has to go beyond playing what he heard and make it something more. You can only listen to the same thing so many times before it's not that exciting anymore.

Does anyone still do it for you?

I think Jonny Lang has got the potential to be an amazing artist. He's got a 2,000-year-old voice, and he plays really good guitar and he sings his ass off.

What about harp players?

I've gotten to the point where I almost hate harmonica players and harmonica music -- except for when I want to play it on something that feels like it ought to be there. There's a couple of harmonica players that I can think of that I like to listen to: Kim Wilson and Fingers Taylor. I'm sure there are probably some other good harmonica players out there, but I don't know who they are.

For the last seven years, you've hosted a rock, roots and blues cruise to the Caribbean. How would you describe that?

Well, it's really hard to describe, because it's indescribable. It's one week in the Caribbean with about fourteen bands and about 700 people. Music never stops. The last show ends about 1:30 a.m., and then the all-night jam session starts. It's a lot of fun. Everybody in the world seems to want to get on it now, but you can only get so many bands on. There's staples on there that are on every year, like Marcia Ball, Stephen Bruton, Asleep at the Wheel . . . I've got about five or six acts that are there every year, and about that many more that I rotate in and out.

Where exactly did you get the idea to do this? I did a cruise for some guys out in Kansas City for two years in a row, a blues cruise -- nothing but blues music. About halfway through the second year, I'd heard all the blues I'd ever want to hear in my life. I mean, I love blues music, but blues music if its not done really well, gets really old, really fast, and that's what happened. It got really boring. So I told my wife, "We can do a better job at this." So I talked to a friend of mine who went in partners with me, and we leased a boat. Lost our ass the first three years, then it started to pay for itself, and now it's making a little bit of money.

You've been playing music professionally for four decades now. Was there ever a point where you'd felt you'd had enough?

I never felt like I'd had enough, but I felt like it'd had enough of me -- the early Eighties I was down pretty low due to a lot of things. My second marriage had fallen apart, I had IRS problems and I was abusing myself. And I didn't have a record deal. But an angel came into my life, who is now my wife, and she put it all back together and made it work. That was in '85. But everything about life for me is now better than it's ever been. My career's better than it's ever been, I've got a great life, I've got a great family, I'm healthy, and I still enjoy doing this.

Any lingering demons?

Well, there's always going to be lingering demons, but I've made a deal with them, where if I don't pull the trigger, they won't turn around and bite me.

RICHARD SKANSE
(March 29, 2001)