Bob Schneider is freaking out.
He’s earned a truckload of plaques from the Austin Music Awards, his 2001 release “Lonelyland” garnered positive reviews and regional acclaim, and he’s in the studio working on an album for Universal Records that’s set to come out this summer.
But in a break from recording Friday, he admitted that he’s completely terrified of a short upcoming solo acoustic tour.
“It’s just you and your guitar,” he said. “If you mess up … They know you messed up.”
But the Austin singer-songwriter continues, adding that playing without backing allows him to reach out to the audience in a way he sometimes can’t with a band in tow.
“When it works, then there’s a connection that happens between me and the people at the show,” he said. “Even though it’s super scary, when it works it’s great.”
Schneider brings his eclectic mix of rock, country, pop and blues to New Orleans’ House of Blues Feb. 14 and Baton Rouge’s Varsity Theatre Feb. 15 after playing shows in Birmingham and Atlanta.
He says listeners should expect to hear some tracks from “Lonelyland,” some tracks that probably never will make an album and maybe a few from the upcoming Universal release.
But he doesn’t use his performances to showcase an album.
“I try to write all the time, and the songs live as soon as I write them,” he said. “I write a lot of bad songs. I have a hard time realizing what’s good and what’s bad.”
He doesn’t write in the studio, rather he plays a song live almost as soon as he writes it, discarding the bad songs in favor of cuts he won’t tire of playing 50 or 60 times.
“I like to live with the song for awhile and find out if I get tired of it,” he said.
“Lonelyland” is a compilation of softer, almost pop-driven jams, and rugged, raspy rock tracks that range from three minutes to more than seven.
In the more than seven-minute-long “Madeline,” he croons “It looked good on paper / Now it’s scaring me to death / I’m all wrung out / With nowhere to go / Just your second-string Romeo.”
Contrast this against a rock beat, brass backing and almost playful lyrics — “I can tell you where it is but I can’t tell you where it’s at” — on “Bullets,” and it’s obvious Schneider doesn’t want his collections to bore anyone.
“I don’t listen to one kind of music,” he said. “My favorite artists, they don’t all write and perform in one style. I kind of have musical ADD, too. I just get tired of listening to the same thing.”
It is this musical ADD that makes Schneider so endearing. He goes from playful to sweetly serious in a matter of bars. In one track you can hear him laugh. In another, he samples an opera.
It also means he always has a lot of projects going on. He’s a regular in Austin’s thriving live music scene, winning the “Musician of the Year” award at the 2001 Austin Music Awards.
In addition, he showcases his paintings and drawings on his Web site, www.bobschneidermusic.com, and he designed the covers of some of his former bands’ CDs.
His contract with Universal also allows him to continue to make indie recordings at his leisure, such as his record “The Galaxy Kings,” where he assembled jazz musicians who didn’t even know all of the songs and recorded an album in one day.
This project took only two weeks from the day he started to the day he had 2,000 copies of the CD in his hand.
So how is this free spirit dealing with producing songs for a major record label?
He says while he doesn’t feel pressured to record any one type of song to please the suits, he knows the company wants a marketable product.
“The record company really wants something that they can play on the radio,” he said.
But, a lot of Universal’s staff are fans of his work, so he said they also want to see him produce the best record he can.
“They’re not trying to make me into something that I’m not,” Schneider said.
Which is a good thing — not only is Schneider extremely talented, but he’s also in love with the process of doing his craft free from outside worries.
He advises other artists not to worry about if what they write is good or bad.
“You always have to assume that anything you write will never be successful,” he said. “The only thing that matters is the doing of the thing.”