Nineteen seventy-three was a strange year to be John Fogerty. He was just off a spectacular run with his band Creedence Clearwater Revival, from the swamp-rocking cover “Susie Q” (1968) to his own “Proud Mary,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Down on the Corner,” and “Fortunate Son” (all 1969), and quickly onward to “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” “Run Through the Jungle,” “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” (1970), and many more indelible songs that stripped rock ’n’ roll down to its essentials and roots. And yet Creedence had split acrimoniously in 1972; John was often not on speaking terms with his brother, Tom, the band’s rhythm guitarist; and a legal battle over record-contract terms had begun that would consume and creatively debilitate John for decades. In the midst of all these triumphs and travails, he made his solo debut in ’73 with The Blue Ridge Rangers, a tribute to the songbooks of Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Merle Haggard, and others in which Fogerty played all the instruments and overdubbed a one-man gospel choir.

Today, Fogerty feels ambivalent at best about his first solo outing, though not about the heroes he was celebrating. So 36 years later, he has given the idea a second shot with The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again, taking the role of singer and rhythm guitarist and assembling a top-shelf band that includes Buddy Miller (guitars), Greg Leisz (pedal and lap steel), Jason Mowery (dobro, fiddle, and mandolin), Jay Bellerose (drums), and Dennis Crouch (bass). (The title is intentionally ungrammatical—The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides rather than Ride—because, Fogerty says, “The first one was just one guy singular. And it sounds good because it’s ‘wrong.’”) This time Fogerty tips his hat to Ricky Nelson (“Garden Party,” with luminous harmonies by the Eagles’ Don Henley and Timothy B. Schmit), Buck Owens (“I Don’t Care”), the Everly Brothers (a feisty duet with Bruce Springsteen on “When Will I Be Loved”), and John Denver (“Back Home Again” and “Paradise,” the John Prine classic that Fogerty originally learned from Denver’s version). It’s a satisfying and lighthearted set—enduring songs, well played and delivered by a voice that has hardly aged since it first grabbed the airwaves.

The mood of the album is a reflection, no doubt, of Fogerty’s much sunnier outlook on life and career than when he first rode as a Blue Ridge Ranger. These days Fogerty seems at peace with his history (in contrast to long stretches when he refused to perform his own Creedence hits) and excited about current musical projects—thanks especially to some 15 years of serious woodshedding on the guitar. Fogerty has always been a powerful player—his melodic solos in Creedence were every bit as tight and memorable as the songs themselves. On the new record Miller and Leisz supply the hot licks, but as Fogerty revealed in this late-summer phone conversation from his home in California, his guitar quest is leading to all sorts of musical discoveries.

You’ve known some songs on this CD since you were a kid. Would you paint a picture of yourself when you first encountered, say, “When Will I Be Loved” and talk about what impact it had on you?
FOGERTY I was riding in my brother Tom’s car—I was still too young to drive—and the Everly Brothers’ “When Will I Be Loved” came on the radio. It was one of those times where we just looked at each other with that thing in our eyes—a great big smile but also like, “Holy crap, how can anything be this great?” The guitar and the way the Everlys harmonized certainly made a big impact. I know at home I fiddled with learning the guitar lick as a 13- or 14-year-old. I’m not sure I ever sang it publicly, but I sang it to myself all the time.

When the idea popped up of revisiting this song for the new record, did you immediately think of doing it with Springsteen?
FOGERTY I had done the basic tracks and had a complete list of what I thought was going to be on this album, and then my wife, Julie, suggested this song. And she said, “I think it would be great if you record this and then sing it with Bruce Springsteen” [laughs]. It’s almost like saying, “Why don’t you become a lawyer and then run for president?” I looked at her with big eyes and said, “Sure, honey, that’s a great idea.” But I’m not sure if I was entertaining it as an idea of whimsy or as something that would actually happen. We moved forward, though, and eventually I talked to Bruce about it, and he was totally up and in favor. It became a delight.

Were you hoping to achieve things on this Blue Ridge Rangers album that you couldn’t do the first time as a one-man band?
FOGERTY Well, yeah. When I did that all those years ago it was probably a reaction to my mental state, having to deal with Fantasy Records circa 1973. I won’t go into it, but I was fairly depressed and certainly felt very constrained by what Fantasy Records was doing to me. I owed them a lifetime of product according to their contract over me. You know what’s ironic? When I finished the original Blue Ridge Rangers album, they immediately let me know that the album was not going to lower my obligation to them—because it was country [laughs].

Doing a one-man band is very time-consuming. You do a lot of starting and then going, “Oh, man, that’s the wrong key” or “That’s the wrong tempo.” It’s not near as easy as when you have four other musicians in a room and you just start playing and turn on a tape recorder. I almost swore to myself at that time, “Boy, I don’t ever want to have to do that again.” What I used to tell people is that I took all these great songs, and the arrangements were really good—if I’d only had real players, it probably would have turned out pretty great. So I was rather sheepish about the first Blue Ridge Rangers album. I had known for decades that if I ever did another, I would find the best people I could to play with me.

