Hancock has been hailed as one of America's great Alt-Country songwriters, a West Texas tunesmith known for his razor wit and intricately crafted word play. He has released 10 albums of material, most recently “War and Peace” in 2006 — but it's for his work with Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Joe Ely, as part of a songwriting triumvirate known as the Flatlanders, that he is best known.

For the uninitiated, the Flatlanders first formed in the early 1970s in Lubbock, Texas, and released a single and an album that even though critically acclaimed had little impact. By 1973, the band was no more with Gilmore, Ely and Hancock each embarking on solo careers. As their status as artists grew, the legend of their first album together took on a life of its own.

During a summer music festival in New York's Central Park in the late 1990s, the trio got up on stage for a short jam session. The next day, the New York Times proclaimed, “The Flatlanders reunite;” offers to perform together soon began pouring in. The Flatlanders have appeared nationally on programs like the David Letterman show and Austin City Limits and have released three albums of new material, the last called “Hills and Valleys” in 2009.

I spoke with Hancock before a scheduled performance in San Diego, where he had the price of gas, Fellini and Tin House proprietor Homer Wells on his mind.

Q: Can you talk a little about the tour that you're on right now?

A: I told Lance (Webb), our manager, to get me out on the road as much as possible until I started squealing about it, and he fixed me up. I'd been touring around Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma a couple of weeks ago and then this leg of the tour started in San Antonio, with Jimmie Dale Gilmore. I did a thing there with him that was a lot of fun and then went to Marfa, Texas, Albuquerque and Sedona on the way out. I finished by driving across Arizona and you always take your chances doing that (laughing). I wound up in San Diego and it's really a beautiful town down here.

Q: Butch, can you speak to the differences between being out on the road by yourself, versus playing with the Flatlanders?

A: The Flatlanders is just a rolling, wonderful party of friends running around the country. Solo is just a whole different thing, having to drive AND sleep. But I'm really enjoying it. I've been telling everybody that I finally have a vehicle that gets mileage instead of yardage. I had a big old Chevrolet pickup that was doing like 13 to 14 miles per gallon. I'm doing 40 something now and it makes a huge difference. But doing solo gigs means that you're fronting the band the whole time because you ARE the band. You have to remember all the words and don't have as much time to think about it between songs because you have to keep the show going.

Q: Are you currently touring in support of a solo CD?

A: I'm sort of promoting the next one, which should be out in September. It'll be called “Seven Cities of Gold.” I'm way overdue for a new album again, but I've got several of them in the can. Last summer I did five nights at the Cactus Café in Austin and I've got several schemes for albums made up of songs from those five nights. I've just got to sit down in the studio and work out the details.

Q: Any idea when the next Flatlanders CD will be out?

A: Well, Joe came out with a new album just a few days ago and he's touring behind that, and Jimmie Dale has a new album out with a band called the Wronglers. He's in that with Warren Hellman who puts on the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. They've produced an album called “Heirloom Music” and they're doing quite a few gigs around, they played South by Southwest. On the way out here I heard them on Sirius Radio.

Q: Have you been to Grass Valley before?

A: I was just out there last year at The Center for the Arts. I sort of swept in and out, because I was playing some other gigs around the Bay Area. What a beautiful place ... When I was there, Homer was just beginning to work on his new place and I saw some pictures of the room he was putting together. It looks like he's really made some good progress, it looks beautiful.

Q: I love your songs and it seems there are lots of different influences in what you do. It's obviously not just pure country.

A: Absolutely, I've never really thought of it as country at all. Certainly, some songs lean more in that direction and just because I'm from West Texas and play acoustic guitar, it's easy to be labeled that way, I guess. But to me it's more folk music basically, but there's also rock and roll and blues and even a little bit of jazz influence. I feel like all kinds of music have influenced me. I can't really pin it down to any particular style or genre. I never know which direction the songs are going to take me. I learned from listening to Dylan and Woody Guthrie. Those guys opened up a lot of doors, but someone like Fellini showed that you can do anything imaginable in a movie, if you do it well. Uncensor your dreams and let things happen.

Tom Kellar is a freelance writer living in Cedar Ridge. Contact him at thomaskellar@hotmail.com