You certainly got great players this time.
FOGERTY I’m really knocked out. I really am—this is not a marketing ploy. The way those guys play off each other, particularly Buddy Miller and Greg Leisz and Jason Mowery, who were the above-the-rhythm-section players, it sparkles. I really love to listen to it, which is why I made the record in the first place. It’s exactly the kind of stuff I love to listen to and smile about the incredible musicianship that’s being tossed back and forth.

Is recording these classic songs a way for you to refuel as a songwriter?
FOGERTY I’m sure there’s some of that. But I’ve been working on my guitar playing for a long time. I got the guitar bug as a very small boy, and then because of all the baloney that happened in my career, I wasn’t moving forward in my playing for a long time. But somewhere in the early ’90s, to make a long story short, I discovered Jerry Douglas, the dobro player, and for some reason that was the catalyst for me. He’s my favorite musician of all time. And one day that little molecule of consciousness in my brain that was the moment when I was 14 or so and thinking, “I’m going to grow up and be really good like Chet Atkins” . . . Well, that little molecule got light shone on it again, and here I was 48 years old, all because of Jerry Douglas. It was one of those moments as a human being when you either wave a hand across your face, like swatting a fly, “Nah,” or you receive it as a gauntlet being thrown down: “I’d better get busy,” which is what I did. So I’ve been quite serious about my own daily improvement ever since.

Are you talking specifically about dobro or any kind of guitar?
FOGERTY At first it was slide guitar on a traditional acoustic in various tunings. And after about a year of that I decided the sound I really wanted was dobro—so I did that for about three and a half years, working my way up to Blue Moon Swamp in the ’90s. But then somewhere after that I transferred that desire back to guitar, meaning acoustic and electric. Around 1998 it finally occurred to me what I was trying to do. I wanted to be able to do the free-hand thing that bluegrass guys, flatpickers, and jazz guys do, where you can just roll your hand and all these notes come out of your hand. And I was nowhere near that.

So I got real busy, because I couldn’t do that to save my life. I started practicing open C position and G position scales, that kind of stuff. Rock ’n’ roll position scales, but not just blues boxes, in other words—much more like what flatpickers play. And it was so slow going. It was horrible. When your ears are professional but your ability is amateurish, it’s really hard to get through, but I stayed with it. I thought it might take me two or three years—it took ten to 11 years to get fluid.

But along the way, I also got into what I guess you call hybrid—to me it’s Nashville Tele chicken picking. I’ve got my thumb and first finger with the pick, and then I’ve got acrylic nails on my middle finger and ring finger. So that’s become part of my repertoire. [On the new CD] even though the other guys were playing all the hotshot stuff, I could do what they were doing—I could join the conversation and kind of guide in what direction I wanted things to go. If I had made this album five years ago, I wouldn’t have had a clue what anyone was doing.

I am able to do a lot of really cool stuff on electric now, but I’d give my eyeteeth to be able to [flatpick] like Bryan Sutton. I have a lot of company.

The vibe of the record reminded me of “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.”
FOGERTY Absolutely, and probably a few more from the Creedence years. I was very influenced by country music, whereas I don’t think anybody else in the band had quite that same attraction. My brother Tom had it to some degree—he liked Buck Owens, but I don’t think he was aware of Merle Haggard much at all. And earlier in rock ’n’ roll, so many guys were crossover people, like Johnny Cash or Jerry Lee Lewis or even Elvis Presley—at first his nickname was the Hillbilly Cat. I didn’t know that until years later or I probably would have sworn off of him! There were certainly large doses of country in Elvis.

On the new record, I’m struck by the songs with soft vocals—like “Back Home Again” and “Moody River.” People don’t normally associate you with that kind of singing.
FOGERTY I must say that I had to spend a period of time with each of the songs to learn how I do that. Even though I’ve sung “Back Home Again” riding in the car, that song in particular kind of terrified me, because I know I don’t sound like John Denver. My wife really enabled me. She kept supporting me and wanting me to do that song, because the lyrics really mean a lot. I daresay I was singing that song to her, particularly when we were tracking in the studio. So I had to spend time in the studio, basically alone when I was doing my vocals, to learn what my voice will do—I had to find that place.

There are a lot of nice vocal harmonies throughout this record, but “Garden Party” stands out. Does this song have particular significance for you?
FOGERTY Absolutely. I was and am a huge Ricky Nelson fan. And when “Garden Party” came out in the early ’70s, I immediately glommed onto the line, “If memories were all I sang, I’d rather drive a truck.” That totally resonated in me. It’s great that you mention the harmony singing, because that’s Don Henley and Timothy B. Schmit from the Eagles—they’re born to sing that song. Maybe that song even inspired them as they went forward in their own careers.

You also cover John Prine’s “Paradise” (see Acoustic Classic, January 2010), which seems to connect with your desire in your own songs to tell stories of working-class people.
FOGERTY I first heard that song in the early ’70s. I heard the John Denver version, and it was great to sing along with and I loved the message. It wasn’t until later that I realized it was a John Prine song. It’s a classic intersection of moods and ideas: I mean here’s John Denver singing this lilting song with his beautiful voice, and yet you’ve got John Prine’s rather acerbic and sarcastic words and point of view coming through.

The way you modulate the key in the instrumental breaks is an interesting touch.
FOGERTY That was something I just heard. I don’t know if over the years I’ve ever recorded it myself with one guitar at home, but I’ve always known that’s what you should do in the middle. As a matter of fact, the way the tracking went, normally the drummer [Jay Bellerose] had the entire open room all to himself. Everybody else was in cubbyholes, and we couldn’t all see each other by any means. But for “Paradise,” I had to come and sit in the middle of the room. We built a baffling system with windows around me so I didn’t leak into the drums, basically so that with body language I could show where the shifts come: where we’re going to the modulation, and how long we’re staying there before we start another verse. The timing is spontaneous. I didn’t want it to be learned—“Oh yeah, after four beats we all change.”

I’m proud of that moment in my recording career, because I think it’s a beautiful track—it’s got a lot of different vibes, a lot of different emotions. You kind of go on a journey with that one.

What led you to revisit your own “Change in the Weather” on this album?
FOGERTY The first Blue Ridge album had a balance to it—there were out-and-out country twangers like Webb Pierce, and then there songs that were gospelly and R&B, because that’s a part of my background, too. And I felt at some point that with this new collection we were leaning pretty heavy into the fiddle and steel guitar area, and I wanted to nod at least a little bit toward my R&B and blues roots. I realized I already had a song that does that, and perhaps in some circles it was fairly obscure. [“Change in the Weather”] was on Eye of the Zombie, which I describe as a good song on a bad album. It seemed like it would fit very well with this group of musicians and work as an arrangement.

In past interviews you’ve described many nights in the ’60s working on your songs until 4 am. Yet the songs themselves don’t sound labored over at all.
FOGERTY It’s an interesting dichotomy. The best songs are effortless—“Midnight Special” or “Cotton Fields” or “Down in the Valley” or “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was quite remarkable in its time. It was completely out of the normal rock ’n’ roll box. The way I think back on that was, the Beatles had been very heavily influenced by Buddy Holly, particularly songs like “Peggy Sue” and “Everyday.” Buddy would go through these circles of fourths or fifths and follow the chord to the next progression. The instrumental chops weren’t necessarily earth shattering, so he’d do it with mental power, you might say.

Well, America kind of forgot all that and went on with its own vision of rock ’n’ roll, whereas the Beatles kept cooking with that in their development. It came out in things like “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which had strange ways of changing key and going to the bridge, that kind of thing. But it still ends up sounding effortless.

The thing is, when you’re writing a song, let’s say you’ve got a good verse going and your next move is the bridge or the second verse or whatever. That’s when you have to want it to be a good song—not a throwaway song or in-a-hurry song. So that’s when the labor begins. That’s when you don’t settle for the first thing that occurred to you. You stick with it until it really fits. Sometimes that comes to you in an instant, and other times it doesn’t occur to you. And then one day you’re riding along in the car and you step out into the parking lot in the mall, or maybe you’re brushing your teeth . . . and suddenly that thing you’ve been thinking about for a long time just goes through your brain at a different angle, and you go—of course! And then it’s clear as a bell.

Do songs come to you sometimes without that labor?
FOGERTY A long time ago, my brother and I were talking until the wee hours of the morning, and he said something to me like, “Well, Hank Williams would write a song in like a half an hour.” And I looked at him and said, “Well, not anymore.” What I was trying to say with gallows humor was, yeah—“Jambalaya” probably popped out in 20 minutes. “Fortunate Son” was that way for me. But it’s very hard to get something that sounds like it popped out in 20 minutes. That’s just the nature of it. I will say when your life is aligned, when you’re happy and you feel good about yourself and your music, you have a far better chance of having those quick things happen to you. If you try a song and don’t get it, it isn’t like you’re crushed or obsessed by the fact that you couldn’t get that thing.

For me, what I do at those times is I take a left turn and start working on my guitar playing. I was talking one day with Nils Lofgren, who’s a heck of a guitar player, and he said, “Well, the cool thing about it is there’s always some other style you can start working on.” Once you get the pick and finger thing going, then maybe you want to do the alternating thumb or the complete five-finger thing—there’s always something. Nobody has it all down in this world, you know.

Is there a guitar project that’s consuming you right now?
FOGERTY Yes. I feel pretty good about where I’ve gotten my hybrid picking. It’s taken me a long time—probably more than ten years. But now I’m beginning to see that there’s another level, more akin to Chet Atkins, where you’re using those same fingers but it’s much more like a roll. It’s much more mellow and even, the way acoustic fingerstyle is played or the way Chet played electric guitar. It’s like an electric fan. It’s just real smooth and creates a wonderful palette. You are able to sound much more melodic, a lot prettier. I’m not perfect at it, of course, but it’s coming around.

So to be able to play in a really soft way is quite another direction, and that’s a place for me to go. I only recently opened that door. I’ve kind of gotten to where I wanted to go, and now, happily, I’m looking out at all these other avenues that are pretty cool.